NCLB: 44% of schools have made deep cuts in social studies, science, art/music, and even lunchtime

==By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 25, 2007; Page A03

In the five years since a federal law mandated an expansion of reading and math tests, 44 percent of school districts nationwide have made deep cutbacks in social studies, science, art and music lessons in elementary grades and have even slashed lunchtime, a new survey has found.

The most detailed look at the rapidly changing American school day, in a report released today, found that most districts sharply increased time spent on reading and math.==

==The survey provides grist for critics who say the federal testing mandate has led educators to a radical restructuring of the public school curriculum in a quest to teach to new state tests. But backers of the law, which is up for renewal this year, say that without mastery of reading and math, students will be hampered in other areas.==

==In the 44 percent of districts that said they had reduced time for subjects other than reading and math, the decrease on average was about 31 percent. The drop was 36 percent for social studies, 28 percent for science, 20 percent for lunch, and 16 percent for art and music over five years, the report said. The federal act, which requires testing in reading and math every year in grades three through eight and once in high school, began to require science tests this year. That might affect decisions about lesson times, the report said.==

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no Science and no Social Studies (except in May once testing is over).

And next year our school day will be longer.

Or is it a middle school without science or history?

What a crazy direction this country is going.

then the teachers must be.

But they can't be left behind!!

How can we do this, especially in the formative years of children? :mad: Thanks for sharing your personal experience! :hi:

The pressure to score well on the damn tests is just incredible.

there will be more kids diagnosed with ADHD and put on medication so they can fit into the whole scheme of things.

But it honestly isn't a problem at my school. We have about the same percentage of kids on ADD meds as we had before NCLB. I am the special ed teacher and my caseload hasn't increased either. It has actually gone down.

And they dropped science, too, until a test in science was added to the state's regimen.

That is absurd. We should be providing exposure to all subjects to children--especially in their formative years. :mad: Thanks for sharing your experience too! :hi:

who wrote this damn law.

And the States aren't without guilt on this too, even though they were date-raped by the Bush Administration.

... reduced the length of Social Studies, Science, Art, Music, etc. to 30 minutes, while raising the length of Math and English to 75. It was ridiculous. By the time the class was settled down and you took attendance the class was over.

They also cut two Social Studies and Science positions from each grade to make room for more English and Math teachers.

The sooner NCLB is dismantled the better.

:hi:

grades for field trips and other activities which, hopefully, will make up for the lack in the school.

Just out of curiosity what grade do you teach? I think what you are doing to go the extra mile is fantastic. It will help minimize the damage done by NCLB. Our children need to be well-rounded. As I have said to the other teachers in this thread, thank you for sharing your experience! :hi:

museums, symphonies, various businesses-factories-etc..(To show behind the scenes workings.), and the pinnacle was two weeks in London and Paris. I think I learned more from that than they did, but they will hopefully remember it forever. I really scored when my father-in-law married a music teacher who is in the process of teaching my little boy the piano and guitar.

The schools are definitely a mess though. I always push for field trips and the like, but it's all they can do to provide really basic trips. So few parents seem to care that we often don't have enough grown-ups to chaperone and drive! If the school doesn't have the money to do these things then the parents have to step up. Unfortunately they often don't. It really pisses me off.

I often mourn for those who don't have the advantages I've created for my little ones. They need all the help they can get in this world that is only getting harder, faster, and less forgiving.

It really should be getting easier, not harder...

Adequate Yearly Progress is not only test scores. Attendance minimums are included. So be prepared for pressure from the school to keep your kids in school and not take them out.

The idea of a "well-rounded 'person'" is, of course, subversive.

The subjects the hard core republikkan hates are the one that have been getting the shaft...

Science...Unless it's intelligent design

History...They've spent the last years eight years re-writing/distorting history. As the people who lived through the Great Depression have died out, they've been financing books that say Roosevelts policies did little-to-nothing to get us out of the depression -- that if it wasn't for WW II, he'd have been viewed as a failure.

