Considering 45% to 54% (depending on the survey) of the entire US population believes that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, that the Earth/Universe was created in 6 days, that man lived with the dinosaurs. . .I'd say it's really up to the teachers to teach kids about science. Right ann/Goldi? hahaha

Stop hijacking the thread. The evolution/ID debate has been beat to death and the public has already spoken. ID is not part of the state standards and the majority of the public does not want it to be. If so many americans believe this then they are getting it at home not in school and parents have every right to teach it to their kids if they want. There is a whole lot more to math and science than evolution.

I understand what the teachers are saying because until recently I was there with them. Ever since NCLB, the teachers have had to standardize their own knowledge base and spent many many hours doing that. They must spend so much time doing "have to do's". The global learning projects that assist higher level thinking and promote synthesis of prior learning are what is now left behind.
Let me try again. We are teaching more INFORMATION than ever before when prior to NCLB we were teaching children to be autodidactic. Now we are become a nation of sheep and puppets.
One more try.
NCLB has promoted "teaching to the test" where before teachers could utilize their creativity to bring out the creativity in their students. Now teachers have little to no time for creativity. There are only so many hours in a day and most of it is prescribed in use by NCLB. All teachers ever really needed was a good scope and sequence of information that was to be taught kindergarten through grade 12...and the teachers would have worked out the details of how to teach it just fine. Here is an oxymoron for you...todays standardized tests are subjectively standardized...rather than impirically standardized as they were before.

Finally. No child left behind was a good idea in theory but it has been too narrowly defined to be useful. How is that?

It's tough to teach any field of science (and I'm not just talkin' evolution) when the vast majority of USians still believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

NCLB mostly had adverse effects on teachers who have been teaching their own thing for years and just didn't have the energy to change. There are teachers out there who like knowing if they are being effective beyond the "oh i like Mrs. _____ she was funny and had lots of parties in class".

There was once a study done to look at children’s behavior in a playground with fences and without. They found that the movements of the children were much more varied and tended to use the entire playground when the fences were in place. Without fences children centered their play more in the middle and very rarely explored the edges of the playground. There are creative ways to teach within the boundaries of the standards and the fences are not that high to allow creative expression outside the boundaries once in a while as well.

I have a neighbor who home schools their 4 kids. They teach to the test and the standards as well. They complete their lessons in 2 to 3 hours in the morning and then do other activities in the afternoon, sports, field trips, art or music lessons, and other activities with other home schooled kids. If there is not enough time in the day in the public schools then there is an efficiency problem that has to be addressed.

I know you think the whole world revolves around your little pet issues but sorry to break this to you it doesn't.