The Seattle Times: Opinion: No Child Left Behind: Test-obsessed education won't move us ahead: "Two important studies from the late '80s-early '90s, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor to connect what students are learning with the needs of employers, acknowledged that basic academic skills, such as reading, writing and mathematics, were central for student success in school and adult life. But both studies included additional categories of competence and knowledge as being equal in significance to traditional academics: speaking and listening skills, problem-solving skills, creative-thinking skills, knowing-how-to-learn skills, collaboration and organizational effectiveness skills, and personal-management skills.

These reports looked not only at which skills were needed to support the economy, but also considered the wider range of human capacities, including citizenship, personal relationships, creativity and self-expression. But during the past decade, a string of political leaders (Bill Clinton, Gary Locke and most other governors, and now George W. Bush) have abandoned the needs of the present and future and retreated into the familiar paradigm of the industrial school, only with more testing and more penalties. "