Dear Alameda County Parents,

The federal No Child Left Behind policy is up for reauthorization, and that has generated some attention in the media. Last week we saw headlines about the erosion (and in some cases elimination) of science programs in our elementary schools, and the negative effect that is likely to have on secondary science programs and eventually our nation's population of great scientific thinkers. A new documentary, Democracy Left Behind, argues that NCLB's chilling effect on social studies programs is disastrous for the future of our democracy. Arts Active Parents know that high quality experience in music, drama, dance, and visual art are essential if we're to give our kids the power to be agents of their own learning and their own development into well-rounded human adults.

The arts provide pathways to learning other subjects, and also are themselves rigorous academic disciplines. Some of our children are in schools where all subjects are taught in a richly arts-infused landscape of learning, where intellect and creativity are encouraged to blossom side by side. Some of our children, however, are spending more and more time pushing a pencil across a piece of paper, as their schools add more minutes of reading and math to the school day in a desperate attempt to get test scores up enough to avoid being closed.

Educators who are using formulas to calculate how many more minutes of math will lead to what test scores, and who are (sometimes quite reluctantly) squeezing out other subjects in favor of testing focus, are doing this with the best intentions. They point to the historical inequities between schools and the achievement gap between kids of different ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds. They see this "curriculum narrowing" as a temporary measure to allow kids to catch up in the key knowledge areas of mathematics and reading, and argue that you can't really learn anything else if you can't read.

Unfortunately for those kids, this theory doesn't seem to play out in reality, especially in the area of reading comprehension. An August 2006 report from The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement presents a fascinating overview of research supporting the idea that curriculum narrowing - the reduction of instructional time for the arts, social studies, and science - actually increases the achievement gap.

Reading is a complex activity that requires a series of steps, starting with decoding and ending with understanding. For a long time, educators were trained to believe that if students could be trained to decode text accurately and quickly, and use specific comprehension strategies, that understanding would naturally follow. Cognitive psychologists, however, have found that there is a step after decoding which requires background knowledge in order to begin to comprehend the text. Since our educational programs haven't caught up with our knowledge about how children learn, many students spend more and more time learning decoding skills and comprehension tools, but lack the background knowledge in a subject to fully understand what they are reading. What does a phrase like "over the rainbow" mean to a child who has never seen a rainbow, has never studied either legends or science about rainbows, and has never drawn a rainbow?

What is most troubling is that curriculum narrowing, originally conceived to take us toward equity, seems likely to actually further harm our neediest kids and contribute to a widening of the achievement gap. More affluent students, even if they're in schools that aren't doing a good job of offering a balanced curriculum, are more likely to have alternative ways to learn the world knowledge they need to read with understanding. Poor urban and rural children are much more likely to depend on their schools to provide them with vocabulary and knowledge about the world outside their experience. Without time for social studies, science, and arts, where will this knowledge come from?

As the NCLB program is re-designed at the Federal level, and as it's implemented at the district and school level, we Arts Active Parents need to be a strong voice for change. We need to advocate for better integration of arts integration throughout our reading and math curriculum, such as the work MOCHA (The Museum of Children's Art, http://www.mocha.org) has done with visual arts integration into Open Court reading curricula, and ) the Music Integration Learning Enhancement (MILE, http://music.ousd.k12.ca.us/mile.htm) initiative in some Oakland schools. We also need to champion arts programs, and support professional arts teachers and teaching artists in the work they're doing in our schools. With strong arts programs as well as strong arts integration to improve learning in other subject areas, all our children can learn to comprehend that rainbow.

To learn more, visit these links:
For more information about the unintended effects of NCLB, including the report I cite above, visit the Keep Arts In Schools community of advocates at http://keepartsinschools.org/.

To see the Federal Government's page about NCLB including the administration's proposals for re-authorizing it, visit http://www.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml.

To see the National Education Association's proposed plan for improving NCLB, visit
http://www.nea.org/esea/index.html.

To see information about the documentary "Democracy Left Behind," visit http://www.docmakeronline.com.

To see a short video that shows drama being used to increase language, vocabulary, and reading skills in second graders, view KQED's SPARK* segment about ASCEND school in Oakland, here:
http://www.kqed.org/arts/places/spark/profile.jsp?id=922

Best wishes and happy advocating!
-KATHY KAHN, Arts Active Parent Coordinator

PARENTS MAKING A DIFFERENCE:
ARTS ACTIVE PARENTS IN DUBLIN UNIFIED

In Dublin Unified, Arts Active Parents all over the district are joining together to support arts programs and counteract the effects of curriculum narrowing in their schools. At Dublin Elementary, moms came into the classroom last month to help build scarecrows for the Fall Festival. This class chose a Mexican theme since they were studying Mexican culture. (Group photo, L to R, moms Judie Greenhouse, Becky Shepard, Lisa Voit, and Amber Bohnet)

Dougherty Elementary, another Dublin school, also has a scarecrow project. This year, 20 classrooms created scarecrows based on the painting styles of famous artists. Room moms worked with the classroom teachers to choose an artist and teach the students about the artist as well as the how-to's of constructing a scarecrow. This is tied to a larger effort: Dougherty parents are helping to introduce a new Art History curriculum on campus, and are looking at various other potential projects, including Arts Learning in Action tours to bring local elected officials to campus, and Arts Nights when families can have the experience of creating art. Below, teacher Dayna Cahn talks about a creative project with parents Laura Ospital and Jaylene Leslie at the first official meeting of the new Arts Committee of the Parent Faculty Club.

Happy Holidays - Time to Enjoy Your Kids!

You won't be hearing from me in December. I figure you'll be too busy going to holiday events at your school and preparing your own family celebrations to miss a newsletter. Whatever holidays you celebrate, I hope you can take time to make art with your kids! Create gifts, cards, wrapping paper, cookies and other food art, holiday decorations, family performances of songs and stories. The time you spend creating together may be your happiest memory of the year. You'll hear from me again in January.

MOST IMPORTANT! Events at Your Own School

Attend events at your own school in November and December.
Many schools have concerts and exhibits this time of year.
Also, if you're in elementary school, attend the events at the
middle school you'll be attending. If you're in middle school,
it's time to check out the holiday events at the high school!
This is a great time of year to begin to look forward to the
next school by joining their holiday celebration. Also, seeing the
work of teenaged visual and performing artists can be
very inspirational for younger kids.