Barely a day goes by when I don't get a new education book in the mail, and -- truth be told -- most of those books go straight to The Sun's giveaway pile. But I held onto one that came a few weeks ago, called Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade.

The book was written by Linda Perlstein, whose work I greatly admired when she covered education for The Washington Post. For Tested, Perlstein spent a year at Tyler Heights Elementary in Annapolis, a school where the student population is largely poor and minority. She began her time at Tyler Heights when the principal and her staff were reveling in the news that their students had earned sky-high scores on the Maryland School Assessments, the tests mandated by No Child Left Behind. Immediately, they felt the heat to replicate that success the following year.

We often hear that No Child Left Behind is turning schools that serve impoverished kids into test-prep factories, at the expense of everything else. Tested goes inside one of those schools and shows us how that happens. It's particularly interesting in light of Eric Smith's appointment as Florida education commissioner this week. The story of Tyler Heights is part of the legacy he left behind in Anne Arundel County.