avocado8

Yet Another Reason to Hate No Child Left Behind

If you had any doubt that No Child Left Behind would make things worse instead of better, consider this:

In Mississippi, 89 percent of fourth graders performed at or above proficiency on state reading tests, while only 18 percent of fourth graders demonstrated proficiency on the federal test. Oklahoma, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Alaska, Texas and more than a dozen other states all showed students doing far better on their own reading and math tests than on the federal one.

The chasm is significant because of the compromises behind the No Child Left Behind law. The law requires states to participate in the National Assessment - known to educators as NAEP (pronounced nape) - the most important federal measure of student proficiency.

But in a bow to states' rights, states are allowed to use their own tests in meeting the law's central mandate - that schools increase the percentage of students demonstrating proficiency each year. The law requires 100 percent of the nation's students to reach proficiency - as each state defines it - by 2014.

I was already worried about educators "teaching to the test" instead of teaching kids how to think and how to learn. But if the test they're teaching to is crap, that's even worse. If this keeps up, no one American child will be left behind in the global economy; all of them will.