The weaknesses seen in the recent materials and methods introduced in mathematics classes represent symptoms that are not unique to mathematics. Indeed, the rhetoric of whole language or whole math -- or whole science -- is essentially the same with only a few words exchanged.
Science, as a subject matter field, is especially ripe for the denaturing effects of these so-call reforms for several reasons. Among these are:
Here are some reports giving background on the problems in science education:
While California's performance in Science Education is less than stellar, the state was confronted with a golden opportunity - but managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And, the denied opportunity was offered to the state for free.
A Bad DecisionThe story begins with the Academic Standards Commission in California. Charged with the task of developing grade-by-grade standards in various subjects, the Commission is beginning to turn its attention to science. They put out a request for bid from contractors wanting to act as consultants in the process.
Two groups replied. One, known as the Associated Scientists, offered to do the task for free. But, despite the inclusion of three Nobel laureates and many other scientists, the Commission found in November, 1997, that a group with an educator emphasis was better suited to do the job for $178,000.
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There seems to have been some irregularity in the way the Commission made their selection. A protest was quickly filed, and public pressure on the Commission to reconsider grew.
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On December 1, 1997, the Commission retracted their prior decision. Evidently, there was some reason to question their prior action. The bidding process was started over again. New bids would have to be submitted.
The public image of the Commission had dropped a notch. The comments and the press coverage continued as the state awaited new bids. The same two groups applied again, both having modified their proposals.
See:
Can This Be Happening?
On January 15, 1998, the Commission reported on their evaluation of the two new proposals. The Associated Scientists had taken on new participants, and they upped the count of laureates to ten. The Associated Scientists outscored the competition this time.
Alas, better was not good enough. The Commission rejected both bids. They decided instead to hire one lead member from each group to serve as consultants.
What this all means for the future of science standards in California remains to be seen.
The process would appear to be an attempt to resolve differences between the two factions represented by the two groups. Will it work? Or, does snubbing the Nobel-laden group twice prove to be the final nail in the coffin?
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And the Story Continues ...
Far from ending, the story of science standards for California is just beginning.
Perhaps in an attempt to bolster the professionalism of the Academic Standards Commission, Governor Wilson appointed Glenn Seaborg to the Commission as the new head of the science committee.
Seaborg is the former head of the Atomic Energy Commission, a former Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley. He is a Nobel prize winner, the associate director-at-large of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and chairman of the Lawrence Hall of Science. He holds the distinction of having an elements named after him - "seaborgium," element number 106.
Seaborg is widely recognized as an authority on education as well, having co-authored "A Nation at Risk." For details, see:
Los Angeles Times
Monday, November 17, 1997
Education: Three laureates and their team offered to write goals for free. State chose more experienced group.
By RICHARD LEE COLVIN, Times Education Writer
SACRAMENTO--One of the Nobel Prize winners co-discovered more than 10 chemical elements. Another is a Harvard professor who studies the behavior of molecules. And the third was lauded by the Nobel committee as "one of the most creative research workers of our age."
Glenn T. Seaborg, Dudley R. Herschbach and Henry Taube all won science's top honor for their work in chemistry. But long before that, two went to California public schools. And all worry that today's schools are not doing an acceptable job of preparing students to follow in their footsteps.
So all three joined with more than 30 scientists and teachers to volunteer to write "standards" for what California students should know in science.
They offered to do it for free.
But the state commission responsible for coming up with the standards turned them down flat. Instead, it gave the job to a group based at Cal State San Bernardino--for $178,000.
Most of that group's principal members are educators, not scientists. They earlier helped write standards already used in some schools--standards viewed by the scientists as "dumbed-down."
Officials of the state Commission for the Establishment of Academic Content and Performance Standards said they opted for the San Bernardino group earlier this month because its members had more experience writing standards to guide instruction from kindergarten through high schools. The scientists, they said, had great resumes but were vague about how they would go about the work.
"They wouldn't know a classroom if you put it in front of them," said Judy Codding, a member of the commission appointed to come up with the state's first academic standards not only in science but in reading, language arts, math, history and social science.
The dismissal, however, has enraged the scientists, who last week filed a formal appeal of the process.
