Opinion
Education Opinion

Everyone’s Favorite NCLB Angles -- Teaching To The Test, Educational Triage, Curriculum Narrowing -- All In One Place

By Alexander Russo — March 05, 2007 1 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

The big story of the week, so far at least, seems to be this Washington Post piece about principals at some local schools targeting 2nd quartile kids (aka bubble kids). Here’s the story: A Concentrated Approach to Exams. Here are a couple of responses: The bubble kids (Sherman Dorn), Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t (AFT Blog). Here’s the full list of blogs who have posted on this already (one of my favorie WPost features).

As you’ll see, the piece revisits pretty much all of the narrowing the curriculum/ teaching to the test / educational triage angles we’ve come to know and love over the past five years but whose scope and depth and negative impact remain not entirely clear or documented in this story or in what little research has been done on the impacts of NCLB on curriculum for better and worse.

For special measure, the piece refers to NCLB-required state tests as “high stakes,” which is a pet peeve of mine since it confuses high stakes for kids (not a part of NCLB) with high stakes for teachers and principals (arguably real though generally inconsequential).

The opinions expressed in This Week In Education are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.