The Other Achievement Gap

From Kevin Riley at Leader Talk:

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Here's a gap that's deep and growing deeper by the day:

It starts in schools that struggle to keep pace. For whatever reason. Maybe it is the leadership, maybe it's the teachers, maybe it's the kids or the parents or the books or the pedagogy or the water or the facilities or the lack of light. In the end, it doesn't matter. Because schools that don't keep pace with AYP have to circle the wagons and teach harder. More reading. More math. Then more reading still. More math still.

And while reading and math crowd out the rest of the curriculum-- as schools eliminate science and social studies and the arts and physical education to make way for more focussed/rigorous/aligned instruction in basic skills (aka "test prep")-- something big goes missing:

Creative thinking, innovation, critical thinking, problem solving, application, play, self-discovery. Joy. Learning.

...the skills our kids need to compete for jobs. For economic growth. For America. For global survival.

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