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Dumping History in the Home of Washington and Jefferson

Monday, January 30th, 2012

Earlier this week the Virginia Senate passed a bill that would end state history and science testing in 3^rd grade. The reasons? You can guess—money. Dumping the tests would apparently save 920k in fy2013. And, according to the bill’ sponsor Sen. John Miller, a desire to intensify elementary schools’ focus on reading and math instruction: “I believe it makes common sense to concentrate on reading and math, and give a good basic foundation in those two core subjects for our students.”

Miller does not understand how children learn to read. You simply cannot teach reading effectively if you aren’t building students’ academic vocabulary in history, science, and other core subjects. Students’ reading skills will stagnate after 4^th grade if they have not been fed, and do not continue to get, a hearty diet of literature, social studies, and the sciences. So sending the signal—as dropping assessments does more clearly than perhaps anything—to Kindergarten through 3^rd grade teachers that history and science are less important than reading and math skills is perilous.

Unfortunately, most other states already have sent this signal. The home of Washington and Jefferson is among the last holdouts that put a strong emphasis on history testing at the elementary level. A 2008 report by StandardsWork found that they were one of just six states that that had mandatory social studies testing every year between 3rd and 8th grade. Things have only gotten worse since. And not just at the elementary level. Last year we wrote about Maryland’s decision to scrub – again, supposedly for budgetary reasons – its high school graduation exam in Civics and Government. These short-sighted decisions at the state level, along with national level threats such as the recent move to drop required science testing from NCLB, paint a grim picture for the content of public education. And they do so at an odd and perilous time.

Forty-six states and DC are in the throes of implementing the new Common Core State Standards in ELA and Mathematics. The full name of the ELA standards is the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (my italics). These standards are not intended to drive history, science, and other subjects from the curriculum. In fact, because of the strong emphasis the standards put on the importance of using informational (non-fiction) books, they are a wonderful platform for teaching students MORE about history, science, the arts, etc. The standards are intended to be implemented in the context of a “well-developed, content-rich curriculum” (a quote from the CCSS’s preface), not in an intensely narrow, skills-only context.

While legislators in Virginia and elsewhere insist that elimination of the tests in no way minimizes their support for the content, we know from studies, including a recently completed study by our organization, that “what gets tested gets taught.” Ninety-three percent of respondents in Common Core’s recent national survey of school teachers blamed high stakes tests in math and reading for the narrowing of the curriculum they see occurring.

Let’s not treat education like an expendable piece of infrastructure that can be mined for cuts when the budget gets tight. In the end, narrowing our children’s education is the most costly mistake any state can make.

Lynne Munson with Emily Dodd and Barbara Davidson

Posted in Curriculum, History/Social Studies, Math and Science, Standards | No Comments »

Not even 10 minutes for Social Studies

Monday, November 28th, 2011

You can’t even make this stuff up. The Dallas Morning News reports that teachers at Field Elementary School in Dallas have been fabricating social studies, science, music, art, and physical education grades for students. Was it because students were doing poorly in those subjects? No. It was because Field’s principal simply would not allow teachers to teach those subjects.

According to Field teachers they had to give students phony grades because the principal required them to spend all of their instructional time on math and reading. A third grade science and math teacher told investigators his request to teach science for 10 minutes twice a week and social studies for 10 minutes once a week was denied. Field’s principal told the teacher that students would “pick up” science knowledge though math lessons on creating and interpreting graphs. According to a school counselor: “I do not know of science being taught in 3^rd or 4^th grade, and I am unaware of social studies being taught at all.”

Many Field Elementary students also missed out on art, physical education, and music classes because they were pulled out of these “specials” for extra tutoring in math and reading. A music teacher reported giving students all a grade of 95 because after the first six weeks of school she “never got to see them in music again.” In one affidavit a math instructional coach reported “90 percent of third graders did not attend specials because of TAKS [Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills] tutoring.”

Field has earned the state’s highest school rating–“exemplary”—the last two years. That judgment is based significantly on students’ performance on state reading and math tests, of course.

So, is what happened at Field a singular, potentially criminally extreme example of educational negligence? Perhaps. But the pressure that spurred Field’s principal is felt by public educators nationwide. And this is far from the first time we’ve seen folks buckle under that pressure and do the wrong thing. We’re reminded of the well-documented cheating scandals in DC and Atlanta.

Pressure can be an effective source of motivation. It can also be used as an excuse to do the wrong thing—and to get others to go along. As we begin to implement the CCSS and the new assessments to come we need to keep these stories in mind. With its emphasis on informational text, academic vocabulary, and research, the CCSS in ELA provides an opportunity to fight curriculum narrowing, not an excuse to give in to it. Social studies, science, and the arts are among a wide array of core subjects that can be taught in powerful ways via the new standards. They should also continue to be taught in their own right, in part because no student will become a strong reader, writer, or researcher without the key knowledge those subjects impart. No one should make the mistake Field did—and many other schools are likely doing in less dramatic ways–and set these subjects aside.

Lynne Munson

Posted in Assessment, Curriculum, History/Social Studies, Teacher Perspective, What We're Reading | 1 Comment »

The “Continuous Narrowing” of ESEA

Monday, October 17th, 2011

In September 2009, when reauthorization of ESEA seemed imminent, Secretary Duncan said, “Let us build a law that discourages a narrowing of curriculum and promotes a well-rounded education that draws children into sciences and history, languages and the arts in order to build a society distinguished by both intellectual and economic prowess.”

Now, more than two years later, Sen. Harkin has released a draft ESEA reauthorization proposal. And, in spite of the Department’s significant influence, the draft bill’s support of the “well-rounded education” Duncan touted is, well, almost undetectable.

The document is 860 pages long. Student achievement in “Core Academic Subjects” is referenced a dozen times, but specifics never arise. This tome contains no mentions of chemistry, physics, or biology, for example. Music gets four mentions; art only one. And history and civics just two. How are we going to improve education if no one is willing to talk about the substance of what is being taught?

Meanwhile, the shape, method, and approach to accountability measures continue to be tweaked, tuned, and obsessed over. The big news the draft contains is a reinvention of the current accountability system, scrapping AYP’s strict performance targets in favor of a measure of “continuous improvement” for all students and for particular subgroups.

But “continuous improvement” will do nothing to address ESEA’s intense focus on math and reading at the expense of the rest of the liberal arts. Although the bill would shift testing requirements to include measures for student growth, required tests would continue to measure student achievement in only math, reading and science. And the science test would remain inconsequential to “continuous improvement.” Why not widen the lens of the “continuous improvement” measure to include other subjects? It is an idea that would present many challenges and face many obstacles, but it is at least worth discussing.

Writing about the unintended consequences of NCLB, Diane Ravitch and Checker Finn predicted, “Rich kids will study philosophy and art, music and history, while their poor peers will fill in bubbles on test sheets. The lucky few will spawn the next generation of tycoons, political leaders, inventors, authors, artists and entrepreneurs. The less lucky masses will see narrower opportunities.”

We know that is happening already. And if anything resembling Harkin’s draft becomes law, the problem will only get worse.

Lynne Munson

Posted in Arts, Assessment, Curriculum, English/Language Arts, ESEA, Foreign Language, History/Social Studies, Math and Science | No Comments »