Almost immediately after No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the landmark legislation that requires public schools to demonstrate progress in reading and math instruction through standardized tests, took effect in 2002, school districts began devoting more time to reading and math at the expense of other subjects. NCLB has had a strikingly negative effect on art, science and history education, according to recent reports, which paint a gloomy picture of misplaced educational priorities and persistent ignorance among American schoolchildren and adults. Yet there is a silver lining to the gloom, as the same studies—as well as a major new survey from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS)—highlight museums' vital role in supplementing formal education and providing informal learning opportunities.

The Center on Education Policy, a centrist education think tank, conducted a survey of 349 public school districts in the winter of 2006–07.1 It discovered that 58 percent of districts have increased instructional time for reading/language arts and 45 percent have increased instructional time for math in elementary schools since the 2001–2002 school year. Most of those districts also reported "substantial cuts in time for other subjects or periods, including social studies, science, art and music, physical education, recess, or lunch." More than a third (36 percent) of all school districts have cut elementary social studies instruction—by an average of 76 minutes a week—while arts education is down at 16 percent of the schools and science at 28 percent of the schools.

NCLB also has affected the amount of time spent outside of the classroom. The number of school field trips has declined as art, history and science are squeezed out of the K–12 curriculum in favor of math and reading. According to a Feb. 11 Newsweek article, "class trips have plummeted at some of the country's traditional hot spots for brown-bag learning," including the Chicago Children's Museum (down a tenth since 2005), Mystic Seaport (down a quarter since 2005) and the New England Aquarium in Boston (down a quarter since 2003).2

There are no hard statistics on the decline of field trips to museums, but the anecdotal evidence is compelling—and the cause is clear, at least to many observers. As Elizabeth Babcock, education director at the Field Museum, explained during an interview with Chicago Public Radio, local teachers say, "I would love to come see your exhibition, but we have to show a certain percentage of improvement on our standardized tests, and that means we need to drill and practice in our classroom, and I'm not sure I can take a day out of school to come on a field trip."3

The dwindling number of field trips has already forced at least one museum to shut its doors. In March, the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Ind., announced that it would close for good at the end of June, after nearly 80 years in operation. The Lincoln Financial Group, which owns and operates the museum, cited declining attendance—from 12,000 schoolchildren in 1996 to 7,500 schoolchildren in 2006—as a major reason for the move.4 While critical of the museum's decision, historian Gerald Prokopowicz conceded that "fewer students are going on field trips to museums," a trend he blames on "standardized testing, which forces teachers to spend more time in the classroom."5

No Child Left Behind also deserves some of the blame for perpetuating American ignorance, according to a February report by conservative think tank Common Core.6,7 "Still at Risk: What Students Don't Know, Even Now" is the latest in a long line of surveys demonstrating that, as the song goes, American high school students don't know much about history—or, for that matter, literature. More than 1,200 17-year-olds were surveyed this time, only 43 percent of whom could place the American Civil War in the correct half-century. Nearly a quarter failed to identify Hitler—some thought he was an industrialist rather than a dictator—or knew that Uncle Tom's Cabin was about slavery. Fewer than half could identify the authors of the Canterbury Tales or Invisible Man, and only about 60 percent knew that Oedipus was a Greek hero or that the Renaissance was a period in European history.

As education historian and reformer Diane Ravitch writes in the preface to the report, Common Core attributes American students' ignorance to the national education system, which "has become obsessed with testing and basic skills because of the requirements of federal law. . . .  Such obsessions are unhealthy for children, unhealthy for education, and toxic for those who want all children to share in the benefits of a balanced, rich, and coherent liberal education."

The report calls for better curricula—with more emphasis on content rather than abstract skills and more time for the arts and sciences—and education policies that include assessments beyond math and reading. It also acknowledges a special role for cultural exposure outside of the classroom, asserting that  "activities such as attending plays, visiting museums, singing in choirs, and reading at school and at home are important not only in their own right, but also because they offer students access to the literature and history of our common culture."

Similar conclusions have been made about American students' familiarity with science. In a 2006 survey by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 15-year-olds in the United States ranked twenty-first out of 30 industrialized nations in scientific literacy. On the other hand, American adults do quite well in this regard, ranking second behind Sweden in another multinational survey conducted by Professor Jon D. Miller of Michigan State University in 2005. Miller, one of the nation's leading experts on scientific literacy, attributes the disparity between students and adults to the informal education that museums, zoos and aquaria provide.8 (Not coincidentally, Sweden is the only country where a higher percentage of adults visit science and technology museums each year than in America.9)

Source: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (2006), reprinted in Stéphane Baldi, et al., "Highlights From PISA 2006: Performance of U.S. 15-Year-Old Students in Science and Mathematics Literacy in an International Context" (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, US Department of Education, 2007).

Given museums' important role in combating ignorance, it's a good thing that so many Americans visit them each year. Nearly 150 million American adults visited at least one U.S. museum in 2006, according to surveys conducted by the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science on behalf of IMLS.10 That figure includes visits to zoos, aquariums, botanic gardens and related institutions, and it represents more than 66 percent of the entire adult population. Another 8 million visited at least one museum online but not in person. In all, the IMLS research team estimates there were 701 million U.S. physical museum visits by American adults in 2006.

The IMLS report, "InterConnections: A National Study of Users and Potential Users of Online Information," also documents the patterns of museum visits by age, gender, ethnicity, museum type and education level. For example, the researchers found that men tend to visit museums more often than women, though women are more likely to visit children's museums and zoos. Adults aged 25–44 visit museums more often than younger or older people; museum-going declines with age after 44. More Asian (72 percent) and Hispanic/Latino adults (70 percent) visit museums than African Americans (55 percent). But only 36 percent of adults with less than a high school education visit museums, either in person or online.