By Maureen Downey
(From Atlanta Journal Constitution, January 9th, 2012)
Sunday marked an anniversary that few educators celebrated. On Jan. 8, 2002, President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law, setting off a decade of test-driven school reform.
The landmark law mandated annual testing in reading and mathematics with the ultimate goal of all students reaching a “proficient” level by the 2013-14 school year. Schools had to reach escalating target scores to prove “adequate yearly progress” or risk a failing label.
Districts had to sort out scores by students’ race, ethnicity and other characteristics, so schools could no longer mask low-performing students.
Patterning the complex law on reforms from his home state of Texas, Bush said, “The fundamental principle of this bill is that every child can learn, we expect every child to learn, and you must show us whether or not every child is learning.”
Thus began a frenzy of standardized testing that turned many of America’s classrooms into drill-and-kill laboratories in which anything not on the test fell to the wayside.
Schools that reported jumps in their annual test scores earned headlines, parties and visits from beaming governors. Those that did not suffered failing labels and falling morale.
Over the past decade, there has been a steady increase in percentage of schools each year that did not make AYP. In the latest report, 2010-11, roughly half of the nation’s schools failed to reach their goals. But because states could set their own baseline for proficiency, there are wide variations from one state to the next in how well schools are meeting their targets.