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Home > Interviews > Interview with Diane Ravitch
Voices of Innovation
A Few Words from Diane Ravitch, Research Professor of Education, NYU Steinhardt School of Education; Co-Chair of Common Core.
A few months ago, a group of concerned educators formed a new organization called Common Core, with the purpose of advocating for the subjects--such as history, literature, and the arts-- that were left out of No Child Left Behind.
In the federal legislation, the only subjects that matter are reading and mathematics. They are thus far the only subjects that are tested. Science will also be tested this year in every state, but it won't "count" as evidence that a school is making what the law calls "adequate yearly progress."
Evidence is accumulating that schools are narrowing the curriculum to make more time to prepare children for state tests in reading and math. After all, if they don't make progress every year on those subjects, the school may be stigmatized as "in need of improvement" and may be subject to increasingly onerous penalties, even closed down.
As schools focus on testing and preparing for tests, certain subjects tend to be dropped from the school day. The arts are often the first to go, because they are never tested.
The foolishness of this strategy is clear on its face. A school cannot be a good school if children never encounter the arts, if they never have a chance to participate in the arts, if they never draw or dance perform in a play or play an instrument or make a video or create something from their imagination. What parent would want their children in such a "school"?
Common Core, which includes Richard Kessler of the Center for Arts Education on its board, was created to raise public awareness of the importance of the arts in education. It intends to identify exemplary schools and programs, publicize research findings, and do whatever it can to advance the cause of arts and other non-tested subjects in the schools.
One recent publication (March 2008) that all arts advocates should read if "Learning, Arts, and the Brain," by the Dana Consortium Report on Arts and Cognition. This three-year study by a number of cognitive neuroscientists found that involvement in music, dance, and drama education is important for cognitive development, that it develops attention skills and strategies for memory retrieval that applies to other subject areas. In other words, engagement in the arts makes children smarter in school and in life.
In a way, this is common sense. Learning a part for a play or learning to play an instrument or to sing a part requires concentration and self-discipline. Don't we all know this? These are also activities that inherently call up intrinsic motivation, the desire to finish the task and do it well, to one's own pleasure and satisfaction. The pleasure and satisfaction do not arrive, however, without dedication and hard work. And note that the arts--every one of them--requires practice and play, concentration and passion. What a great recipe for learning!
These are "outcomes" that are not tested, and in my view, should not be tested, any more than we can find a test for character or civic duty. These are outcomes that should be part of every child's school day and week.
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