One of the travesties of the NCLB standardized testing craze is the elimination of rich complex curriculum, especially for the students identified as "below proficient." Instead of exploring themes of humanity in literature, they are reading 1 page out of context non-fiction pieces for the purposes of finding the main idea, evidence to support the main idea, and inferences- as an end in themselves for test taking, not to dig into a beautiful piece of literature to learn about ourselces, others, and the world. The rationalization is that kids need to learn the basics of reading, math, and language before moving on to more complex tasks.
Another dangerous notion is that students shouldn't learn anything of importance unless they are going to college; otherwise, they should learn the basics and prepare for job training.
These practices become self-fulfilling prophecies. Many sites with the lowest test scores are often low socio-economic areas, and many of those areas are disproportionately represented by racial minorities. So we end up depriving the poor and racial minorities of rich meaningful curriculum and putting them on a track to vocational job placement and an education devoid of purpose, wisdom, passion, or liberation.
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