Study Finds No ‘Educational Triage’ Driven by NCLB

A new study offers evidence to dispute the notion that the federal No Child Left Behind Act is pressuring educators in struggling schools to focus on the “bubble kids”—students who fall just below the passing threshold on state tests—at the expense of students at the high and low ends of the achievement spectrum.

For the study, which is to be published Oct. 31 in the magazine Education Next , researcher Matthew G. Springer scoured three years of test-score data on 300,000 elementary and middle school students in an unnamed Western state for signs that students in the middle testing range got a disproportionate boost in test scores after the 2002 law took effect.

“I didn’t see anything that seemed to indicate that educational triage is taking place,” said Mr. Springer, a research assistant professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt...