It seemed that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act was a great idea to focus on underprivileged children's needs. It focused on helping children who were from low economic backgrounds by trying to offer the same educational opportunities as every other student. The Act was based on the idea that if goals are set higher and goals that could be measured were set, then it would improve outcomes in education. However, this Act seems to have cause our educators to focus on reading and math only because that is mainly where these goals have been set. The other subjects such as social studies, science, and the arts are now commonly neglected in the school systems. The curriculum is now based on text preparation because the results of the test are what matter with this act. Even in cases when social studies is test, this act has forced the information to simply be memorized facts and the tests do not depict and accurate depiction of the student's actual knowledge. The link provided touches on these issues with NCLB and there are even instances when schools transfer out students before testing begins in order to meet their goals. This is awful because it shows that some educators care about themselves and their student's results more than they care about giving an actual proper education to their students. This shows us that integration of social studies, science, and the arts is more important now than ever.
A few ways to do this are to connect standards in different content areas:
1.H.1.3 Explain why national holidays are celebrated
This could be done during a literacy lesson by reading a story on a specific holiday or person such as Martin Luther King Jr. The students could read a biography that is age-appropriate and gain a knowledge of both history and literacy. This standard could connect to:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.2.1 Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.
http://www.socialstudies.org/system/files/publications/yl/1704/170431.pdf
This is definitely an issue to be concerned and I think that what we have been learning throughout this class and others is that "intelligence" based on a standardize test does not give the full picture of how smart a student is or how much of the content is internalized and retained. Students needs are not being met, they are bored to death under this model. It is important to use Mathematics and Reading/Literacy as a base for all other subjects. That is why integration will be so important to us as teachers. Being able to, well, kind of "sneak" the other subjects in throughout the day will be the best way to help students become aware and taught the other subjects. My belief is that we produce well rounded, intelligent, thought based students who enjoy learning and take what we teach them into adulthood. Learning is not about memorization but knowing the what and how to apply it and understand it. Great post David.
ReplyDeleteWow, David. I wasn't aware that schools were transferring students out to meet goals. This just makes me that much more aware of what an issue this is. I think that the idea behind was meant with good intentions. However, it has spiraled into something that isn't helping our students. The problem with this kind of testing to begin with is that is not accurate. There is so much pressure on students to do well that panic and anxiety arises causing some students not to do well. We all know that there are people that simply don't test well. That does not mean that they do not know their content and information. How many times in life do we take the information we know and are forced to answer multiple choice questions? Not very often. So how is this helping our students? We need to be finding an alternative to this method which will then allow us the opportunity to focus more on other subjects like social studies, science, and arts.
ReplyDeleteDavid,
ReplyDeleteWhat research did you complete for the replacement of NCLB?
How did you connect this information to the NCTCS?