Narrowing the curriculum, NCLB style

One of the fundamental idiocies of George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind school accountability legislation is its oh-so-narrow test-based definition of student learning.  Nothing matters in educational Bushworld other than student scores on standardized reading and math tests. Once that notion has been accepted and internalized, as it has been in Oregon and elsewhere, the  unintended consequence of an ever-shrinking curriculum becomes an inevitability.

Dr. William Reese of the University of Wisconsin, author of the book  America's Public Schools: From Common School to No Child Left Behind, poses the obvious question:

"If a subject is not tested, why teach it?"

Good question, to which school leaders like Portland Public Schools Superintendent Vicki Phillips have no good answer.  Phillips has blithely assured district patrons that her school reconfiguration plan will both expand curricular options for students and help close the achievement gap.  But she doesn't explain how more art, music, and "wellness" will help kids score better on reading and math tests.  Her plan, in fact,  seems at odds with her reasons for offering it.

Well, let me help her out.  Not only with the conundrum of raising achievement while simultaneously expanding curricular offerings, but also with Phillips' call for K-8 schools: 

We can raise achievement and extend curricular opportunities by integrating the teaching of reading and math skills into the teaching of art, music, P.E., foreign language, science, social studies, history, civics, and everything else that isn't currently factored into student achievement.  Rather than obsessing with specializing instruction, we should think about generalizing it. 

I don't want to get into a long-winded exposition of the merits and methods of integrated instruction, but suffice it to say that integration is simpler than it seems.  Just remember that words and numbers -reading and math- are an integral (there's that word!) part of any "specialized" course of study that may find its way into a classroom.  Once that realization sets in, the possibilities are endless.

As for K-8,  it's easier and less time consuming for a single teacher to integrate instruction than it is for a group of teachers to collaborate on integrated lesson plans.  Not better, necessarily, just easier.  That's not to say that groups of K-8 teachers shouldn't collaborate.  They should.  In fact, they already do to some extent.

Here's the problem, both here and everywhere else.  Our educational leaders have left curricular reform out of the discussion of ways to improve student learning, mainly because, like Bush, like Rod Paige, like Margaret Spellings, and like the Portland School Board, they don't understand it.  They're content to utter banalities like "high expectations" and "rigorous" course offerings and consider the discussion done. 

Experts on school reform put it this way:  teach the student, not the subject. That's a lesson we haven't quite mastered here in Portland.

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[The One True b!X]

FWIW.

http://www.furiousnads.com/2006/Mar/most_learning_left_behind