the nrc report claims that the gain in student outcomes as a result of nclb is small and given the ambitious program initiated by the us government to improve significantly student outcomes by the system is set to fail testbased incentive programs as designed and implemented in the programs that have been carefully studied have not increased student achievement enough to bring the united states close to the levels of the highest achieving countries when evaluated using relevant lowstakes tests which are less likely to be inflated by the incentives themselves the overall effects on achievement tend to be small and are effectively zero for a number of programs