A clear, interesting analysis: the difference between de-stigmatizing, on the one hand, and affirming, on the other.

Amen! If a quarter of the energy now spent on dragging horses--I mean students--to water and trying to force them to drink, were spent on really teaching those wanting to learn, American education would be very different. In many schools, administrators exert superhuman efforts cajoling utterly unconcerned teenagers to keep their warm bodies in school though they may curse out teachers, cut class, do zero work, demoralize the good students, and drag the mediocre students down to their level. Some school could be improved, not by throwing money at them, but by LETTING the most disruptive students drop out so that the teachers can teach and the other kids can learn. I speak as a teacher and the wife of a dedicated but frustrated teacher.

Your father-in-law is blessed to have you all, and you are blessed by him. It is good that there are enough people both able and willing to minister to him. Some, like my friend, a never-married woman in her fifties when her dad fell ill, care for the loved one at home as long as possible and then make the wrenching decision to put him in a home, still visiting daily or twice daily. The maddening thing, though, is that the more rules the government makes to "protect" the elderly (e.g., HIPPAA, the Medicare "skilled care" rules, etc), the more stymied are relatives in overseeing their care.

My friend's father was in a "good" nursing home and routinely neglected. Mistakes on his chart "couldn't" be corrected by her because of HIPPAA; he was misdiagnosed as being stage III Alzheimer's by a doctor who barely glanced at him, so her concerns about changes in his condition were explained away as inevitable. Finally she moved him to an excellent boarding home, run by a retired LVN. Before the move, the Medicare gatekeeper said, "We can't, pay because he needs a higher level of skilled care." My friend answered, "He's been getting NO care, skilled or otherwise, at your facility." Thus the nannies at HIPPAA and Medicare joined hands with the zombie attendants and never-present nurses to sabotage the care of a 90-year-old WWII veteran.

Omitted-words-typo correction: It is true that NCLB is the hand of big government in the classroom. It is also tru that the feds have no business in education and the more they get involved, the worse it gets, as Shubi said.

It is true that NCLB is the hand Whether "reforms" come from leftists or garden-variety, clueless bureaucrats, it is the rule rather than the exception that top-down reforms, with impossible mandates like NCLB's "A hundred per cent of students will be 'proficient' reading and math by 2014 (rather like the government mandating a given city shall be crime-free by 2014, or else!), encourage teaching test-taking rather than subject matter. This is what comes of trying to fix human problems by more and more laws, and of asking bureacrats rather than veteran, committed teachers, about what does and does not work

Yes, those issues do need to be addressed; the curriculum IS being dumbed down, since administrators' heads are on the block if the kids don't "pass," incorrigibility, addictions, etc., notwithstanding. Honesty IS essential. But NCLB holds schools not just "accountable," but RESPONSIBLE for the achievement even of students who cannot or will not achieve. Hence the rock-and-a-hardplace situation of the honest, caring teachers of such students. I admire Bush, but NCLB is and example of "The perfect is the enemy of the good."

These teachers cheated, for which there is zero excuse. But when big bonuses and severe punishments are tied to test scores in schools with awful discipline and no parental culture of learning, good teachers are between a rock and a hard place. Principals say, "Don't take it personally when the kids curse at you. They have bad home lives. Ms. Smith, it's not Joe's fault that he and those other 10 kids in1st period come an hour late and then go to sleep. But remember, if they (pick one) drop out, don't graduate, or fail, YOU will pay the consequences." The government acts as if teachers must be shamed or bribed into teaching well. So the ones that CAN be bribed rise to the top. Honorable teachers either become demorolized or leave.

The N.C.L.B. law could not "make" honest educators cheat. However parts of it are highly motivating for dishonest ones to do so: e.g., it mandates that all students, whether unmotivated, addicted, emotionally disturbed, or studious, be "proficient" in reading in math by 2014, or their schools will suffer the consequences, as if Congress mandated: "Cities MUST be crime-free by 2014" (Ravitch's example). What happens is that excellent, honest educators in no-win situations get out as soon as they can, while dishonest ones stay and cheat. My husband was routinely told by his principal: "Johnny's a senior, so I know you'll "help" him. Lakisha wants to go to Harvard so she "needs" an A." My husband retired earlier than he'd planned to.

This A.P.S. cheating epidimic is both appaling and unsurprising. The union--and administrative-- responses to it are predictably mealy-mouthed. However, the AFT president's remarks contained a grain of truth: she said in the NYT interview that the cheating was a biproduct of when "targets become more important than learning." All that means is that when lavish, government-funded bonuses are tied to the test scores ("targets") of students who, often, have chaotic home lives, no work ethic, no respect for teachers, and miserably bad preparation (due, sometimes, to many teachers' poor preparation by content-poor, leftist-agenda-driven ed. courses), those administrators and teachers who rise to the top will be those willing to cheat.