Linda Darling Hammond’s response to what’s wrong with our education system really grabbed my attention. Having survived the years of intense scrutiny under No Child Left Behind, it seems that educators today are just now coming out of the fog of the bombardment of state and local assessments. But now what? Although many teachers felt their hands were tied with what and how they were teaching, the freedom of creating a more equitable system is daunting to say the least. Hammond went on to say that our students today are the most tested and least examined. To me this speaks to the idea of educating the whole child and ensuring that their most basic human needs are taken care of first and foremost. Looking at a child’s data can never tell the whole story. A successful educational system will produce “”equity of outcomes” no matter how that child started their educational path. As a teacher of struggling elementary school readers, this concept intrigues me because my students are often starting at a disadvantage. Lack of preschool, having a primary language other than English, lower socio-economic status, are just a few of the hurdles that my students have to overcome. I feel an immense pressure to have them achieve the “equitable outcome” of becoming an on grade level reader by the time they are 5th grade.