That was perfect. I know my kids are getting precious little social studies or science in elementary school-- although the science thing isn's that surprising given the distrust of science that our politicians evince with every breath in their body....
A wonderful response,but are they listening? Not only do we see self-contained classrooms phasing out seperate blocks of time for science and social studies we also are seeing more and more departmentalized fourth and fifth grades reverting back to self-contained in a veiled way to cut down on the time spent on academic areas other than LA and math.
The response is that teachers can integrate....I'm sorry, and no offense should be taken, but it is the rare elementary teacher that knows a particular content area like science or social studies well enough to integrate correctly and to meet standards in those areas especially in the upper elementary grades where the content expands so greatly.
I also wanted to let you know I had tagged you for something. I do understand if you don't want to fully participate...maybe you could alter the requirements a bit like I did. Intrigued? Come see....
Outstanding letter!
If your children's school is short-changing the social studies and science and arts, etc, that is poor local implementation of NCLB, not the fault of NCLB itself.
NCLB has so little impact on what's taught in California because our STAR testing regime has far more stringent requirements than NCLB does. Your complaints are misplaced; you should be addressing them to your district and to Sacramento, not to Washington.
I just wrote a tirade about this today! They can keep the money, I want my life and my sanity back!
How are we as parents supposed to trust the educational system? When teachers are fixing tests to make their students pass exams due to the “No Child Left Behind” mandate. This is ridiculous. Maybe they should reevaluate NCLB?? Check out dailycents.com at
http://blogs.dailycents.com/?p=819
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