Several years ago, EducationNext published The Educational Value of Field Trips. The piece begins with a brief history of the field trip once being a cornerstone of public education in America. Schools saw the benefits of these experiences out of the classrooms justified the costs.With field trips, public schools viewed themselves as the great equalizer in terms of access to our cultural heritage.The piece goes on to discuss the decline of culturally enriching field trips over the past decade or two. There are a variety of factors beyond the obvious financial ones, including a focus on increased time needed to prep students for standardized test, as well as a shift from "enrichment" to "reward" field trips.
EducationNext highlighted the challenge of making the case for this particular type of enrichment activity because of a lack of "rigorous evidence about how field trips affect students". They then presented research from " the first large-scale randomized-control trial" to examine what students learn from visiting, in this case, an art museum.*