As they see it, it's more than a choice between two groups or even a matter of cost or who has Nobel prizes. It's a choice between competing philosophies of how science should be taught in American schools--similar to the battle being fought over math education.
How much can you demand of children in the MTV age without turning them off? And at what point, in trying to make subjects appealing, do you lose real understanding of the great--but difficult--discoveries of mankind?
The best-known member of the scientists volunteering to write California's science standards is Seaborg, 87, a former chancellor of UC Berkeley. He has long been a leading voice warning about the sad state of America's public schools, having co-chaired the panel that wrote the landmark 1983 report "A Nation at Risk."
In explaining his participation in the Associated Scientists group, Seaborg argued that schools have gotten even worse since then--and put part of the blame on attempts to broaden the appeal of science without retaining its rigor.
"Educational content is continually diluted in a failed effort to produce palatable bits of information for progressively less skilled students," Seaborg wrote in a letter included in the scientists' proposal to the state. "It is essential that we take a stand and insist on educational standards with greater content. We, as scientists, have a moral obligation to help stem the tide of mediocrity by putting our understanding of scientific principles and knowledge at the service of our children."
The other side--epitomized by the San Bernardino-based Institute for Science--is at the forefront of efforts to reform science education by making it less abstract, less about H2O and more about water.
Largely composed of education professors and teachers, this group believes that science classes have focused too much on memorizing terms, laws and formulas and not enough on hands-on demonstrations, observation and understanding of the physical world.
"When reformers see standards that have all those [scientific] terms down to the lowest grade level, they think you'll be teaching kids to memorize the First Law of Thermodynamics and the result is the kids can answer a multiple-choice question but they don't understand it," said Roland Otto, a nuclear physicist who is a key member of the San Bernardino reform group.
Scientific concepts "tend to be very difficult for kids to grasp . . . [so] we're leaving all these kids who don't get it behind," said Otto, who is in charge of education programs at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory--where he was recruited by Seaborg, an associate director.
Science now, Otto said, is too elitist. Too few poor and minority students stick with it. And too many students give up and wind up being scientifically illiterate.
But many in Seaborg's rival Associated Scientists group believe the essentials of their fields are being discarded in an attempt to make classes attractive for a wide range of students. They worry, for instance, that children won't be taught such basics as how all substances are made up of molecules, and that molecules are made up of atoms. Instead, the reformers would teach children that "big things are made up of small things," said Stan Metzenberg, a biologist at Cal State Northridge, who brought together the scientists to counter the influence of what he saw as well-meaning but misguided educators.
"It's truly regrettable, but individuals who have never taken an upper division college science course are often entrusted with the job of defining the 'content' of science for the public schools, and that leads to mediocre and 'dumbed down' curricula," Metzenberg wrote in his letter recruiting scientists to participate in the standards-writing project.
In defending the rejection of Metzenberg's proposal, Scott Hill, the executive director of the state standards commission, noted that the San Bernardino group also has Nobel laureates who will review its work--although none will be directly involved.
In addition to Otto, its leaders are Bonnie Brunkhorst, an earth scientist in the education department at Cal State San Bernardino; Dorothy Terman, the science coordinator for the Irvine Unified School District; and Tom Smithson, a Cal State Sacramento education professor.
"The big difference was that one group had extensive experience writing achievement standards for science and one did not," Hill said. In addition, Metzenberg's group did not submit a detailed work plan, he said, although the criteria for the standards-writing contract did not mention a need for such a plan.
The Sacramento-based commission earlier hired consultants to help it write standards for a range of other subjects. The state Board of Education, which has the final say over the standards, approved the document covering reading and language arts last week. Next month, the board will decide on math standards, which have prompted a bitter battle, as well.
Math reformers downplay memorization, believing it does not lead to true understanding--or enjoyment. They believe in having children try to figure out the Pythagorean Theorem on their own, for instance, rather than have a teacher explain that basic rule of trigonometry. As in the
science debate, that approach is ridiculed by a rival, traditionalist camp, which complains that the new approach leaves children unable to figure out simple percentages without a calculator.
Standards in the other fields, including science, are to be completed by next fall. Statewide tests then will be created to monitor how well students are measuring up to them.
