Look at this:

“If you are not passing more than 65 percent of your students in a class, then you are not designing your expectations to meet their abilities, and you are setting your students up for failure, which, in turn, limits your success as a professional.”

This is from a memo a New York City principal sent to his teachers. What is the message he is sending here? I’ll tell you what it says to me.

If you are not making your classes easy enough for these kids, if you are making things to difficult for them, then you are doing the children wrong. You cannot expect them to rise up to your level, you must drop down to their level. If you don’t, you will have to fail them and that won’t make you look like a good teacher.

This is what teaching to the test does to the public education system. This is one of the unintended consequences of No Child Left behind.

Now why would a teacher lower their standards just to pass a student? Here’s 3,000 reasons:

Teachers at the school stand to receive $3,000 bonuses if their school improves.