This is a paper that discusses the results of funded study focusing on the effects of NCLB on education, suggesting that the bottom and/or middle groups have improved while the top groups have not. The top hasn't lost ground but has not been improving. They use NAEP scores- I'm not sure what those are.

http://www.edexcellencemedia.net/pu...ldleftbehind/20080618_high_achievers.pdf

Thanks for sharing. This was an interesting article to read. I wonder if some of issues brought up by teachers will be looked at, ie teachers would like more training on how to teach high achievers.

I haven't read the entire article yet, but NAEP is the national assessment of educational progress.
My school has been selected to give this test this year, the organization has picked about 1/4 or our high school students to take this year's test in a week or so.
That is all I know about the test, but we as a school have no say in who is tested or over the test at all.

Way to throw away credibility, with a survey question like this:
" “For the public schools to help the
U.S. live up to its ideals of justice and equality, do
you think it’s more important that they (A) focus on
raising the achievement of disadvantaged students
who are struggling academically OR (B) focus equally
on all students, regardless of their backgrounds or
achievement levels?” Only 11 percent chose the former,
while 86 percent chose the latter."

Rephrased: Given that eqaulity is important... is equality important?

Haven't read far enough to see if they address ceiling concerns (some percent of the top 10% can't go any higher.)

We just received a letter that our HS was selected to give this test, and that our 12th grader will be taking either the math or reading test. Not sure how they select, but the school is typically in the top 1% in the state in state standardized testing and in average SAT scores. My kid is certainly not the best student there, but if (as suggested above) they take the top 25%, I would expect her to fall in that category.

She just groaned when she read the letter...thought all the standardized testing was over.

When I shared this with my teacher colleagues they all said the same thing: no kidding, we could have told them this a long time ago. In other words, the results agreed with what we all see everyday and what some of us try to fight everyday.
It was good to see the numbers though because some of the admin doesn't see that this is actually what is happening - they just see that there is still growth everywhere, the fact that it is less at the top doesn't seem to click with them. I'll let you know if I hear anything from them about this.

DH and I have always referred to it as No Child Gets Ahead for a reason.

A friend of mine once referred to it as "No child learns; bummer."

I've heard a lot about nclb but not being in the US don't get to see it first hand. Is it like our new national standards;

1/ set extremely low goals.
2/ tell parents who are worried about their child to 'relax your child is meeting the standard'
3/ apply the standards totally inconsistently and randomly so they don't agree with Standardised performance tests. Eg. Assess a child on one piece of writing for the whole year and declare them below standard when they test the 95th percentile in nationwide achievement tests.
4/ have no moderation of results.
5/release these dodgy results to the press so schools have incentives to ignore the high achieving kids.
6/sit back and say 'aren't we doing wonderful things for equality, the bottom marks are up and the top marks down'.

If so i think we got the idea from you.

Up until recently, the states have set their own goals and their own content standards. Those who set lofty goals had to punish their underperforming schools with staffing changes and diversion of budgets to private corporations who would serve as restructuring consultants. Those that set easily attainable goals still had difficulty getting 100% of their students to score at grade-level proficiency.

We still don't have national standards, but something like 80% of states have agreed to a new set of standards called The Common Core. In terms of critical thinking skills and college preparation, the Common Core standards are better. However, states don't have much money to spend on training, and there will be new tests to design on low budgets and in a rush. We can expect a bumpy transition.

But, yes, there's nothing in NCLB about helping gifted or even proficient students to stretch and grow. All of the targets involve the same percentage of various categories of students (racial, socioeconomic, disabled, English Language Learners, etc.) scoring as grade-level Proficient in reading, math, and whatever else the state reckons it can afford to test. If one of those categories (e.g., disabled) misses the target percentage, the school has not made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).

On the other hand, if the school has less than 40 students in one of the categories, they don't have to worry about that category. I actually had a restructuring consultant ask me to try to keep the number of special needs students below 40 for that reason. Anyway, that's why it is much more difficult for middle and high schools to make AYP than it is for elementary schools. The larger schools have to qualify in more categories.