How No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Is Ruining

America
By Scott Swain

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 deals with social studies mainly by omitting it
from the new nationwide education accountability system.

The omission of social studies-and, more importantly, of history, geography, and civics-
from NCLB is beginning to have deleterious effects. It’s causing some states and schools
to downplay these subjects in favor of those for which they’ll be held publicly
accountable and compared with each other. As the old educator truism puts it, what gets
tested is what gets taught. Already we hear reports from the field that history is getting
slighted due to the press to get everyone proficient in math and reading. Hard as it is to
imagine history getting less attention than before in U.S. schools, this is surely not a good
thing (Finn, 2003).

If we were proficient with regard to teaching history and civics in our schools, this might not be
such a national cataclysm. But consider our track record. For many years in the United States,
there has been a drifting away from our founding documents and the founding fathers who wrote
them. In 1998 the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) conducted a study of 4 th ,
8 th and 12 th grade students with regard to their understanding of civics (American government).
Only 2% of the 4 th and 8 th graders and 4% of the12 th graders had an advanced level understanding
of civics. On average, only 24% of all students could function at the proficient level, the level
identified by NAEP as the level at which all students should perform. One third of all students
could not demonstrate even a basic knowledge of American government (NAEP, 1998).

On April 10, 2003 the celebrated historian, David McCullough, told a Senate committee that
We are raising a generation of people who are historically illiterate. . . . We can’t function
in a society, he explained, if we don’t know who we are and where we came from. . . .
When you have students at our Ivy League colleges saying they thought Germany and
Japan were our allies in World War II, you know we’ve got a very serious problem (Finn,
2003).

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 must be repealed if we are to save our country
from an illiterate and unimpassioned decline into mediocrity.

References

Finn, C.E. (2003). Terrorists, Despots, and Democracy: What Our Children Need to
Know. Retrieved January 28, 2006 from
http://www.edexcellence.net/institute/publication/publication.cfm?id=316
National Assessment of Educational Progress. (1998). Retrieved January 28, 2006 from
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/civics/

Scott Swain is the President of the Roots of Freedom Foundation, a non-profit educational foundation. Roots of Freedom and the Roots of Freedom Foundation educates and inspires youth, families, and all citizens to understand, respect, and preserve for future generations the values, freedoms, and ideals established by the Founding Fathers and fundamental documents of the United States of America.
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