Beating The Bubble Test

Here are some of the things kids at Garfield/Franklin elementary in Muscatine, Iowa, no longer do: eagle watch on the Mississippi River, go on field trips to the University of Iowa's Museum of Natural History and have two daily recesses. A sensible bargain has been struck: literacy first, canoe trips later. But there are more substantive losses too. Creative writing, social studies and computer work have all become occasional indulgences. Now that the standardized fill-in-the-bubble test is the foundation upon which public schools rest--now that a federal law called No Child Left Behind mandates that kids as young as 9 meet...