Art...Who needs to learn about perspective? The beauty of the world? How to use color to make things bright? The only colors they care about are either green (money) or red (Jesus' Crucifixion)

Music...Again, who needs to expand themselves? Music is a waste of time. If they want to learn the piano or violin make their parents pay.

Recess...What do children get from recess? They only learn how to play with others. They need to learn to look out for number 1 (aqnd avoid stepping in number 2)

Republikkans are sick, sick people.

And when I share these facts with my fellow teachers, they think I am nuts. Really.

she`s one of the left behind by the left behind act. when i went to school 40 some years ago at least then someone who studied the arts and society was worth something. now students like my daughter and many of her friends are "bad numbers" on a test.

Social Studies? Divide and Conquer, new rule.

Science? Creationism is the latest rage now, science is dangerous to little minds.

Art = Pornography with all those nekked parts. Get the scarf!

Music? Let them bring iPods to school, there's your music program.

Lunch and recess? Eat your ketchup, sit down and shut up. What are you complaining about?

must be systematically dumbed-down! The kind of world that is being molded now -- the one they will enter upon reaching adulthood -- requires them to be devoid of critical thought or anything else that is not vital to playing a part in a service economy that will make subsistence and entertainment the focal points of a neo-third-world lifestyle -- and that is being optimistic, to say the least.

To expose today's children to anything other than what is essential to their practical performance largely as order-takers, solicitors, and menial forms of labor and dirty work, is only to invite trouble and dissent Critical thinking and any capacity to do so must be avoided, as well as any kind of "liberal" education that might expose students to more expansive and inclusive comprehensions of the world they exist in.

The obligation on parents today is to teach their own children well. There is no viable substitute for that -- not even private schools! The only practical and viable movement that will have any value or impact on the dumbing-down that is clearly a result of government policy is to put a child's education as a priority and make the time to talk with them and teach them that there is more to our ideas and life than what institutions have been created to provide. You might even teach them about the how and why of the compulsory educational system and discuss the problems inherit in a system that appears to be about opening minds with knowledge when it tends more now to serve as a way to encapsulate their potentials in a subservient mind-set for a profit-oriented agenda.

Yes, I know that parents generally don't have enough time to teach their kids and interact with them in a functional, influential way. You can still have a dramatic and useful impact, even though, conveniently, you are spending more and more of your valuable time working to fulfill the basic needs of survival for your family.

Think about what the television is telling your children and how it influences them, over and above what your intentions are for their lives and futures. If you bear the thought of going from transmitted TV to well-chosen videos, you have made a positive step in the right direction. If you can't live without your "shows" and can't keep your children from watchign the mind-bending drivel, (watch a few hours of that stuff and you will see) that is literally being poured into their minds, then you now have a point of contention to consider in righting the scenario.

The list of things you can do goes on and on. For parents who love their children and will not allow them to be turned into the grist for a capitalistic nightmare of a mill, then more must be said and done to save them from their digital subjugation now, so that they might take a stand upon maturation. Otherwise, they are merely being groomed to be, mostly, slaves to a very precise and unforgiving machine that serves its makers very, very well all the way unto the Nirvana of windfall profits and beyond.

Teach your children WELL!

;)

I wish the future was about being made content by TV. But looking at TV's shows, it's far devolved compared to what people called TV of 30 years ago, and TV back then wasn't being called very bright things either.

I agree with you larger point about education. But let's remember Three's Company was a huge hit 30 years ago. It wasn't all "All In the Family". We have some wonderful shows on today. The Closer, Boston Legal, 24 at its best, even the Simpsons would hold up favorably toward anything from 30 years ago.

And that these are basic skills they should already know and that teachers shouldn't have to spend too much time on these things. Standardized testing doesn't give you results, it measures them (and it can only do that to a certain extent).

If we expect the kids to pass these tests without teachers spending all of their time teaching to it, then we need to find a way to make that happen. Just expecting it to happen doesn't work.

