Word: maths
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Under the law's most visible stipulation, states must test public school students in reading and math every year from third through eighth grade, plus once in high school, and reveal the results for each school or face a loss of federal funds. Just as critical, schools must break out test results for certain groups: blacks, Hispanics, English-language learners, learning-disabled students. This has embarrassed many a top suburban school where high-flying majorities have masked the low achievement of minorities and special-ed students. The law insists--with consequences for failure--that schools make annual progress toward closing...
...objectives remains an open question. Fourth-grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) rose sharply from 1999 to 2004, but most of the gains occurred before the law took effect. The achievement gap appears to be narrowing in some spots--fourth- and eighth-grade math scores for minorities, for instance--but not others. The gap between white and black eighth-graders has widened slightly in math, for example. Gains for eighth-graders in general remain stubbornly elusive...
...reading and math tests: Is it the right tool for measuring learning and raising achievement in the nation's schools...
...focus on reading and math distorting and narrowing education...
...addition, the do-or-die AYP system creates perverse incentives. It rewards schools that focus on kids on the edge of achieving grade-level proficiency--like those 11 students in Blaine's math-review class. There's no incentive for schools to do much of anything for the kids who are on grade level or above, which is one reason the law is unpopular in wealthier, high-achieving communities. And sadly, says O'Connell, "NCLB provides no incentive to work on the kids far below...