No Child Left Behind, Take 2

Here‘s another article in the Post-Dispatch about No Child Left Behind. This one quotes Show-Me Institute board member Mike Podgursky:

"You’re not gonna hit 100 percent here," said Michael Podgursky, an economics professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia. The only way to make it would be to keep lowering the definition of proficient, he said.

The most important thing is that the scores show improvement, Podgursky said.

I may have been overly optimistic in my previous post on NCLB. As Tim pointed out to me, the requirement for adequate yearly progress encourages districts to focus resources on the students who score just below the desired level and to write everyone else off.