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The Center on Education Policy just released a new report on changes to the elementary curriculum since NCLB. Their findings: Schools have put subjects like social studies and the arts on the chopping block to make way for more time in mathematics and reading.  (Way back in 2004, yours truly wrote a similar, though less sophisticated, report that reached similar conclusions.) Given the wide range of skills and knowledge students will need to thrive (see here, here and here), this is unsettling news.

The good news is that many public schools out there still achieve great success in mathematics and reading without throwing everything else overboard. See, for example, The John Stanford International School in Washington State, the Woodrow Wilson Elementary School in New Jersey, or Port Chester Middle School in New York.

A postscript:  Apparently, a new organization called Common Core is preparing to tackle the question of curricular erosion.  I don't know much about it--only that the organization plans to launch itself on the Tuesday, February 26th.