Shaded areas are passing percentages. Setting the passing score at level 1 produces a gap of 34 points. At level 2 the gap shrinks to 14 points.For those of you looking for ways to explain why NCLB's goal of 100% proficiency for all subgroups by 2014 is wholly impossible and designed only for the citizens of Disneyland (or Lake Wobegon), here are some tools for your rhetorical toolkit:
"Acid Tests" by Charles Murray - an unlikley ally in the war against NCLB, but Mr. Bell Curve makes a great case for why NCLB is both inane and deceptive.
"Closing the Racial Learning Gap" by La Griffe du Lion - this funny, witty piece expands on the statistical arguments put forward by Murray.
"'Proficiency for All' — An Oxymoron" by Richard Rothstein, et al - No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requires that all students be proficient by 2014. But some policy makers think that this goal can be achievable if only schools had more time to improve. This paper by Richard Rothstein, Rebecca Jacobsen and Tamara Wilder concludes that there is no date by which all (or even nearly all) students in any subgroup can achieve the NCLB requirement of proficiency on "challenging" standards, because no goal can simultaneously be challenging to and achievable by all students across the entire achievement distribution. The authors show that even the highest scoring countries in the world cannot meet this standard, nor could they meet a standard that required only basic skills of all students.
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