no child left behind?

Update: If I could spell worth a darn, I wouldn't have had to add this update. Aggh!

Update: Notice the word "potentential" "potential" in the Statesman article below. This is a vicious cycle wherein low expectations by administration leads to abandonment of students, and those students in turn don't achieve at a high level. This situation sucks. And it can hardly be called education.

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By way of Disinformation:

"No White Child Left Behind

An Associated Press study has revealed a bit (well, a lot) of skullduggery in the reporting of No Child Left Behind test scores. Under NCLB guidelines, schools with small numbers of a certain ethnicity - white kids in Camden, NJ, but black, Asian, and Hispanic kids everywhere else - aren't required to report those kids' test scores."

What's going on here?

From the Statesman Journal:

"Many states, including Oregon, are helping public schools escape potential penalties by skirting the No Child Left Behind law's requirement that students of all races must show annual academic progress.

With the federal government's permission, schools deliberately aren't counting the test scores of nearly 2 million students nationwide when they report progress by racial groups, an Associated Press computer analysis found.

Minorities, who historically haven't fared as well as white people in testing, make up the vast majority of students whose scores are being excluded, the AP found. And the numbers have been rising."

So, in fact, millions of (minority) children are being left behind -- on purpose? To tilt the numbers? To meet this standard?

The AASL says that "all students, especially those living in poverty, need assignments that are relevant" to build literacy skills -- please read this AASL brochure. As it happens, many minority students live in poverty.

Librarians can help somehow, right?

Another article on the matter at InfoToday.

At the official NCLB site at ed.gov... No mention of libraries in the site index...

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Feeling: cranky