Word: progressives
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...lack of progress wouldn't be so noticeable if India's marketing gurus hadn't raised expectations so high. Last year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, India's government and industries backed a publicity campaign dubbed "India Everywhere," which overwhelmed conference attendees with facts and figures about the wonderful new India. But since I arrived in India almost seven months ago from Africa, I have heard countless foreign businessmen and women in New Delhi and Mumbai (formerly Bombay) complaining about the gap between the image India projects and the reality. Last month, when I spoke...
...contingent from other grades--because their test scores hold the key to putting the school over the top on the pivotal Pennsylvania System of School Assessments (PSSAS). Last year, after a history of failure, the school, under new leadership, managed to meet the federal goal for adequate yearly progress (AYP) on the state tests for the first time. If it does so again, Blaine moves off the dreaded list of failing schools, no longer a target for intensive oversight and sanctions that could include replacing the staff...
...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 the achievement gap between rich and poor, black and white, and bring all students to grade-level proficiency in math and reading by 2014, ending what the President memorably called "the soft bigotry of low expectations...
Whether NCLB is achieving its 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...
...heart and soul of No Child Left Behind are its requirements for annual testing and proof that students of every stripe are making adequate yearly progress. AYP is as basic to U.S. education as ABC, but most thoughtful educators object to the way it's measured. One of the biggest problems: there are too many ways to fail, even when a school is moving in the right direction...