What Has NCLB Done to Environmental Education?
Photo of students planting oystersThe No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is contributing to an increasing environmental literacy gap by reducing the already modest amount of environmental education taking place in K-12 classrooms. Its emphasis on testing for core subjects is causing many administrators to eliminate environmental education in favor of investing more resources in math and language arts, severely limiting instructional time for science and social studies, the traditional subjects in which EE is taught. Even many science teachers feel compelled to eliminate those aspects of science class that do not appear to relate directly to questions on state science tests. Science curricula are narrowing in response to less time and more stringent assessment, limiting the amount and variety of environmental education as well as the kind of multidisciplinary teaching that it fosters. Teachers are actively or passively discouraged from providing valuable field based experiences for their s
