Eric.ed.gov – Some Strategies in Dealing with High-Stakes Testing and the Death of Social Studies Education

The pressure of high-stakes testing has virtually eliminated the teaching of history and the other social studies from many urban elementary schools. The author has heard it directly from many Philadelphia (Pa.) teachers in numerous classes where he teaches graduate social studies pedagogy courses to graduate student teachers who are pursuing Masters degrees or state certification. Many of these graduate student teachers describe enormous stress on them and their students to meet the established Annual Yearly Progress (AYP), as indicated by standardized test results. Graduate student teachers also describe the pressure they face to eliminate altogether the teaching of subjects other than reading/language arts and math. Over the past two years more than forty graduate student teachers have related receiving similar directives from their supervisors. Moreover, the situation is not unique to Philadelphia. High-stakes testing pressure has lead to sporadic treatment of subjects other than reading/language arts and math in many schools across the United States. Faced with what he considered an untenable situation, he decided to develop a different approach to his university’s elementary social studies pedagogy course. It is based on the premise that the key in developing strategies in schools where social studies has been eliminated lies in creating a deep passion within classroom teachers for social studies education which is accomplished by focusing on several substantive human relations encounters.