Gotta get those scores up no matter what

I'm so glad Tim at Assorted Stuff continues with his thoughtful work.

One of the unintended consequences of No Child Left Behind is that a good deal of instruction not directly related to passing the tests is being squeezed out of the classroom. The result in California is that the number of students involved in music and art has been cut in half over the past four years. The decline doesn’t seem to be bottoming out as schools are devoting more and more of the day to preparing for the tests.

At our school, we've got a bunch of new grants. Great. A lot of effort has gone into getting money to help remedial students.

But at the same time, I felt such a huge loss when I saw the notices of the school grants. It's gotten so important to get the freaking scores up but it comes at a cost that is not measurable and not directly noticeable.

We've being forced into a huge paradigm shift regarding what is valuable in education. And it seems arts education is not on that list at all.