Curriculum leaders have long contended that what schools teach must reflect the needs of society, the needs of the learner, and the recommendations of scholars in various academic fields. Accordingly, schools teach about environmental problems, require courses on the importance of good nutrition and exercise, select history units that focus on noteworthy topics, and so on. However, as knowledge continues to grow, schools face a shortage of instructional time as they seek to accommodate these three components within a balanced curriculum that prepares students for the future.
Today, federal legislation has complicated this broader view of knowledge. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) focuses heavily on using reading and mathematics test scores to determine whether schools are making progress in reducing achievement gaps among various subgroups of students. This narrow focus has resulted in a serious imbalance that denies many students access to the high-quality curriculums that students in more affluent schools enjoy. NCLB is now the prescribed treatment for the achievement gaps in U.S. schools, but it has some serious side effects.
Side Effect 1: A Skewed Curriculum
Marshall S. Smith, one of the architects of standards-based reform, recently commented on the effect of standards-based education on the curriculum:This is a narrowing-the-curriculum problem. If we focus only on math and language literacy, what happens to the rest of the curriculum? In California, we have lost a very high percentage of our arts, music, physical education, and other teachers and rarely have K–8 foreign languages. My sense is that it is time to begin to redress this imbalance. (“Chat Wrap-Up,” 2006, p. 35)
Schools end up narrowing the curriculum because they are under considerable pressure to show adequate yearly progress in reading and math. For example, one large urban U.S. high school in which I worked had subgroup pass rates in the range of 15–30 percent, a long way from the 100 percent pass rate that schools are supposed to achieve by 2014 (Cawelti & Protheroe, 2001). No wonder teachers were under pressure to focus on raising scores. Elementary schools are also feeling the crunch, despite state and district guidelines that supposedly require time allocations in a variety of subjects.
A study that predates NCLB legislation (Hargrove et al., 2000) offered this conclusion about the effect of high-stakes testing on the curriculum:Of greatest concern is the enormous amount of time that is being spent on reading, writing, and mathematics at the cost of instruction in science, social studies, physical education, and the arts.
The elementary teachers studied typically spent 75 percent of their time teaching reading and math, leaving inadequate instructional time for other subjects.
The public seems to be aware of the legislation's effect on the public school curriculum. A recent Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll asked a random sample of respondents, “How much, if at all, are you concerned that relying on English and math only to judge a school's performance will mean less emphasis on art, music, history, and other subjects?” Seventy-eight percent of respondents indicated that they were concerned either “a great deal” or “a fair amount” (Rose & Gallup, 2006).
Moreover, in its 2006 study about the effect of NCLB on school districts, the Center on Education Policy noted evidence of a narrowing curriculum. According to the study,71 percent of school districts reported that they have reduced instructional time in at least one other subject to make more time for reading and mathematics. In some districts, struggling students receive double periods of reading or math or both ... sometimes missing certain subjects altogether. (p. vii)
Many school leaders are well aware of the curriculum imbalance resulting from NCLB's test-focused approach. However, they are understandably fearful, not only of seeing their schools labeled as “failing,” but also of jeopardizing funding and public support.
Side Effect 2: Discouraged Teachers
Teachers are becoming increasingly concerned about the effect of high-stakes testing on their teaching. In a study of 376 elementary and secondary teachers in New Jersey, teachers indicated that they tended to teach to the test, often neglected individual students' needs because of the stringent focus on high-stakes testing, had little time to teach creatively, and bored themselves and their students with practice problems as they prepared for standardized testing (Centolanza, 2004).
Moreover, the focus on high-stakes testing is negatively affecting teacher morale. Assessment results often discourage teachers who have worked hard to close achievement gaps with their students. For example, if teachers have the goal of helping students in special education attain scores in the proficient range on state tests—and their students never come close—this repeated failure demoralizes teachers.
Side Effect 3: The Funny Numbers Game
W. Edwards Deming, a major force behind the quality movement in the United States, repeatedly warned that a heavy reliance on single goals or other narrowly defined evidence of success tends to encourage people to tweak the system rather than make the fundamental changes needed in schools and classrooms to ensure student mastery of standards. Making the right numbers appear becomes more important than improving the system. Thus we see “negotiations” between state education agencies and Washington bureaucrats on the need to exempt English language learners or students in special education programs as well as maneuvering by some states to lower their cutoff scores to show higher numbers of “proficient” students.
In addition, each U.S. state defines “proficiency” somewhat differently, and these definitions rarely line up with how proficiency is determined at the national level. For example, Texas reported that 83 percent of its 4th graders met the state proficiency standard in reading, whereas the most recent round of testing by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed that only 23 percent of those 4th graders met the proficiency level as defined by NAEP. This variation adds further confusion to the issue of curriculum imbalance because it's part of an accountability system that is flawed from the start through a rigid focus on only a portion of the “end product” desired for all students.
Creating a Balanced Diet
Despite the concerns of teachers and school administrators, a “stay the course” mentality seems to prevail among Washington officials. The depth of these concerns will become clear as policymakers reconsider the legislation in the months ahead. Education leaders would be wise to prepare to articulate their own plans for restoring balance to the curriculum and eliminating achievement gaps.
The traditional approach to ensuring a balanced curriculum in elementary schools has been to establish the number of minutes that students should spend on various subjects; secondary schools tend to require a specific number of semesters or years of study in the various fields. Both remain viable approaches.
