At a meeting in June my principal discussed the efforts of our school in narrowing the achievement gap (such a cliched term nowadays). Specifically, the gains of the lower end students were highlighted. An obvious upward trend could be seen. But, the high achievers basically showed no change. I mentioned at the meeting that this should [...]

One of my criticisms of NCLB is that it causes too many schools to focus all of their attention on the bottom 25% of a school’s population while ignoring the middle- and upper-level students. Some of the effects of this focus in my school are: fewer upper-level course choices in order to create more lower-level courses, larger [...]