"students are praised when they do well, but the schools are blamed when students do poorly."

I have noticed this many times when performance on the No Child Left Behind tests is discussed in the media. How ridiculous. A contracts professor of mine at Duke once made the remark in class that it is the quality of the students that determines how good the school is. If you dumped the Harvard students out of Harvard and replaced them with students from a community college, what would be the quality of the graduates?

The premise of NCLB is that all students have equal potential and innate ability. I suspect few experience teachers believe that. This is one of America's reigning delusions.