EdWeek: NCLB Seen as Curbing Low, High Achievers’ Gains

From today's Education Week online -- a story that should be disturbing to policymakers, administrators, teachers, and parents. I wish we could say that it wasn't true....but we've seen these "bubble kid" strategies being recommended to teachers by consultants and administrators. Here are the opening paragraphs; click the link above to read the whole story.

A new study of Chicago students suggests that the federal No Child Left Behind Act may indeed be leaving behind students at the far ends of the academic ability spectrum—the least able students and those who are gifted.

The study by University of Chicago economists Derek A. Neal and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach lends some empirical support to the common perception that schools are focusing on students in the middle—the so-called “bubble kids”—in order to boost scores on the state exams used to determine whether schools are meeting their proficiency targets.