Elementary school refers to the institution that provides the first four to eight years of a child’s formal education. The number of years of instruction varies from community to community depending on the size of the school population. At the present time, most elementary schools enroll children of ages five to twelve, kindergarten through sixth grade. Some elementary schools include a preschool. The socio-economic status among elementary students in a school is usually similar, but political and social developments may lead to the planning of enrollments so that students from diverse backgrounds attend the same school. For instance, the mainstreaming of special-needs children into classroom settings was mandated by Public Law 94–142 in 1975.

Parents who have children of elementary school age are compelled to provide institutions for their children to be educated. Schooling is free in public elementary school. In other words, taxpayers pay for school buildings, teachers’ salaries and school supplies and equipment. While their children attend school, however, parents spend more on buying books, field trips, photographs, lunches and so forth. These expenditures depend on the state or local school district.

The elementary school curriculum includes language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, music and art. Subjects such as mathematics, social studies and science encompass various content areas. For example, science programs are composed of materials from biological and physical areas, and mathematics includes work in geometry. Elementary school teachers, in contrast to secondary school teachers who are specialists in specific subjects, are expected to have and to be able to impart a broad knowledge covering each area of instruction.

The most common approach to teaching or instruction in elementary schools is currently a thematic approach in an integrative curriculum. This emphasizes thematic or problem-focused units of study and the contents are blended through activities of a variety of discipline areas. For example, a unit called “animal” might include representative activities such as a survey regarding class members’ favorite animals, making bar graphs, visiting zoos, and so forth.

American elementary schools are struggling for several reasons in their curriculum to satisfy the needs of students as well as society Multicultural education is one of the important issues in the American elementary school curriculum. It is a trial to understand students from diverse backgrounds, which include not only ethnicity or socioeconomic status, but also different intelligence levels, learning styles, and so forth. To satisfy the needs of individual students from multicultural backgrounds, elementary school teachers and educators try to find appropriate teaching strategies. At the same time, American elementary schools deal with the issue of social efficiency or the need to provide stability in the face of potentially radical social change. That mission took the form of enjoining curriculum-makers to devise programs of study that prepare individuals specifically and directly for the role they will play as adult members of the social order.