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August 30, 2009

Smart Child Left Behind

Tom Loveless & Michael Petrilli, via a kind reader's email:

AS American children head back to school, the parents of the most academically gifted students may feel a new optimism: according to a recent study, the federal No Child Left Behind law is acting like a miracle drug. Not only is it having its intended effect -- bettering the performance of low-achieving students -- it is raising test scores for top students too.

This comes as quite a surprise, as ever since the law was enacted in 2002, analysts and educators have worried that gifted pupils would be the ones left behind. While the law puts extraordinary pressure on schools to lift the performance of low-achieving students, it includes no incentives to accelerate the progress of high achievers.

Yet the new study, by the independent Center on Education Policy, showed that more students are reaching the "advanced" level on state tests now than in 2002. This led the authors to conclude that there is little evidence that high-achieving students have been shortchanged.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 30, 2009 1:55 AM
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