No Field Trips For You!
The superintendent of a school system in West Tennessee has decided to cancel field trips for some schools for the new school year. The reasoning? Low math and reading scores.
I first heard of this story on a local morning radio show. The hosts agreed with superintendent Dr. Versie Hamlett, stating that it's a good thing the students won't be going on field trips and they should not be rewarded for poor test performance. As you may imagine, some parents and local business owners aren’t thrilled with the decision.
To learn more about the district, I visited its webpage. Interestingly, the district's vision statement scrolls across the top of the page and includes a statement of goals, one of which is to "partner with our community." It's admirable that the superintendent is trying something to turn around falling test scores, but canceling field trips alone won't significantly impact them. The choice to eliminate field trips brings several questions to my mind:
What kinds of field trips have the students taken in past years?
Have past field trips been substantially connected to and supported by the district's reading and math teaching strategies?
How could field trips be revamped to provide rich, curriculum-based experiences to students?
Was data other than test scores (which are influenced by many factors) used to make the decision?
While the story doesn't mention which grade levels are impacted by the decision, it's safe to assume the mandate includes elementary students. Tennessee recently passed a 3rd grade retention law. Based on test performance, some students will complete year-long tutoring and attend summer school to avoid retention. The state education department also recently enacted an A-F school scoring model, and test scores factor into the overall school score calculations.
Background knowledge and real-world experience, two essential components of a child's ability to learn and retain information, are promoted and built by well-planned field trips. In “Why Don't Students Like School,” Dr. Daniel Willingham states that intelligence starts with the building of facts. When students can make real connections between classwork and the real world, interest levels go up, and knowledge is more readily retained. A 2022 research article in the Journal of Human Resources found that culturally rich field trips helped students score higher on end-of-year exams.
The time gained by canceling field trips won't be impactful if the schools continue teaching math and reading the same way. More time on task does not always equal more success. The experiences lost by the lack of travel to local farms, businesses, arts venues, or parks/zoos/museums will far outweigh any advantage gained by taking back a few hours per year of classroom instruction.
