Posted on October 3, 2010
You might call this the war room of Edison Elementary. Third grade teachers huddle around the table, flipping through binders of student statistics and old tests marked in red pen. The walls are papered with a dizzying array of numbers from different tests, highlighted by grade level. The teachers sip water, snack on bagels and try to figure it out: How many kids will it take to beat No Child Left Behind?
The federal government demands that more and more kids at Edison score "proficient" on state tests every year. It sounds good to politicians and the press, but the teachers know it isn't that simple.
The problem: The tests don't track how much each child improves. Instead, they measure how each group of children scores compared to the last group. So Edison is actually trying to get a
