Please don’t denigrate all qualitative research methods as “speculation.” Can you not see any place for them in this debate?

BTW, effective teachers find ways to teach literacy across all content areas–not eliminating some while “focusing on reading first.” But high stakes tests seem to promote short-sighted curricula.

I do not know where you get your information, but curriculum has not been disproved. In fact, the charges have grown since NCLB’s inception. Now, you make the call that we should move beyond numbers, fine, let us do that. But in the same breath, you demand that we come up with some sort of measure. What kind of dashboard variable do you propose, man? These things cannot be reduced to mere minutes and seconds. Talk to educators, particularly at the elementary level, who contend that mandated minutes in math and language arts leave little time for anything else. This is all largely due to the fact that alternate curricula in science, social studies, and the like are simply not tested. If they’re not tested, then the schools, who rely on test scores as THE quintessential measure of their worth, don’t teach them.

I see it as a very big coincidence that administrators encourage more time being spent on math and reading while these are the two subjects that are typically tested. Now, we’re not exactly talking about high quality time either. The math and reading that is actually taught is stripped down, rationalized, drilled, rehearsed, and repeated. Many schools still rely on basal readers. Heck, while we’re at it, why don’t we just go back to hornbooks? That seemed to work in the Latin grammar school days of jolly old England.

You just can’t rely on these reports, the minutes are averages of averages, and these are also entirely self-reported measures. What teacher is going to admit that they NEVER teach science and social studies, especially those who have been around long enough to remember pre-NCLB days? Additionally, some teachers, not all, try to make up for a lack of science and social studies via integration of curriculum or cramming it in any old ten or 15 minutes they can find. All of these estimates upon estimates add up to what teachers report as their time spent on subjects other than math or reading. What kind of instructional time is this? Not the kind we should support and all of this is due to the culture of desperation we have found ourselves in as a result of punitive accountability.

Let me respond to the specifics first.

Yes, the GAO report found that the reduction of arts in Title I schools is greater than in non-Title I schools. Would you expect it to be any different? Getting kids to learn how to read strikes me as more critical than teaching them to discuss arts. Title I schools show much larger failures in their ability to teach kids to read, and it seems reasonable that they–properly, IMO–focus on reading first.

The NCES report indeed says what you quote. Perhaps, if you actually read it instead of just glancing, you would also note that the time dedicated to academic instruction increased over this period by 0.6 hours/week, accounting for much of the increase in reading and math. As I have repeatedly noted, the decreases in science and social science are rather small and come to about 3-4 minutes per day.

Let’s now turn away from numbers and talk some speculation (”beyond numbers” and “qualitative” in Jeff’s parlance.) Yes, indeed. If one is permitted to define narrowing as one wishes, there is an absolute certainty that one will find whatever one wants to find. That why we have blogs and comments like this thread. But until someone comes forward and suggests exactly what to measure, and precisely how to measure it, we are just toying with ideas. Yet the outcry about ‘narrowing the curriculum’ came with very specific charges of large reductions across the nation in the arts, science, and social sciences (and, incidentally, PE.) Now that this has been essentially disproved, some seem eager to re-define the charges so they can be kept alive.

But still, let’s look at the reports. Here’s what you and Andrew did not say about the GAO report:

“Elementary school teachers at schools identified as needing improvement, those at schools with higher percentages of minority students, and those at schools with higher percentages of students with limited English speaking skills, were significantly more likely to report a decrease in the amount of time spent on arts education compared with teachers at other schools.”

At schools designated as needing improvement, 11% saw a decrease in those two years, as opposed to 3% who saw an increase. Schools that struggle to raise test scores feel the most impact of NCLB, and we can see that the impact is greatest on arts instruction in their schools. True, most of those schools said arts instruction stayed the same. But if we asked some more questions to really get at the issue of narrowing (what about recess? test prep? PE? Social Studies? lit?), I would expect that we’d find something different.

And here’s what you did not say about the NCES report. This was the main finding from the summary page:

“Findings from this report show that combined teacher instructional hours in first-through fourth-grade English, mathematics, social studies, and science increased between the 1987–88 and 2003–04 school years. This was due to individual increases in English and mathematics instruction. Over the same time period, instruction in science and social science saw an overall decrease.”

Okay, so the report was a study of the four core subject. What does this have to do with arts education? Am I missing something? Should I go back and read more?

It appears to me that the data from these two studies is not complete enough to really tell me much about narrowing in the curriculum. A researcher would need to define narrowing (might require talking to teachers) and then go beyond the numbers available here to really find out.

I don’t know if we need to multiply the 7% by 3, or multiply 7-4=3% by 3, or raise e to the (-i*pi*7%) power. Arguments can be made for any one of them. For example:

(a) 2 years is 2/7 of NCLB’s life. Let’s multiply 7 by 7/2. The 4% increase doesn’t count as it reflects a “good thing” and we want to focus only on bad things.

(b) same argument applied a bit more fairly to 3% instead of 7% (7%-4%=3%)

(c) 2004-5 to 2006-7 was probably the period of the most radical changes in curriculum due to NCLB. The law’s bite started to show, accountability systems started to fall in place in all states. Earlier there was little reason to change, and after 2007 reports started to complain about curriculum narrowing, so most schools started to shy away from taking away arts or social sciences. Hence the 3% is the upper bound of narrowing due to NCLB and it will probably decrease over time.

Which one is right? We don’t know. However, the best data we have shows that (a) there was little long-term change until 2003-4 (NCES report) and that there seems to be limited change between 2004-5 and 2006-7 (GAO report). All the rest is speculation and hyperbole.

sorry again

Where did that come from?

“Re-read what John Thompson effectively says: “The data is not conclusive enough to eliminate even 33% reduction–I have no support for this claim, but prove me wrong; and in any case, imagine what the money could have done if applied elsewhere (pick your favorite: community building, obesity reduction, art support, SCHIP).”

No I won’t be a hypocrite. I think I know where it came from, my last pargaraph, the one with all of the typos. It also had the aggressive comment that I should have edited out.

I apologize.

I think I would have re-written that paragraph in a more constructive way. I just got interupted and posted too quickly.

You also had a great response in that Block Scheduling doesn’t apply to elementary. It had applied in a previous study that I must have confused.

As to the substance, the report studied 1/3rd of the time span of the law – so far. So, do you multiple 7%, or more or less, by three? So, when you are estimating the downside of NCLB, do you estimate a minimal ammount of damage due to this one factor or a significant amount of damage done to the kids that the law was designed to help? (When measuring the positive results of NCLB, the law’s supporters do the same, but your post was not reassuring in its arguments that the damage side of NCLB might be smaller.)

My point was the opportunity costs of that expensive law have been huge, and it still seems to have caused more damage than a good law should caused. (the 3% growth could cut both ways, serving as a reminder that maybe we should have invested more in the arts in poor schools.

Note also that while you worry about how hard it would be for individuals to answer a survey accurately if they had to think back more than 2 years, you apparently haven’t thought about *any other reasons* why it might be hard for people to answer a survey accurately.