testing, testing, one two

http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/LA/0855-may08/LA0855Exchanging.pdf

I just read an article about a California school that was forced by NCLB to change its English curriculum. They had been using an authentic and holistic approach, including comprehensive assessments to determine exactly what each student needed. Now they are required to use a supposedly scientific but completely generalized curriculum imposed from the outside, involving tests whose purpose is to report on the school's "performance" rather than reveal the students' needs.

Interestingly, this change was not a universal catastrophe. Reading scores among English-fluent students jumped substantially in the first two years of implementation. But here's the catch: scores among English Learners were almost completely stagnant.

Furthermore, with their jobs on the line, teachers were forced to focus on the specific skills emphasized in the new assessments (ie, teach to the test), thus compromising the individualized instruction they used previously.

So the net result of this take-over was a dramatic increase in the existing performance gap between English-fluent students and English Learners. In other words, No Child Left Behind forced this school to take about a quarter of its students, and leave them behind.