When I was in elementary, we had a lot more recess, too. However, I looked online at the bell schedule for my old elementary, and it hasn't noticeably changed, so it looks like that's on her district, not a historical thing.
Some things that have definitely changed:
- Morning meeting. This was not a thing in my day. Apparently it's supposed to teach social skills. DD8 thinks it's a colossal waste of time.
- Pull-outs. It seems kids are being yanked out of the regular classroom for everything. It's good, because it provides for differentiation for kids like my DD. But if my efforts at home to patch the holes it leaves in my DD's educational day are any indication, what kind of impact are they having on kids whose parents aren't on the job?
- Kids "writing" before they can spell - just... stop. Please.
I was in first grade in 1970 (yikes I'm old!). We did ave standardized tests even back then. They weren't percentiles but percentages, so not normed like today's tests.
Are you sure? I came along a decade later, and I remember taking the ITBS throughout elementary school. Those were percentile ranked.
To be honest, I have no idea what purpose that testing served. Except for the special ed class, there was no such thing as differentiation. If the teachers were being evaluated based on it, nobody told us.
