The Double Standard and No Child Left Behind

I hear lots of complaints from other parents and from teachers about the rigors of No Child Left Behind.

Here in Texas, the kids have to take the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills in various grades to measure how well students are performing. The pressure teachers put on students during that test-taking period is astonishing. Both parents and teachers complain about the pressure on the kids to perform on the test and about teaching to the test.

Well, guess what? The test is supposed to be a measurement of what we think students should be able to do in third grade, fourth grade, or eleventh grade. I've never understood the argument that measuring whether kids are actually learning the stuff we expect them to is a bad thing.

And, of course, NCLB was all George Bush's fault, remember? It's been called a failure and sneered at by liberals (even though Ted Kennedy was in on it) as terrible for kids. But now, a study says student reading and math scores are improving. Hmm. I guess it's another example of how "dumb" George Bush is, eh?