Should parents have to choose between math and music for their kids? Should we be asking families to study science at the expense of art? Are some subjects “more important” than others? And has No Child Left Behind become yet another excuse to further erode the already fragile mission of America’s public schools?
According to many critics,education that is not open, creative, inclusive and WHOLE is not really an education, and political hot buttons have no place in the serious task of creating vibrant educational curricula for the young. And most importantly, the most vulnerable should not bear the price of a culture at war with itself.
The No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001, and signed by the President in early January 2002. It was meant to be the centerpiece for the Bush Administration’s educational program. At its heart was the notion of accountability. Schools were to use proven ‘scientific’ methodologies to improve scores in Math and Science. Those schools that did not significantly improve test scores would have to allow children to transfer to other, higher-scoring schools, including the new, and sometimes controversial, charter schools. In addition, they could have to provide the transportation, and enhanced after- school tutoring. Schools would also have to answer more to the needs and demands of parents, to local communities, to local school boards – to almost everyone, it seems, but the children themselves. Critics argued that one size was made to fit all.
Almost five years later, what has actually happened in the trenches, at the school level?
In some schools, if math and science scores had to rise, additional classes had to be added. Choices had to be made. And what went? Well, too often what got eliminated were those classes still deemed by some to be the ‘luxuries’: art, music, drama. The short-term, and shortsighted response was rob Peter to pay Paul. No Child Left Behind did not mandate this; it just made it easy for schools in a high-pressure situation to do.
And who is really hurt by all this? Not the politicians. Not those who wanted to further erode the federally mandated public school system. Not the confused parents, torn between wanting the best for their children, and a political battleground taking shape in the schoolyard.
Children are the ones who bear the burden of this attempt to raise scores by mandate. Not only are they now potentially left behind, but stripped of art as a means to negotiate a hostile world, they are suspect to become even less able to cope. Playing politics with a child’s right to a full education is a shocking by-play of a program that meant to help. Now there is “an achievement gap” often bridged by emphasizing one part of a curriculum over another.
Advocacy groups would say that the tasks that are ahead as challenges for the twenty-first century need people who can think broadly across multiple disciplines, who have a deep understanding of multiple cultures, and gifts that cut across many fields. They would suggest the need is to add more, not take anything away; and to nurture a wide range of abilities, not just create a secure world for those with the highest scores on standardized tests.
The next generation needs to know as much about the music of mathematics as the mathematics of music. As much about the art of science as the science of art, and much, much more about history, and its context, and how to ask the right questions.
Some would argue that we need to teach our children how to ask questions even more than we need to train them to only give us the ‘right’ answers. And for that, they must be allowed to be explore a curriculum that has breath and depth.
Americans for the Arts, one of the many groups to oppose what the No Child Left Behind Legislation has done to arts programs in many public schools, runs many public service ads addressing the issue. Their tagline is “The less art kids get, the more it shows. Are yours getting enough? Art. Ask for more.” In some ways this pushes the point somewhat naively: art is not a vegetable, or a vitamin, after all. But the metaphor works on a basic level: students do need a balanced curriculum, and that includes arts education.
Other advocacy groups, such as nochildleft.com, cite seventeen reasons why the act has failed, including lowering of standards, fear, intimidation, and the loss of good teachers, whose morale has been adversely effected by the new guidelines.
And then there is the issue of how the act has impacted students with special needs and abilities.
Some researchers say that it is harder to measure what represents progress and success in this more complicated area. And do these children need to feel any additional sense that they are not ‘keeping up’?
The No Child Left Behind Legislation comes up for renewal in 2007. On both sides advocates are gearing up for a fight. Let’s hope it is not the children who wind up with a black eye.
