Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for May 25, 2006 DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT...SCIENCE

From the New York Times...

Test Shows Drop in Science Achievement for 12th Graders

By SAM DILLON

WASHINGTON, May 24 — The first nationwide science test administered in five years shows that achievement among high school seniors has declined across the past decade, even as scores in science rose among fourth graders and held steady among eighth graders, the federal Education Department reported on Wednesday.

The falling average science test scores among high school students appeared certain to increase anxiety about America's academic competitiveness and to add new urgency to calls from President Bush, governors and philanthropists like Bill Gates for an overhaul of the nation's high schools.

The drop in science proficiency appeared to reflect a broader trend in which some academic gains made in elementary grades and middle school have been seen to fade during the high school years.

The science results came from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a comprehensive examination administered in early 2005 by the Department of Education to more than 300,000 students in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and on military bases around the world.

"Our fourth graders are doing better — that's the good news," said Darvin M. Winick, chairman of the bipartisan body set up by Congress to oversee the test. "But the 12th-grade results are distressing, there's no other way to slice it. The Bush administration and just about everybody else is complaining about the high schools, and these results show there's really something to complain about."

The science test, which was administered in the first months of 2005, covered the earth, physical and life sciences. The science test was last given in 2000 and in 1996. The test administrators translate scores into three achievement levels: advanced, proficient and basic.

On the most recent test, 68 percent of fourth graders achieved at or above the basic level, compared with 63 percent on the 2000 and 1996 tests. Twenty-nine percent of fourth graders performed at or above the proficient level in 2005, up from 27 percent in 2000 and 28 percent in 1996.

The rising science achievement among fourth graders mirrored similar trends on nationwide reading and math tests released last fall. In interviews, analysts attributed those increases to the broad movements for higher standards and accountability that began in most states in the 1990's and gained force when President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind law in 2002.

The fourth-grade science results showed scores of black and Hispanic students rising more than those of white students, thus narrowing the gap between minority and white students who, on average, have traditionally scored much higher. But the gaps persisted or widened in the higher grades

Eighth-grade scores were largely unchanged from 10 years ago, with 59 percent of those tested scoring at or above the basic level in 2005, while 60 percent of students were at or above basic in 1996. Officials called those results disappointing, but the results from the nation's secondary schools were worse.

Among high school seniors, 54 percent performed at or above the basic level in science in 2005, compared with 57 percent in 1996. Eighteen percent of high school students performed at the proficient level in 2005, down from 21 percent in 1996.

To achieve at the basic level on the National Assessment, high school seniors must demonstrate knowledge of very basic concepts about the earth, physical and life sciences, and show a rudimentary understanding of scientific principles.

There was some debate on Wednesday about how to explain the 12th-grade declines.

Assistant Secretary of Education Tom Luce said they reflected a national shortage of fully qualified science teachers, especially in regions of poverty, where physics and chemistry classes are often taught by teachers untrained in those subjects.

"We lack enough teachers with content knowledge in math and science," Mr. Luce said. "We have too few teachers with majors or minors in math and science. That clearly is a problem."

Michael J. Padilla, a professor at the University of Georgia who is president of the National Science Teachers Association, said that the problem was not that universities were failing to train sufficient numbers of science majors or that too few were opting for classroom careers, but that about a third of those who accepted teaching jobs abandoned the profession within five years.

"What happens is that the system tends to beat them down," Mr. Padilla said. "Working conditions are poor, it's a difficult job, and the pay isn't that great."

Some teachers cited the decreasing amount of time devoted to science in schools, which they attributed in part to the annual tests in reading and math required by the No Child Left Behind law. That has led many elementary schools to cancel some science classes. On average, the time devoted to science instruction among elementary teachers across the nation declined from a weekly average of 2.6 hours in 2000 to 2.3 hours in 2004, Department of Education statistics show.

The No Child Left Behind law requires states to begin testing in science, however, in the 2007-2008 school year. P. John Whitsett, a physics teacher at Fond du Lac High School in Wisconsin who has taught science for 36 years, said that children who had the opportunity to study science in elementary school tended to develop an excitement for the field that lasted into high school. But when elementary and middle schools neglect science, students seek to avoid taking science courses in high school.

"Overall interest in science is down," Mr. Whitsett said.

The results showed considerable regional variations, with some states' scores stagnant or falling and others rising sharply. The National Assessment's report on the test praised five states — California, Hawaii, Kentucky, South Carolina and Virginia — because both fourth- and eighth-grade scores there improved from 2000 to 2005.

Michael Petrilli, a vice president at the Thomas Fordham Foundation, an educational research organization that supports testing, attributed the science successes in Virginia and California to what he described as those states' clearly defined science standards. And Kentucky, South Carolina and Virginia, he said, are among those states that hold local schools accountable for low science scores.

