Back in 2000, when George W. Bush was running for President, he tales up the (nonexistent) Texas Miracle and said there was a simple answer to solving the problems of Educatuon, raising test scores and graduation rates, and closing achievement gaps. Easy-Peasy. Test every child every years from grades 3-8. Publish the scores. Reward schools that raise scores. Humiliate those that don’t. The secre: High expectations! So No Child Left Behind mandated that every child would be proficient by 2014. An absurd goal, and district or state met it. Probably every school in the nation should have closed.

Peter Greene writes here about appropriate and inappropriate uses of expectations.

Setting impossible goals is actually demotivating.