No, really. Kausfiles directs us to Eduwonk, who gives us some taste of the singularity of the event.
Eduwonk says: Stockpile canned goods and firearms! That guy by the subway station was right...the apocalypse is upon us! Key indicator? Pro-charter school NYT story here...front page NYT Sam Dillon pro-NCLB story here!
As Eduwonk says, make sure you are sitting down for this one.
BOSTON - Spurred by President Bush's No Child Left Behind law, educators across the nation are putting extraordinary effort into improving the achievement of minority students, who lag so sharply that by 12th grade, the average black or Hispanic student can read and do arithmetic only as well as the average eighth-grade white student.
In short, Bush's NCLB policy is doing exactly what it was designed to do: force educators to find ways to reach the least educable.
Here in Boston, low-achieving students, most of them blacks and Hispanics, are seeing tutors during lunch hours for help with math. In a Sacramento junior high, low-achieving students are barred from orchestra and chorus to free up time for remedial English and math. And in Minnesota, where American Indian students, on average, score lower than whites on standardized tests, educators rearranged schedules so that Chippewa teenagers who once sewed beads onto native costumes during school now work on grammar and algebra.
"People all over the country are suddenly scrambling around trying to find ways to close this gap," said Ronald Ferguson, a Harvard professor who for more than a decade has been researching school practices that could help improve minority achievement. He said he recently has received many requests for advice. "Superintendents are calling and saying, 'Can you help us?' "
I draw your attention to the word suddenly in the last paragraph. When the education industry does anything at a pace that is visible without stop motion photography, that is indeed front page news.
Of course this recognition by the NYT's is bound to be ignored by the paper itself as soon as its editors come back from vacation. Kaus suggests that
Friday before a holiday is the classic time to bury good news! ...
But the article is astoundingly honest. Consider the next paragraph.
No Child Left Behind requires schools to bring all students to grade level over the next decade. The law has aroused a backlash from teachers' unions and state lawmakers, who call some of its provisions unreasonable, like one that punishes schools where test scores of disabled students remain lower than other students'. But even critics acknowledge that the requirement that schools release scores categorized by students' race and ethnic group has obliged educators to work harder to narrow the achievement gap.
Isn't it precisely the fact that educators are obliged to work harder that explains the backlash?
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