Bush's "No Child Left Behind" plan hopes to reform the modern educational system in America. The key objective of the President's plan is to close the educational deficit between private and public schooling, Anglo and minorities. Bush hopes to accomplish this goal by raising the standards in public schools, and increasing the accountability of those schools, districts, and states for the success of the students. Annual assessments in reading and math will be the prime measurement of this success. Those schools that succeed in improving education and minimizing deficits will be rewarded with federal bonuses, but schools that fail to meet the standards will lose federal funding, and possibly be forced to shut down. Bush's plan to bolster the educational system has good intentions and reachable goals, but the plan relies too heavily on linguistic and mathematical achievement testing to measure success.
             In the opening of "The Theory of Multiple Intelligences," Gardner uses a story that demonstrates his belief on the effectiveness of standardized testing. Two children take a standardized test to measure what Gardner refers to as a traditional type of intelligence, or "the ability to answer items on tests of intelligence" (379). One child scores well, while the other scores only average marks. As the test predicted, the child that scored well had a successful school career, where the average child had a typical school career. Later in life however, the average child has "become a highly successful mechanical engineer," where the above-average student found only eventual mediocre success as a mid-level bank manager (Gardner 377). (Gardner classifies the engineer who has "risen to a position of prominence in both the [...] community of engineers [and] civic groups in his community" as successful, but the mid-level bank manager as "ordinary" (378). Gardner seems to ...