ABSTRACT
The national high-stakes testing movement thathas affected education reform in virtually ev-ery state in the country is rooted in efforts to understand and better educate at-risk students. Such students were perceived to have the deck stacked against them in terms of educational and social support at home, enriching activities available to them in their communities, and perhaps innate intellectual endowments that they could bring to the challenges of academic learning. What began as an individual testing movement to target the learning difficulties of particular students has emerged into a systemic movement targeting the teaching deficiencies of entire school systems. In fact, many critics of the American education scene argue that the entire nation is at risk for under-educating its student body.
