Reply #92: In the days before high-stakes testing,

[LWolf]

I found that to be the same. We always took tests, although not so many and not with such an emphasis. When you focus on thinking, the kids do well on the test without much stress.

That changed for us when a single school in our large district didn't make AYP for a couple of years and triggered legal action. The whole district has to come up with an "improvement plan," and part of that plan will be to further standardize curriculum and instruction. That's when the scripted curriculums etc. were instituted. Our test scores actually went down with the changes in the plan; we had to stop doing what worked to provide documentation that our district was authoritarian enough about standards to keep the district from takeover.

That, and the mathematical reality that the formulas used for AYP pretty much guarantee that ALL schools will eventually "fail," and you've got a recipe for disaster.

NCLB doesn't care how well your students were doing to begin with. You WILL improve every year by a certain amount, or else. Of course, the better you are already doing, the less room there is statistically for "improvement," and the less improvement you show.