Testing and NCLB: Mistaking the Cure for the Disease

Kevin Carey reviews Linda Perlstein's book on No Child Left Behind, and thinks she mistakes the chemotherapy for the cancer.

Perlstein drives from Tyler to Crofton Elementary School, located in a wealthy planned community just fourteen miles away. Crofton students spend their days writing in journals, making crafts, studying science and history, and so on. There's little test prep, but nearly every child passes the exam. The contrast is a gross injustice, Perlstein believes.  [...]

But then she immediately explains that, unlike Tyler students, youngsters at Crofton come to school from home environments "rich with logic and analysis, that stimulate the brain and saturate children with learning strategies." They're also less likely to have "brains compromised by pre-natal substance abuse, lead poisoning, and malnutrition" and thus have more in the way of "memory, attention span, and motivation." In other words, Crofton doesn't need to create a highly structured environment to make up for the lack of structure at home. It doesn't need to explicitly teach learning and study strategies, because students get those from their parents.