Which Child Left Behind?

We had dinner tonight with a teacher friend from another middle school, and the subject of high-stakes testing inevitably came up. Despite the affluence of our district, none of the five middle schools made AYP last year. When you drill down the data, particularly for the subgroups, you can come to some startling conclusions. For example, our friend's principal told their staff that if one more African American boy had passed the math test, they would have made it. Of course, there were other kids who failed, but the way the results are disaggregated and the data is delivered, their success becomes less important to the school, which is the exact opposite of the intention of the law.