One of my pet gripes is that we don’t broadly appreciate how badly GWB’s No Child Left Behind law absolutely gutted civics education in America because it tied draconian “accountability” penalties exclusively to math and reading scores (1/)
People make a lot of jokes about voters thinking there's a big dial that controls gas prices in the oval office, but I think "low info voters have no idea what the government actually does" goes a lot deeper than that and they blame whoever is President for anything that annoys them.
If you worked in education 20 years ago (I did), you would've seen an obsession with juicing math and reading scores. One sadly common strategy was to "double dose" students performing below grade level in reading and math. What's "double dosing?" Well...(2/)
Double dosing meant scheduling students to not one but TWO blocks of reading and math every day. The theory was this would lead to rapid growth in those subjects (it was a bad theory and yes, most of us knew that at the time) (3/)
In order to "double dose" students in reading and math, of course, you had to cut something. School systems largely cut social studies and either science or art to steal the extra minutes. So a whole generation+ of kids just didn't get basic social studies. (4/)
After the peak NCLB years, science bounced back more effectively, largely because system leaders believed it to be a lucrative career field and due to effective STEM campaigning. The humanities haven't really ever fully recovered. (5/)
So now when I see lots of folks with a total dearth of knowledge of civics, I sigh and say, "yeah, of course. I was there; we didn't teach you any social studies." (6/)
My oldest is going into 7th grade and has never had a social studies class at school. No US history, no education about how our government works. Nothing. It's all about the STAAR test.
Oh, the effects are still around today. I worked with a 1st grade teacher who didn’t teach anything except literacy for half the year because “the most important thing is they learn how to read”. The 2nd grade teacher was so lost trying to get those kids caught up. 1/2
My elementary World Language program was just cut from one of the biggest school districts in the state because of budget in favor of keeping reading and math computer programs that increase test scores. This is all a legacy of the NCLB policies. 2/2
