Setting the bar too low doesn’t challenge children

 As lawmakers consider renewal of the 5-year-old No Child Left Behind law, teachers are complaining that it places too much emphasis on testing. Actually, the problem is the lack of a universal test and the unachievable perfection demanded by the law. The 2002 bipartisan legislation calls for all students to be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014. But the notion that all students will reach proficiency is simply folly—what University of California Berkeley Professor Bruce Fuller calls “well-intentioned pie-in-the-sky.” In almost any social science experiment, perfection is unattainable unless the bar is set too low. If every student succeeds, we haven’t demanded enough of our students. Read more of this opinion piece by Daniel Borenstein in The Contra Costa Times.