Well, I usually keep quiet on this stuff, as it just goes around and around in the same old circles. However, I guess I'll just put in my 2 cents this time.
Yes, there are bad teachers. There are also many, many gifted and caring teachers who do as much as they POSSIBLY can with what they have. Many of these teachers stay in the poorer schools year after year, because they know without them the kids don't stand a chance. The test results are still below the richer areas' scores. It's not about teaching, it's about lifestyle, in my opinion, and the tests themselves. When those kids don't come to school, come late, come sick, come with toothaches and lice eating their scalps driving them nuts with the itching, come without their glasses because they can only get one free pair a year and they lose or break them within two months, come unable to hear because of severe and recurrent ear infections, come hungry, come upset about something that went on at home, come after having no bedtime, no dinnertime, no bathtime........it's catch-as-catch-can, come after having been woken in the night by fighting, partying or sirens outside their windows, come after having once again had big brother take the only blanket and they were cold all night..............and on and on. All actual experiences of my actual 7 year old students. Here they come. I do what I can to make them safe and happy, I hand out crackers, I hand out combs, I hand out shirts, jackets, shoes and socks, backpacks, paper and pencils, books, free lice medicine, dental and medical referrals, referrals for free glasses. And then I teach. And then I give them a test given to me by the powers that be to measure what they've learned........and my seven year olds, coming from where they come from are supposed to understand in a reading selection that ONLY mentions mama scraping potato salad from a bowl and getting a birthday cake from a cooler, that the family is on a picnic. No mention of a park, playground, picnic table, grill..........just potato salad, which if mine have eaten they ate at KFC, and a cake in a cooler..........my kids use coolers as refrigerators since their electricity is turned off so often, and in their houses as drink dispensers........usually sodas for the kids mixed in with beer for the parents. They are supposed to get that from that? We are told to teach the children the difference between fact books and fiction books........then the question asks the children if the "genre of the selection was biography, folklore or realistic fiction"............not the terms we were told to use. We are told when to teach what, and to teach regrouping in the 4th six weeks. Then there is a question with a regrouping problem in the 3rd. We are told to teach them how to tell temperature by both fahrenheit and celsius on a thermometer, and we do. Then the thermometers in the question measure in increments of 5 instead of 2 like an actual thermometer.
You see my point? Even if we somehow manage to teach them what we've been told to teach them through all their other problems, the tests themselves don't measure what they've learned in a way that they can show. They are only 7 and 8 years old. If you try to trick them, you will succeed.
My school tests 3rd lowest in the district. Yet I know teachers in some of the higher performing schools who were in our school and couldn't take it. They left to a higher performing school where they wouldn't have to work so hard, and their students would still test well. That's because those kids' parents have set them up to be ready to learn when they come in. Their needs are met. Their medical and dental problems are seen to right away before it becomes a problem. They are able to have role models who show them how to do things, solve problems, get things done. They get experiences like picnics with potato salad.........and that's the only time they use coolers. Trick questions may still get them, but they are also likely to have had varied experiences like being read to, having heard jokes and riddles, that will enable them to have the framework of figuring that out.
I have materials and money to spend. I have resources to help me try to meet my students' needs that really have nothing to do with my "job". My problem is that the people running the show fail to realize that these are real children, individual people..........they are all different and come from different experiences before they come in to learn........then they want ONE test on ONE day to be one size fits all? A test written by those who have never seen these kids and their homes.
They say "no excuses". I don't see any of my children's problems as excuses, but they sure are barriers to their learning. They are REASONS why the child takes longer to learn what a child in a middle class neighborhood learns on the dot of the timeline the powers have decided on.
If I am to be judged by what my children KNOW, that's unfair. If I could be judged on how my children IMPROVE, I am perfectly willing, provided we do make notations on how many days they weren't with me, or with me half the time, or didn't have their glasses, couldn't hear instruction, were sick, had a toothache, and so on. These aren't little computers.........type it all in and it sticks. These are KIDS.
Unions help us do our job. They make sure we are given the time to do it, some freedom from children who simply aren't able to be in a classroom, some protection from administrators who "have it in" for a teacher for whatever reason (can be personal, racial, lifestyle, or even because they want the teacher to cheat on tests, so their school looks better than it is). They also help some of the teachers do their jobs longer than they should be helped. But, how many people do you think are out there willing to take that teacher's place? Those kids would have to be "absorbed" into existing classrooms, making it even harder for the "good" ones to do their jobs. In some cases that may be warranted, in others not.
For what it's worth, that's my two cents. I'll teach as long as I can..........when the stress affects my health too much, or my salary is threatened by my choice to work with the kids who need me most, I may have to hang up my ruler. Until then, I'll continue to do the very best that I can, so that when my students judge me (and I think they're the only ones that truly can), I won't be found lacking.
And as far as comparing us to Belgium, well, I'd need to look at Belgium to decide if I think we can accurately compare. Is it as diverse as we are? If not, their tests may not be as slanted as ours are, so they would do better as a whole. Unless of course, we are taking the exact same tests........but I know no one has brought an international test to my second grade class. How is it culturally? Are the children as varied as ours in lifestyle, which in turn varies them in "readiness" to learn upon arrival at school? Is there, as in China and Japan, a lot of follow-up practice at home? Our country has a love/hate relationship with homework, and it's not often done by low-performing students.
Also, there was just a report done (can't remember the source now, but I'm sure it can be googled), that while our students underperform many countries in tests, they also outperform many of the same countries in real world problem-solving, inventiveness and imaginative solutions, and leadership. Some countries are doing a strict formulaic and rote curriculum which helps them learn the base, but they students are never taught nor allowed to question or try it out in different ways.
Sorry for the book, as I said, I don't get into discussion of this much, so there's a river waiting to get out.
Great little program, NCLB! 
Starting out at $20,000 a year (oh, pardon me, add $200 to that for my master's degree) at the age of 40 sounds just peachy to me. And you're saying I'll never get fired??? Score! 
I said, Okay, you say my son isn't reading, then WHERE IS READING RESOURCE!!!' Just unbelievable....
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