Re: Science courses nearly extinct in elementary grades

[aburke5054@aol.com]

So put in a science test.  No duh on that one.  Art


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From: Monty Neill <monty@fairtest.org>
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Subject: [arn-l] Science courses nearly extinct in elementary grades


More evidence of how NCLB-led high stakes testing regime is narrowing
curriculum:

Science courses nearly extinct in elementary grades, study finds
Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, October 25, 2007

The third-graders looked puzzled when asked what they liked best about 
science.
No answer.

OK, then, next question: "What is science?" a visitor asked the 
children in a
hallway at Bessie Carmichael Elementary School in San Francisco.

"Science is like art," said Manuel, 7, who let that cryptic response 
hang in the
air as he ducked away.

He might have meant that both can open the heart to beauty. Or maybe he 
was
saying that science, like art, is something students don't get much of 
these
days in elementary school.

If it were the latter, a new survey of 923 Bay Area elementary school 
teachers
would agree.

About 80 percent of those teachers said they spent less than an hour 
each week
teaching science, according to researchers from the Lawrence Hall of 
Science at
UC Berkeley and from WestEd, an education think tank based in San 
Francisco.

In contrast, a national study seven years ago found elementary school 
science
instruction averaged more than two hours per week, said Rena Dorph, the 
lead
researcher on the new study.

"It's alarming because it's a very short amount of time per week 
dedicated to a
subject that's considered a core subject in schools," said Dorph, who 
is
director of the Center for Research, Evaluation and Assessment at the 
Lawrence
Hall of Science.

Understanding science helps children learn to think and solve problems 
while
questioning the world around them, Dorph said.

There is also evidence that people who go into scientific fields 
generally
learned to love science as children, she said.

And as a practical matter, colleges require applicants to have taken 
science in
high school.

"And how are you going to understand high school science if you haven't 
had it
before fifth grade?" Dorph asked.

Her research team - reviewing responses from more than 80 Bay Area 
school
districts as well as the teachers - made other sobering findings about
elementary science instruction in Bay Area schools:

-- About 16 percent of the elementary teachers said they spent no time 
on
science at all. (Most taught at schools that had missed the reading and 
math
benchmarks of No Child Left Behind and were trying to catch up.)

-- Most kindergarten to fifth-grade students typically had science 
instruction
no more than twice a week.

-- Ten times as many teachers said they felt unprepared to teach 
science (41
percent) than felt unprepared to teach math (4 percent) or reading (4 
percent).

-- Fewer than half of Bay Area fifth-graders (47 percent) scored at 
grade level
or above on last spring's California Standards Test in science. (Only
fifth-graders are tested in science at the elementary level.)

"The demands of No Child Left Behind have made it almost impossible to 
devote
enough time to science," said Melinda Dart, a fourth-grade teacher at 
Wilson
Elementary School in Daly City's Jefferson Elementary District.

Dart was not among the anonymous hundreds surveyed by the researchers. 
But she
agrees with the findings.

Dart is planning a field trip to the Exploratorium in December and is 
preparing
her students by teaching them about electricity and magnets. In one 
lesson, she
had them rub balloons with various materials so they would see the 
effects of
positive and negative charges.

But she has had time for only three 30-minute science lessons since the 
semester
began.

"It's very rushed," she said. "In order to develop a scientific way of 
thinking,
the thing you need most is time. And in our test-driven schools today, 
time for
experimenting and exploring is what we have the least of."

In San Francisco, Principal Jeffrey Burgos of Bessie Carmichael 
Elementary
agreed - but said teachers can find ways to be creative beyond the 
limited time
already set aside for science.

"You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that you can't 
get
everything into one day," which is about five hours of instructional 
time, he
said.

So you shoehorn it in, sneaking science into reading and math lessons.

Second-grade teacher Bernadette Ison is a master at that.

Her classroom at Bessie Carmichael is filled with children who are 
learning
English and who come from lower-income families - just the kind of 
challenges
that policymakers say is why basic reading and math should trump 
science and
social studies.

"So we integrate science into our literacy," Ison said. "Our reading 
curriculum
is called "Nature Walk," and we have a theme called "Animals."

On Friday, the students will take a nature walk around Stow Lake in 
Golden Gate
Park. Afterward, they'll write an essay on what they saw and learned, 
Ison said.

This year, the California Board of Education has purchased new 
elementary
science textbooks and materials that are just now reaching classrooms.

The reviews have been mixed. Some teachers said the materials were 
clearer than
what they replaced, though they covered less ground.

Others said they were overwhelming. One teacher counted 1,199 pages in 
the
teachers' edition science workbooks, as well as flip charts, four large 
boxes of
materials, vocabulary and concept cards, CDs and DVDs.

Perhaps it's no wonder that teachers have little time to teach it all. 
They
barely have time to learn it themselves.

The other day, the textbook company came to the Jefferson Elementary 
District in
Daly City to show teachers how to use all the new stuff, said 
third-grade
teacher Janet Harrison.

The textbook instructors stayed 90 minutes, Harrison said. And then 
they were
gone.

Got science?

Some of a new study's findings about elementary school science 
instruction in
Bay Area schools:

-- 80 percent of teachers say they spend less than an hour each week 
teaching
science.

-- 16 percent of the elementary teachers say they teach no science at 
all.

-- Ten times as many teachers say they feel unprepared to teach science 
than
feel unprepared to teach math or reading.

-- Fewer than half of Bay Area fifth-graders scored at grade level or 
above on
last spring's California Standards Test in science.

E-mail Nanette Asimov at nasimov@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/25/MNNKSVFOH.DTL

Monty Neill, Ed.D.
Co-Executive Director
FairTest
342 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-864-4810 x 101;  fax 617-497-2224
monty@fairtest.org
http://www.fairtest.org
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