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We see that, too.  School trips are driven by available funding and  
(even more so) the needs to improve high-stakes testing scores.   
Teachers tell me they are under pressure to increase "time on task"  
and field trips are scrutinized for their ability to raise scores.
Beryl

On Nov 20, 2006, at 9:32 PM, David Smith wrote:

> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology  
> Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related  
> institutions.
> ********************************************************************** 
> *******
>
> Time and money, as always - based not on any formal survey, but on my
> frequent discussions with teachers and with administrators.
>
> Time has to do with testing these days - several districts in our area
> do not allow any time out of classroom before mid-March testing dates.
> This amplifies our April-June school visit crunch and means some
> districts can't come because we are booked up.
>
> Most of the districts not coming are urban and in addition to being  
> more
> tightly focused on testing, they do not have the fund-raising  
> capacity.
> The vast majority of kids doing fund raising are selling to their
> immediate family and so the success of fund-raising is directly
> proportional to the median income of the families in the school.
> Well-off suburban schools have PTA budgets that permit field trips,
> inner city schools do not.  To get inner city schools to come, we
> include field trip attendance in grant-funded professional development
> programs, we write grants directly for field trips, we invite kids to
> special events for free (one school brought a group to help us  
> unveil a
> new Hubble image, for example - their freebie was a PR move for us).
>
> Dave
>
> David L. Smith, Ph.D.
> Director of Professional Development
> Da Vinci Science Center, Allentown, PA
> http://www.davinci-center.org
>
> Engage, Explore, Share
>
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Beryl Rosenthal
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Dir. of Exhibition & Public Programs
MIT Museum
265 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617)452-2111 (t)
(617)253-8994 (f)



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