The Testing Obsession and the Disappearing Curriculum
By Tim Walker
Not that long ago, elementary schools were places where students could discover what they were good at, explore the subjects that appealed to them, or maybe just be content with enjoying school.But for many elementary school teachers who joined the profession during the last decade, and especially those who work in high-poverty schools, classrooms that provide vigorous learning opportunities to all students never existed—thanks, in large part, to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
Today, more than a decade later, the law is uniformly blamed for stripping curriculum opportunities, including art, music, physical education and more, and imposing a brutal testing regime that has forced educators to focus their time and energy on preparing for tests in a narrow range of subjects: namely, English/language arts and math. For students in low-income communities, the impact has been devastating.
“Shouldn’t these early grades be a time to discover, play, and explore?” asks Los Angeles art teacher Ginger Rose Fox. “We talk all the time about making our kids ‘college and career ready’—even at such a young age. Let’s make them ‘life ready’ first. But I guess that doesn’t fit into our testing obsession.”
Like countless educators across the U.S., Fox has witnessed the way critical subjects have been crowded out of schools or even eliminated entirely by the lethal one-two punch of deep budget cuts and the singular focus on improving reading and math. In Los Angeles alone, one-third of the 345 arts teachers were given pink slips between 2008 and 2012 and arts programs for elementary students dwindled to practically zero.
The good news is that money has begun to trickle back in—to California, at least. But slowly improving state The Testing Obsession and the Disappearing Curriculum | NEA Today:
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