To me, today, as it does many days, but especially in the last week of classes, No Child Left Behind means sitting in review sessions explaining study techniques and reading strategies I learned in a public elementary school of medium quality. We are doing things like finding topic sentences.
I am also explaining, and explaining again, that a spelling error on the final examination will matter less than does a misunderstood concept. This is one of the worst ravages of No Child Left Behind. These test and detail oriented students are so oriented towards watching their backs that they cannot absorb what stares them in the face.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Sounds to me like No Child Left Behind will make the perfect bureaucrat. Get enough of them in the system and ossification is assured.
My God, you’re right – that’s probably the agenda behind all of this!
mm-hmm. i feel sorry for my students!
It’s all about “fill-in-the-blank” (straight out of a book), apparently. This semester, I dedicated myself to teaching two classes of in-coming freshman students how to think and most of them now look like so many three-day-old kittens with their eyes half-open and half-still-stuck-together, mewing loudly as they wiggle around on their furry little bellies looking for new worlds to conquer. What a rush! :^)