Rationing!

Eduwonk reader and Columbia TC student Jennifer Booher-Jennings has an article in the new PDK about “rationing” education in an accountability driven system. Worth reading but her second dilemma seems a more real tension than the first. That’s because the percentage of students that must pass the tests rises over time precisely to ensure that schools don’t focus just on the kids most likely to pass. Also, gotta ask…if all teachers were dutifully attending to all students in the pre-NCLB/pre-standards era, why are we in the jam we’re in? NCLB’s far from perfect but its critics do themselves no favors when they romance the pre-NCLB status quo as if it were utopian with rich curriculum for all kids, attention to all, etc….