High Stakes

[kelley]

Of course, this is mere anecdotage, in the same way that carrol views 
similar research on why downsized professionals ultimately reject their 
identity as middle class, but it may be worth a read for others who don't 
think so:
http://www.ffcd.org/wp_highstakes.pdf

High Stakes: Time Poverty, Testing and the Children of the Working Poor
--Margaret M. Chin and Katherine S. Newman, February 2002

Introduction
The United States has embraced two great policy shifts in the past ten 
years - one in welfare and the other in education - which were inspired by 
popular support for increased personal and institutional accountability. At 
one level, the two trends - insistence on work over welfare and an end to 
social promotion in school - were completely unrelated. They were brought 
about by different policy constituencies, inspired by wholly different 
research findings, and implemented by entirely different bureaucracies. At 
another level, they are intertwined, if not in their origins, then in their 
implementation in the private worlds of working poor households.