So says a new report by the Fordham Institute, that during the period of No Child Left Behind, 2002-now, reading and math scores for the lowest achieving students have gone up, but scores for high achievers haven’t. The think tank, which is fairly conservative and opposed to NCLB, makes no claims that the education law has caused the trend.

But as the New York Times’ Sam Dillon reports, it’s easy to draw such conclusion as the law is premised on penalizing schools when students don’t meet minimal threshholds. Anaylsts interviewed mostly discussed how discouraging it is not to have an education policy that also challenges already competent students. But lurking beneath is a rich irony: the Bush administration, which has done so much to accelerate economic and health care inequality, may actually be closing the gap in education. -MB

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