Dorothy Borrelli

September 31, 2007

This past summer Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Representative John Sarbanes (D-Md.) introduced the bipartisan No Child Left Inside (NCLI) Act HR 3036 in both the Senate and the House. The goal of the legislation was to restore environmental education in America's classrooms.

The impetus behind the Act comes from two sources. First, increasing evidence has suggested that environmental education may widely improve grades and help prepare youth for quickly approaching (if not already here) environmental and natural resource challenges. Second, President Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 was also influential in getting this bill proposed. NCLB primarily focused on increasing student passage rates for mandatory reading and math tests. A result of the NCLB Act was massive budget cuts to a variety of programs, including environmental education. Of course, it did not help matters that the language of NCLB failed to even mention environmental education.

A key piece of NCLI is that it aims to provide federal money to help train teachers to conduct environmental education. Similarly, it aims to help states develop and implement environmental education curricular plans. This Act is particularly important when considering evidence from research done by the State Education and Environment Roundtable (SEER). SEER has studied the results of environmental education in the classroom and found that it increases student enthusiasm for learning and improves test scores in reading, math, social studies, and science. Environmental education also helps combat growing childhood obesity by getting kids outdoors and moving around instead of leaving them hooked to computer screens and locked indoors.

The result is that the 2007 draft reauthorization of NCLB now includes fourteen pages all about environmental education. The "Miller-McKeon Discussion Draft" creates two new grant programs to promote teaching and learning about the environment. Under the first program, § 5621(c)(2)(B)(ii), in order to receive funding the applicant must specifically show how the proposed activities "will integrate the teaching of an interdisciplinary course that integrates the study of natural, social, and economic systems and that includes strong field components in which students have the opportunity to directly experience nature." Additionally, the applicant must explain how such activities will "improve student academic achievement . . .[,] strengthen quality environmental instruction," and ensure that teachers are trained in field-based, place-based, and service learning.

It is important to keep in mind that neither of the two provisions within the Miller-McKeon Discussion Draft requires environmental education programs. In this instance, all the Act does is potentially provide funding for programs to promote environmental education initiatives.

Currently, more than seventy organizations are showing their support for HR 3036 along with seventeen congresspeople co-sponsoring.

Sources:

Miller-McKeon Discussion Draft of the No Child Left Behind Act, Sept. 6, 2007, available at http://www.cbf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=act_sub_actioncenter_federal_NCLB.

No Child Left Behind Act, Pub. L. No. 107-110 (2001).

Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Environmental Education Included in the Miller-McKeon Draft of No Child Left Behind, http://www.cbf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=act_sub_actioncenter_federal_NCLB (last visited Sept. 27, 2007).

Amy Linn, No Child Left Inside, Grist (Sept. 26, 2007), http://www.grist.org/feature/2007/09/26/outside/index.html.