As NCLB grinds to a halt - disgraced, discredited and dismissed as ineffectual and damaging - schools and teachers will be returning to the good work begun in the late 1990s - challenging work that involved all students in wrestling with tough comprehension and problem-solving tasks.
Despite the promises and claims of NCLB proponents, the narrow focus on reading and math did not produce good results. In fact, the U.S. faces a crisis with regard to comprehension, as reported by Vicki A Jacobs in "Adolescent Literacy: Putting the Crisis in Context" in the Spring 2008 issue of The Harvard Educational Review. An Ed Department study further reported that Reading First was "Ineffective."
