Over the weekend, NPR looked at a school in Oprah's hometown of Baltimore, the city's Northwestern High School, which is focusing on the so-called bubble kid.  Those are the students just short of passing the state's high school assessment, or HSA. 

NPR's Larry Abramson reports, "Two to three times a week, certain students are pulled out of their regular classes and put into these special test preparation sessions.

The principal, Tajah Gross, says the students are chosen because they're believed to be just a hair's breadth from passing the HSA.

A state department of education official objects to the school's test preparation regimen, saying, "We would prefer that school systems consider the entire school year as preparation for the test."

Professor Daniel Koretz of Harvard says the school's strategy may distort the test: "If it's done intensively, it inflates them, produces gains in test scores that are much larger than the real increases in student learning."

Education Trust's Amy Wilkins says, "What people are, sort of, doing is rather than saying we're going to have teachers that can teach all kids, they're pulling the classes apart now and saying, you get this, you get that. I'm not sure that's really the way to do this.

Text here, audio here.