California's decisions are expected to influence schools across the country in part because the state is the nation's largest market for textbooks, prompting publishers to incorporate the new standards in revised editions sold everywhere.
Codding, a former Pasadena high school principal who sits on the standards commission, said it was not hard to pick the San Bernardino group as the consultant for the science guidelines. Though the group that included the three Nobel Prize winners had "an impressive collection of
resumes," it did not have a game plan or experience writing classroom standards, she said.
Metzenberg doesn't accept that and asked the state Department of General Services to reverse the decision on grounds that the commission failed to evaluate the scientists' proposal fairly.
He noted that his team includes James Dyke, who oversaw the development of highly regarded science standards for the state of Virginia as well as scientists who have worked on similar documents in Massachusetts, South Dakota and for the National Academy of Sciences. The group also includes master teachers who have won local and national awards.
But his most powerful ammunition remains the pleas of the scientists he recruited to lend their expertise to elementary science instruction.
Taube, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983 for his work on the behavior of electrons in metals, is a retired Stanford professor. "While it is true that our schools face increasing social challenges, there is no excuse for offering only 'watered-down' science," he wrote in a letter
attached to the group's proposal.
Seaborg, who attended high school in Watts, was more personal in explaining his involvement, recalling how he was inspired to pursue a career in science by a teacher there. He then earned degrees at UCLA and UC Berkeley, worked on the Manhattan Project, which led to the development of the atomic bomb, and pursued his research on uranium-related elements--the work that earned him and Edwin M. McMillan the 1951 Nobel Prize.
Still an active researcher, Seaborg committed himself to put in at least 10 days helping write chemistry standards.
Herschbach, who along with Seaborg is a co-director of the group, won his Nobel in 1986 and has been deeply involved in K-12 education. He worked on the science standards developed by the National Academy of Sciences, where he is an advisor to the Office of Public Understanding of Science.
In his letter explaining his involvement, he said his interest in improving the quality of K-12 education was spurred by the role a teacher in San Jose played in his life after he entered high school there in 1946. "Nobody in my family even knew anyone who had gone to college," he wrote. "But I was fortunate to grow up in California . . . at a time when the public enthusiasm for education was intense."
His teachers, he added, "instilled in their students a profound respect for the values they had fought for and insisted on commensurate standards."
Otto said he understands the concerns of the scientists. They worry "that we are not serving those kids who are like them [who] got it the first time" and who went on to college and excelled.
He said he also understands why many fellow scientists think that the efforts of the reformers seems more like "science appreciation" than true science.
"It's very hard to find a middle ground because it is so politicized," he said. "I don't know the answer to that tension."
Copyright © 1997, Los Angeles Times
Reproduced by permission
Investors Business Daily
November 18, 1997
Glenn T. Seaborg is an eminent scientist - so eminent that he's the only living person with an element named after him. But the state of California won't let him help write science standards for its public schools. His problem? Taking the idea of standards too seriously.
Seaborg, 85, is what more trendy educators today would call an elitist. That is, he thinks schools should teach the difficult principles of science even if all students may not grasp them. He's worried that if schools try too hard to make hard subjects fun, they'll cheat the students out of essential knowledge.
He and two other Nobel laureates have joined with more than 30 other scientists and teachers to fight for rigorous goals in teaching science in California public schools. They've been treated with less than respect.
The state board set up to adopt science standards turned down their offer to write standards for free. The job went to a group made up mostly of teachers and education professors, at a cost of $178,000.
And one member of the state panel, Judy Codding, added insult to injury. "They wouldn't know a classroom if you put it in front of them," the Los Angeles Times quoted her as saying.
In fact, Seaborg and his colleagues, who call themselves, Associated Scientists, know plenty about classrooms and what make them work. Seaborg, a 1951 Nobel laureate in chemistry and still active in research, co-headed the panel that wrote the famous 1983 report A Nation at Risk about the decline of the nation's schools.
Another member of Associated Scientists, 1986 Nobel laureate Dudley R. Hershbach, helped develop school science standards for the National Academy of Sciences.
