Teachers try to make room for social studies: History class left behind Standard tests impair civics
by LINDA CONNER LAMBECK
The Connecticut Post
A 12-year veteran of the classroom, Barbara Reed is adept at teaching language arts and social studies at the same time. "You probably couldn't come into my classroom and say, 'She's doing social studies now,'" she said.
But the course, funded through a three-year, $982,395 federal grant, has helped her make the most of the shrinking time she has to devote to social studies.
In many elementary classrooms, history seems threatened with extinction. High-stakes tests in reading, math — and soon, science — make those subjects the ones teachers work on first and most often. The testing is required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. History gets relegated to the afternoon, and sometimes gets pushed off until the next day.
"It is easy to ignore. It's not tested," Reed said. "But easy is not what is right." Janet Corville, a teacher of sixth grade at Nichols School in Stratford, said the Egyptian pyramids sometimes take a back seat to reading, writing and math until after the Connecticut Mastery Tests are over in March.
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