No Child Left Behind, Bloomberg’s testing fetish, and their myriad effects on city classrooms.

It was not Mayor Bloomberg’s proudest moment. Last month, the federal government released New York City schools’ rankings on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math tests for 2009—and their scores had flatlined, even as scores on the state Regents exams continued to rise. “Don’t trust the Regents,” shouted a Post editorial headline, saying that the NAEP gap had revealed New York State’s testing regimen to be “a pathetic joke.”

It seemed like yet another Albany scandal, to go along with Client 9 and state legislators locking each other out of the Senate chambers. Yet according to a growing chorus of parents, educators—and, quietly, school administrators—the test-score brouhaha is just a symptom of a deeper problem with roots in Washington and City Hall… [read more]