Booker-Jennings, Jennifer. (2005). Below the bubble: "Educational triage" and the Texas accountability system. American Educational Research Journal, (42)(2), 231-268.
What a shocking story -- this is the worst of No Child Left Behind. The author describes a school in Texas where raising test scores became the be-all and end-all of everything. In this school, a form of "triage" developed where kids were classified on the basis of test scores as "safe cases," suitable for treatment (the "bubble" kids) and hopeless cases. The majority of the resources went to the "bubble kids" -- those who might pass with some extra input. Even more shocking than this inequity (both "low" and "high" kids suffered for it) was the push to identify more kids as special education kids and thus remove them from the pool of "accountables." This seems to even have exceeded legal percentage limits.
Teachers were placed in competition with each other by using test scores as a measure of a "good" teacher, then publicizing the scores. Conservatives have always tried to prevent coalitions, to "divide and conquer" the less powerful peons who are nevertheless essential for the "grunt" work they do. They attempt to appeal to our darker, more selfish, insecure natures. That is what I see happening here -- and the same thing happens in KC!
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