Existing evidence suggests that high stakes exams result in little increased learning among students. Yet, given the federal mandates for greater accountability, such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation and Race to the Top policies, and the "pervasive testing culture," the use of high-stakes tests is presently an accepted…

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 and its Reading First provisions are an attempt to close the academic achievement gap between mainstream Americans and American Indian/Alaska Native and other ethnic minority groups who have a history of below average academic achievement. This article gives evidence that despite its laudable goals,…

This in-depth interview study of the schooling experiences of 120 First Nations, American Indian, and Alaska Native students contributes to understandings of their literacy motivation, highlighting tensions between their insights on literacy learning and literacy practices implicated by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. With NCLB in…