No Child Left Behind Act leaves Gifted Children Behind

Today's NY Times (8/28) has an interesting Op-Ed piece from Tom Loveless and Michael Petrilli on the Federal No Child Left Behind Act and Gifted Education.

Loveless and Peterilli claim that by focusing on the high stakes testing, many educational systems are actually leaving many children out of the equation. Closing the gap is not enough. A better measure of whether education is improving is the National Assessment of Educational Process.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/opinion/28petrilli.html

Here is my favorite part of the article:

We are closing the achievement gap between our top and bottom students! But is that our only national goal in education? What might happen if federal law encouraged educators to improve the performance of all students? Our analysis of the federal data identified tens of thousands of high achievers who are black, Hispanic or poor. They are excelling at their studies, often against great odds. Shouldn’t we be addressing their educational needs?

Perhaps we should make Drs. Loveless and Petrilli honorary members of our MoCo advocacy efforts?