Does NCLB go too far? (Notebook: education information from schools, business, research and professional organizations).

Classrooms will get over-crowded. More teachers will be needed. And more portable classrooms will make their way on to school campuses.

These are some of the likely consequences of the No Child Left Behind law--when parents me their right to transfer their children out of failing schools into higher-performing ones.

"It makes no sense," says Jack Jennings, director of the Center on Education Policy, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C. "It may be helping some kids, but it will threaten the education of other kids.... It's going too far."

"It's not the only way to go about it," adds Melinda Anderson, spokeswoman for the National Education Association. "There needs to be a more comprehensive look at this as opposed to the silver bullet.... Giving parents the option to transfer to a `higher achieving school' looks good on paper, but the reality of the situation is that it undermines the responsibility of school districts to make every school a high achieving school."

The law requires students in grades 3-8 to be tested annually in reading and math beginning in fall 2005. States must show certain improvement every two years and have all schools proficient by 2014. Now, about 8,600 schools are labeled "in need of improvement," or those that have test scores that have not increased over two consecutive years, Jennings says. Schools that fail to make progress could face sanctions, such as paying transportation costs for low-income students to attend better-performing schools within a district.

Under the new federal regulations, school districts cannot use overcrowded classrooms as an excuse to bar students transferring from failing schools. Jennings adds that districts also can't cite health or safety concerns, or lack of school capacity to keep transferring students out. If districts have policies to reduce class size, they have to make adjustments to meet the new law, Jennings says.