READING AND MATH STUDY CONCENTRATION

March 26, 2006
Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math
By SAM DILLON

SACRAMENTO — Thousands of schools across the nation are responding
to the reading and math testing requirements laid out in No Child Left
Behind, President Bush’s signature education law, by reducing class
time spent on other subjects and, for some low-proficiency students,
eliminating it.

Schools from Vermont to California are increasing — in some cases
tripling — the class time that low-proficiency students spend on reading
and math, mainly because the federal law, signed in 2002, requires
annual exams only in those subjects and punishes schools that fall short of
rising benchmarks.

The changes appear to principally affect schools and students who
test below grade level.

The intense focus on the two basic skills is a sea change in
American instructional practice, with many schools that once offered rich
curriculums now systematically trimming courses like social studies,
science and art. A nationwide survey by a nonpartisan group that is to be
made public on March 28 indicates that the practice, known as narrowing
the curriculum, has become standard procedure in many communities.
The survey, by the Center on Education Policy, found that since the
passage of the federal law, 71 percent of the nation’s 15,000 school
districts had reduced the hours of instructional time spent on history,
music and other subjects to open up more time for reading and math. The
center is an independent group that has made a thorough study of the new
act and has published a detailed yearly report on the implementation of
the law in dozens of districts.

“Narrowing the curriculum has clearly become a nationwide pattern,”
said Jack Jennings, the president of the center, which is based in
Washington.

At Martin Luther King Jr. Junior High School in Sacramento, about
150 of the school’s 885 students spend five of their six class periods
on math, reading and gym, leaving only one 55-minute period for all
other subjects.
About 125 of the school’s lowest-performing students are barred from
taking anything except math, reading and gym, a measure that Samuel
Harris, a former lieutenant colonel in the Army who is the school’s
principal, said was draconian but necessary. “When you look at a kid and you
know he can’t read, that’s a tough call you’ve got to make,” Mr. Harris
said.

The increasing focus on two basic subjects has divided the nation’s
educational establishment. Some authorities, including Secretary of
Education Margaret Spellings, say the federal law’s focus on basic skills
is raising achievement in thousands of low-performing schools. Other
experts warn that by reducing the academic menu to steak and potatoes,
schools risk giving bored teenagers the message that school means
repetition and drilling.

“Only two subjects? What a sadness,” said Thomas Sobol, an
education professor at Columbia Teachers College and a former New York State
education commissioner. “That’s like a violin student who’s only
permitted to play scales, nothing else, day after day, scales, scales, scales.
They’d lose their zest for music.”

But officials in Cuero, Tex., have adopted an intensive approach
and said it was helping them meet the federal requirements. They have
doubled the time that all sixth graders and some seventh and eighth
graders devote to reading and math, and have reduced it for other subjects.
“When you only have so many hours per day and you’re behind in some
area that’s being hammered on, you have to work on that,” said Henry Lind,
the schools superintendent. “It’s like basketball. If you can’t make
layups, then you’ve got to work on layups.”

Chad Colby, a spokesman for the federal Department of Education,
said the department neither endorsed nor criticized schools that
concentrated instructional time on math and reading as they sought to meet the
test benchmarks laid out in the federal law’s accountability system,
known as adequate yearly progress.

“We don’t choose the curriculum,” Mr. Colby said. “That’s a
decision that local leaders have to make. But for every school you point to, I
can show you five other schools across the country where students are
still taking a well-rounded curriculum and are still making adequate
yearly progress. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask our schools to get
kids proficient at grade level in reading and math.”