The U.S. Senate draft of the rewritten No Child Left Behind Act adds writing, music, computer science, technology, and physical education to the list of disciplines it defines as “core academic subjects.”
That shift, buried deep in the 601-page Every Child Achieves Act, released last week, appears to be a response to the years-old debate about the NCLB law’s curriculum-narrowing effect.
Critics of the testing regimen that the NCLB law created will likely argue that expanding the list of core academic subjects is unlikely to have a broadening effect on the curriculum, since only English/language arts, math, and science must be tested.