To be inaccurate, and I'd heard a LOT of things that made no sense.


Pity about science, but who needs that in America anymore? (Now turn to the Christian cable channel and listen to the ministers talk about today's problems being perceived and why we need to get married and make children - so we can have tomorrow's scientists. Don't e-mail them questioning that; they have no response and probably because they're dumber than any politician.)

Who needs music? That's not profitable unless it's manufactured.

People DO need to learn how to read. Yet illiteracy has been said to be a worsening problem. I doubt math is any better off, but with math comes engineering - that's being offshored too.

I wonder if schools still do phy ed...

freshmen on such a massive level. No history, no science (rudimentary, biology, chemistry, physics), music, art, etc.

The kids will be able to read, but they won't have read anything worthwhile.

WHO HAS CONTACTED THEIR CONGRESSPEOPLE ABOUT THE UPCOMING REAUTHORIZATION OF THIS PIECE OF SHIT?

We don't want it "fixed." We don't want it "funded" WE DON'T WANT IT REAUTHORIZED.

NCLB funding and try to muddle through somehow without it. Cut the damn sports programs, get rid of most of the paper pushers, and fund special ed and other federally funded programs that way.

I think some of the posters above are correct in saying that the Republicanites don't want America's youth to know science or social studies.

In addition, the pea-brains who designed this seem not to have heard that one of the most motivating ways to improve one's reading skills is to read ABOUT something interesting, and that one of the ways to improve one's math skills is to APPLY them to real-world problems, such as are found in science.

To gain further insight into the reasons for NCLB, take out a copy of Alduous Huxley's Brave New World and find the passage in which the Epsilon children are taught to avoid learning and beauty.

http://www.mn2020.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC=%7BF42AC440-2920-42E1-9699-E0E3B761793D%7D&DE=

"I, for one, believe this particular federal law to be the single worst piece of federal legislation in my adult lifetime, and my adult lifetime dates back to 1966. It is not merely misguided, as some believe. It is, in fact, destructive and I believe intentionally so. It tests kids on the wrong things for the wrong reasons and, if it’s not changed, this cruel piece of federal cynicism will end up leaving nearly all children behind.

All kids are not the same. All kids do not learn at the same pace. All kids do not have the same learning opportunities. All states and communities do not have the same resources. All communities do not share the same dreams and expectations for their children.

As for the requirements of the law itself, the specific knowledge and skills being tested in this model are narrow, rigid and far too discrete. The truth is: all the expensive and disruptive testing we now have through NCLB tells us exactly nothing about whether kids have the actual skills the 21st century will demand of them. Simply put, getting right answers means little when we’re asking the wrong questions.

One can only speculate about the motives of the people who brought us this calamity, but this much I know. If the federal government persists in pursuing this course of action, and if the states fail to call their bluff, there are two possible outcomes, and only two. The first is all schools are eventually deemed “failing schools” and public education as we know it is ended. The second is lower standards nationwide, lowered deliberately to a common denominator all schools can actually attain, a standard like say maybe that of Texas. So in option two, educationally speaking, we all become Texas..."

their first five years? The focus on high stakes testing and the obsessive emphasis on short term memory tricks and multiple choice strategies (especially in schools that fear the loss of accreditation) make for a stunningly bad education.

http://www.mstanea.org/teaching_learning/issues/sep05.php

Putting It All Together
Teacher Induction, Retention and Shortage
The statistics are staggering.

The implications are sobering.

More than 50% of teacher education program graduates never even enter the teaching profession.

More than 50% of new teachers leave the profession in the first five years.

School districts invest substantial resources to provide support for novice teachers, yet lose 50% of their investment.

The cost to a district every time a teacher leaves is well over $100,000. Maryland loses nearly 7,000 teachers each year.

In Maryland, teacher education programs produce less than 50% of teachers needed each year to fill vacancies.

more...