Contradictions in educational policy: implementing integrated problem-based environmental health curriculum in a high stakes environment.

In this paper, we focus on the efforts of educators at nine different research sites within the United States, funded by a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), to develop and implement innovative, interdisciplinary curriculum on the relationship of the environment and human health. The NIEHS correctly maintained that the interdisciplinary nature of learning about environmental health would improve students' learning across several subject areas and should, therefore, contribute to students scoring higher on state's subject area based standardized tests. However, these goals were undermined by state polices linking standardized tests with student promotion and graduation, and the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) that required public schools and districts to aggregate test scores which might have negative consequences, such as reducing school funding or privatizing school administration and state policies. These policies resulted in deleterious effects that undermined implementing environmental health curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]