Fruchter and NCLB

Some of the information in Fruchter's book on No Child Left Behind was pretty sobering, such as how the additional funding the law requires has not been allocated. But the part that was most interesting to me was the potential of NCLB to actually widen the achievement gap. The author brings out how students in urban settings tend to perform worse on standardized tests. Since teachers are held accountable, those low test scores could give good teachers more motivation to avoid poor, urban areas, in favor of the more affluent. So diverse schools are left with worse teachers, who can't prepare their students adequately for tests, and less money to provide resources to help their students' achievement. The scores remain low, and the gap never narrows.

Another thing I found interesting was the point about how pressure to reach Adequately Yearly Progress could motivate schools to push students out who are likely to fail. It reminded me of a recent episode of The Simpsons, where Superintendent Chalmers and Principal Skinner concocted an elaborate plan to make sure some of the less intelligent students (Bart, the bullies, Ralph Wiggum) were not around during state mandated standardized tests, so that their probable low scores wouldn't cause Springfield Elementary to lose their federal funding (of course, Simpsons fans are aware of the running gag that Springfield Elementary is very poorly funded, whether it was their cafeteria serving "malk" instead of "milk," or the auditorium being bulldozed into a mini-mart after budget cuts forced them to cancel art, music, and dance). Chalmers' anxiety about the test seemed unreasonable, but The Simpsons tends to satirize with hyperbole. Apparently, those kinds of actions aren't THAT far-fetched, as struggling schools will try desperate measures so that they don't fall further behind. When events in The Simpsons don't seem outrageous any more, I think it's safe to say we're living in scary times.