But age, experience and credentials aren't the issues here. The trouble with Associated Scientists, in the state's view, is that it has old-school, rather than what we would call wow-school, notions about the goal of teaching. That is, they see the goal of teaching as primarily to impart knowledge, not to make sure all students have a good time.
The newer thinking aims to make science (and math, another area of controversy) more accessible. One way is to make the subject more fun to learn, even if it is taught in less depth. Another method is to make the subject more tangible and less abstract. It aims, in effect, to make the student say wow, even if he or she is a little dim on the factual details.
That's not exactly how the wow-school folks would put it, but that's the gist of the ruling theories in the teaching of science and mathematics. Memorization and multiplication tables are out. Hands-on work and broad concepts are in.
Good teaching embodies something of both - a mastery of number and detail as well as a grasp of the big ideas and some excitement about the subject. But when the wow becomes the whole mission, colleges get flooded with lots of students who are unprepared for college work. And lacking the basic knowledge, they also lack real grasp of scientific principles.
Seaborg put it well in a letter to the California standards panel: "Our citizens lack a depth of understanding even of the implications to society of rapid scientific progress, and our college-bound high school graduates lack the most rudimentary preparation for careers in the natural sciences."
Seaborg's message is directed at California schools but could serve for the whole country. California, as the biggest market for textbooks and other educational products, is a pacesetter sheerly by virtue of its size. The standards it adopts will almost surely go nationwide.
His words and his recent experience with the state should also be a warning to anyone who thinks American schools can be improved simply by hiring certified education experts and having them develop standards. The fact is that the prevailing idea of standards in schools of education today is not what most of the public would mean by that word.
In the education establishment's view, standards must be written to make sure that virtually all kids can meet them. That means inherently tough subjects like science are elitist if everyone doesn't get the really hard concepts. How to solve that problem? Make the subjects easier - never mind what the Nobel laureates say.
(C) Copyright 1997 Investors Business Daily, Inc.
Reproduced by permission
San Jose Mercury News
December 1, 1997
Reproduced by permission
As a working scientist with three children in public schools, I know the importance of a solid science education as a way to open up peoples' minds and to open the door to economic opportunity.
I also know that creative problem solving in science requires a substantial amount of specific content knowledge, and the ability to integrate that knowledge into a larger picture. To really understand the big picture it's essential to learn the small pictures.
I'm concerned that California's new content and performance standards in science will resemble the fuzzy, low-content "Challenge Standard," since the Commission on Academic Content and Performance Standards' staff has picked essentially the same Cal State-San Bernardino group that wrote the challenge standards to develop the new science standards.
In doing so, it rejected Associated Scientists, a group including a stunning mix of working scientists of top caliber, including Nobel Prize-winners, award-winning classroom teachers and people with experience writing solid standards such as the highly regarded Virginia Standards of Learning.
Part of the reason for having standards is to define clearly the what and when for learning of both the specific and the big picture items. There should be clarity about what should be learned and there should be a clear progression of learning, with each year building on what has come before.
The Challenge Standards are substantially lacking in clarity as to what should be learned and when, there is not a clear path from one level to the next, substantial critical material for real success is missing, and the recommended activities/assessments confuse playing around with mastery and understanding. My views on these standards are shared by many other scientists who have read the challenge standards. Experience making a bad product is not a recommendation for a new job.
Associated Scientists has the administrative expertise to coordinate the writing of content-rich standards with specific goals at each grade or class and a clearly thought out progression of topics and learning from year to year. The group offered to work for free.
How could such a group be rejected? In newspaper accounts, commission staff are quoted as saying that Associated Scientists did not submit a detailed implementation proposal - though the publicized criteria for the contract never asked for that.
The commission meets Monday to make a final decision. I urge that commissioners give themselves time to read and consider both proposals, based on the original criteria, before deciding on the nature of the standards our children need.
Michael McKeown is a researcher at the
Molecular Biology and Virology Laboratory
of the Salk Institute in San Diego, and
cofounder of Mathematically Correct (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/mathman/),
a parents' group concerned about mathematics
education.
The state's substantive new science standards will encourage those "upward spirals" by giving students and teachers a clear sense of what knowledge is important. Los Angeles and other districts should adopt the standards, knowing that they possess something even more vital than knowledge: faith in students' ability to learn.