We're not big friends of the No Child Left Behind spending, but it appears to be holding public schools' feet to the fire. Link. Excerpt from Thomas Sowell op-ed:
There have been many bitter complaints from teachers and principals about the Bush administration's "No Child Left Behind" act -- and more specifically about having to "teach to the test" instead of doing whatever teachers and principals want to do. Now the results are in.
Not only have test scores in math and reading shown "solid gains" in the words of the New York Times, young black students have "significantly narrowed the gap" between themselves and white students. All this is based on official annual data from 28,000 schools across the country.
It is especially revealing that the young black students have made the largest gains while older minority students "scored as far behind whites as in previous decades."
In other words, the children whose education has taken place mostly since the No Child Left Behind Act show the greatest gains. For those whose education took place mostly under the old system, it was apparently too late to repair the damage.