States must by law participate in the National Assessment's biennial reading and math exams. But the science test is voluntary, and New York and five other states — Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Pennsylvania — declined to help federal officials administer the test to a large enough number of students to allow their states' scores to be compared with those of other states.

A few students were tested even in the six states that did not participate fully, allowing the collection of a nationally representative sample.

Tom Dunn, a spokesman for New York's Department of Education, said that state officials decided not to participate fully in the federal science testing because during the spring of 2005 they were preoccupied with field trials for a series of new reading and math exams required by No Child Left Behind.

In New Jersey, 31 percent of fourth graders in public schools scored at proficient or above, compared with 33 percent in Connecticut. The national average for fourth graders attending public school was 27 percent scoring at proficient or above.

The report is available online at nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2006466.

A related editorial from the same edition of the New York Times...

Why American College Students Hate Science

Editorial Observer

By BRENT STAPLES

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, opened for business in a former cow pasture not far from downtown just 40 years ago. Still in its infancy as universities go, U.M.B.C. is less well known than Maryland's venerable flagship campus at College Park or the blue-blooded giant Johns Hopkins. But the upstart campus in the pasture is rocking the house when it comes to the increasingly critical mission of turning American college students into scientists.

A study of the university's science program published in the March 31 issue of the journal Science sets forth an eye-opening recipe for remaking science education in America generally — and in particular, for increasing minority participation, which lags even after decades of federally supported initiatives.

But following U.M.B.C.'s blueprint won't be easy. Among other things, it will require the scientific establishment to rethink its approach to teaching from the ground up.

Science education in this country faces two serious problems. The first is that too few Americans perform at the highest level in science, compared with our competitors abroad. The second problem is that large numbers of aspiring science majors, perhaps as many as half, are turned off by unimaginative teaching and migrate to other disciplines before graduating.

The science establishment explains these defections as part of a natural "weeding out" — a view flatly rejected by U.M.B.C. and a few other campuses where administrators are getting top performance from students who would ordinarily have become demoralized and jumped ship.

Initiated in 1989, U.M.B.C.'s Meyerhoff Scholars Program is so well known that the university no longer needs to recruit for it. High school counselors and teachers nominate about 1,900 students annually, mostly from Maryland, for merit-based scholarships. About 100 scholarships are offered, and of these about 50 are accepted. The new students are welcomed into a well-established community of scientists and scientists-to-be through a summer program that sets the stage for the next four years.

The students are encouraged to study in groups and taught to solve complex problems collectively, as teams of scientists do. Most important, they are quickly exposed to cutting-edge science in laboratory settings, which demystifies the profession and gives them early access to work that often leads to early publication in scientific journals. At the same time, however, the students are pushed to perform at the highest level. Those who earn C's, for example, are encouraged to repeat those courses so they can master basic concepts before moving on.

The laboratory approach keeps the students excited and prevents them from drifting off into less challenging disciplines. Indeed, according to Science, 86 percent of the Meyerhoff participants have graduated with science or engineering degrees. Nearly 9 in 10 of those graduates went on to graduate or professional programs, with a significant number earning M.D.'s or Ph.D's, or both.

Critics have sometimes accused the Meyerhoff program of cherry-picking bright students who would perform spectacularly well wherever they went to school. But the numbers suggest that the school's instructional strategy makes a real difference. Meyerhoff students are twice as likely to earn undergraduate degrees in science or engineering as similar students who declined the scholarships and went to school elsewhere. Most significantly, students who completed the Meyerhoff program are 5.3 times as likely to enroll in graduate study as the students who said no and went elsewhere.

The higher education establishment is generally startled to learn that more than half of the high-flying Meyerhoff students are black. This surprise stems from the unstated but nonetheless well-established belief that high-performing science students don't actually exist in the black community.

U.M.B.C.'s president, Freeman Hrabowski III, knows better. He has spent years expanding his school's access to high-performing minority students and has taken great pains to reassure black families that their children will be well looked after on his campus.

It has long been known that teachers' low expectations, particularly those related to race and racism, can depress student performance. At U.M.B.C., sustained success by minority students seems to have alleviated this poisonous problem. Faculty members who once looked askance when asked to take on minority students in their laboratories now clamor for them.

Off campus, meanwhile, the students are much sought after as research assistants and as candidates for summer internships. Those who finish their education and take their places in the ranks of researchers and professors often become powerful proselytizers for science.

The Meyerhoff model shows that a vibrant, well-structured science program can produce large numbers of students who excel and remain in the field. It has also debunked the myth that academic excellence and minority access are mutually exclusive goals.

The university community needs to absorb these lessons quickly, so the country can begin to train scientists in the numbers that it clearly needs. Without them, America is unlikely to preserve its privileged position in an increasingly competitive and science-based global economy.