School leaders should take into account the many models that have been proposed over the years to establish a framework for developing a balanced core curriculum for all students. To enlist support for learning in the home and community, school leaders should also solicit feedback from parents and community leaders about what schools should teach.
The Broad Fields Approach
Boyer and Levine (1980) proposed that high schools use traditional subjects to focus on a number of common concerns: our relationship with nature, values and beliefs, membership in groups and institutions, the use of symbols, our sense of time, and activities associated with producing and consuming. Earlier, Broudy, Smith, and Burnett (1964) suggested that schools adopt a “broad fields” approach, which would include five categories: (1) symbolics of information, such as English, foreign languages, and mathematics; (2) basic sciences; (3) studies of cultures and social institutions; (4) exemplars in art, music, drama, and literature; and (5) large-scale social problems.
A broad fields approach coupled with developing proficiency in learning, thinking, and communicating is consistent with a whole-child philosophy (Roberts & Cawelti, 1984). To develop a balanced curriculum at the elementary, middle, and secondary levels, I propose that educators incorporate these skills into four broad fields of knowledge: cultural studies; science and technology; citizenship and societal studies; and health, recreation, and leisure.
Each field should include several key concepts and issues. For example, in science and technology classes, students might discuss nuclear energy, conservation, resource scarcity, and genetic engineering. Students participating in citizenship and societal studies should look at such issues as participation skills, rights and responsibilities, global interdependence, poverty, population, and disarmament.
The Cultural Literacy Approach
Lamenting the lack of “cultural literacy” in young Americans, E. D. Hirsch (1987) developed a different approach for determining a core curriculum. He argued that too many of today's youth are unable to have intelligent discussions about important topics because they are not conversant with aspects of history, science, or the arts that bear on those topics.
For example, Hirsch suggests that 2nd graders should know enough history and geography to understand the importance of the Battle of the Alamo in the history of Texas, and that to truly understand the significance of the bold Impressionist paintings, students in the middle and upper grades need to know how major art galleries in mid-19th-century Paris selected their art. A major task of curriculum workers today is deciding what to add to the core curriculum—and what to leave out. Hirsch suggests that educators enlist academic experts to help them make those decisions.
The Crucial Issues Approach
- Perfecting the democratic process. Nonproductive partisanship has been growing in recent years. Schools need to help students become concerned about voter participation, campaign reform, and improved functioning of local, state, and federal agencies.
- Competing economic systems. Capitalism, socialism, and communism have figured heavily in 20th century revolutions, and the world has gone to war over more than one country's expansionist policies. The rapid spread of globalization and recent protests against the World Trade Organization are further manifestations of this important issue.
- Population control, health and famine, and family issues. The world's population continues to grow at an alarming rate; Africa, India, and China continue to produce populations that they can neither fully feed nor house. Millions of people are dying of AIDS, leaving behind young children who struggle to survive. In the United States, poor nutrition, obesity, and lack of exercise continue to plague the young.
- Conflicting cultures and religions. The explosive events in the news today are testimony to the importance of resolving conflicts founded on religious differences or ethnic hatred. As cultures and religions come head-to-head, violence across the globe is claiming millions of lives.
- Deteriorating environmental conditions. Global warming, depletion of the ozone layer, air and water pollution, nuclear power and waste, the possible extinction of certain species—these all threaten our quality of life. Students need to understand the effects of such problems and decide how to deal with them.
Any balanced curriculum, regardless of its approach, should highlight the interconnectedness of various fields of knowledge, expose students to a wide variety of experiences that can help them clarify their interests and talents, and incorporate appropriate ongoing assessments to gauge student mastery.
Providing Real Help
The “test and punish” strategy and the resulting narrowed curriculum don't appear to be helping schools or teachers close achievement gaps. They also aren't serving to motivate teachers or improve the system.
- Funding work in 100 school districts to help these districts apply the Baldrige National Quality Program. The system would focus on improving achievement in all key instructional areas established by the local board of education.
- Funding work in 100 school districts to implement practices that characterize successful organizations, as reported by Jim Collins in Good to Great or by Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman in In Search of Excellence.
- Funding work in 100 school districts to implement strategies that have proven successful in several high-performing school districts, such as involving parents, teaching learning strategies, offering effective tutoring and mentoring programs, and engaging students through cooperative learning (Cawelti, 1995).
- Funding work in 100 school districts to create effective learning communities and provide extensive training for teachers and administrators in applying research-based teaching techniques.
If we spent less money on testing, we could afford to invest more money in worthwhile projects like these that would give us a better idea of how to improve student achievement across entire school districts.
Restoring the Balance
One of the worst-case scenarios that could result from an unbalanced curriculum is a generation of youth who have good “word attack” skills but who know little and care less about important facts, events, and concepts in history, science, and the arts.
Restoring curriculum balance to the schools will require vigorous and committed leadership. Because education in the United States is constitutionally a state function, we must strengthen the state education agency requirements relating to a broader education for all public school students. Despite the pressures of high-stakes testing, schools need to review and enforce existing regulations and policies that ensure student access to a wide variety of subjects. Board members, local school leaders, and teachers must recognize that schools need to provide students with rich reading materials and learning experiences in several core subjects and clearly articulate this need to parents.
Ultimately, public schools must offer a common curriculum that helps perfect a democratic society and that provides all students with a broad array of knowledge and skills for success both in and out of school.
