A little tangent....
I was amused to see a reference two days ago on Tim Blair's smart, smartass website to the uproar caused by the latest plan hatched by the Australian government to assist Aborigines. Tim, like any sensible person, doesn't see the harm in the straightforward five-point plan. But I'm not surprised at the outburst, at least against point #2, "Target primary school students' literacy and numeracy skills".
"Targeting" these skills requires some method of assessment, to see whether or not the literacy and numeracy skills of aborigine children are improving, and the most efficient and even-handed method of assessment is through standardized testing. That's a controversial idea over here, and while the US and OZ situations are not exactly the same, you see the same outraged reactions from some of the US parents quoted in the NYT article on testing (see previous post below). They present the idea that testing is harmful to minorities as though it were a foregone conclusion, and not a subject very much open to debate.
For your further reading:
Pro-standardized-testing for minority children articles and sites: No Excuses; Achieve.org;Richard Phelp's, "Why Testing Experts Hate Testing"
Anti-standardized-testing for minority children articles and sites: The Nation (6/5/00); The Canadian Teacher's Federation;Education Week (9/27/00)