At 9:10 AM -0700 2/17/2002, John S. Denker wrote:
a lot of interesting stuff.
I've actually been very involved in this issue, having generated a petition
signed by about 400 scientists, teachers, professors, and educators,
testified 3 times to the state board of education, etc.
(See www.sci-ed-ga.org and click on "our efforts to improve science
education." You may find my response to Stan Metzenberg's comments on the
science education petition to be relevant.
John is quite right about one aspect (and others as well) - it takes a huge
amount of time and effort to figure out what's going on.
My take on the situation, at least in California, is as follows:
The state board of education is very proud that they now have standards,
books aligned with standards, and assessments more or less aligned with
standards, whereas 5 years ago there was no way to hold anyone accountable
for anything and there were no standards. They were burned by the "whole
language" approach to reading, as promoted by so-called education and
reading specialists and researchers, so they tend to take the whole
"science education literature," inquiry-based science, hands-on science
stuff with somewhat less than a grain of salt. At the latest board meeting
where I testified about the CA science framework, one of the board members
stated that she was sick and tired of all those baking soda volcanoes.
Another stated that she thought the reason CA students did so badly on
national science tests is because they used hands-on science for one year,
then lost the materials or didn't replenish the kits, so that the next
years students didn't do any science at all. Since board members tend to
have a lot on their plates and don't know much (any?) science, their
opinions are what drives their decisions. They also tend to trust a few
scientists - who in CA are not of the inquiry-based science ilk, but rather
are part of the "back to basics" approach.
Just concerning the issue of correctness of science texts:
The key in getting your textbook adopted in CA was that the material was
required to meet every standard at every grade level. If your textbook did
not meet one standard at a grade level or investigated it at a different
grade level, the textbook could not be adopted. This rule was easy for the
curriculum commission to follow, so it was easy to rule out texts. Just
mentioning a standard would allow the curriculum commission to say that
that standard was met - since it was at least mentioned in the text. The
textbook review committees were also supposed to evaluate texts on
correctness (and other topics) - but this didn't really happen. This would
have meant that they would have to read carefully every single line of
text, be experts in the areas, and do all the experiments. This did not
happen, as was admitted in writing by one of the staff members - for good
reason - it would have been a huge task and hardly doable given time and
manpower constraints.
What can be done:
If you want your material to be adopted in CA and it's good material, then
you must modify it to meet every standard at every grade level. You must
play the game if you want to be adopted. This is being done, for example,
by the FOSS program produced at the Lawrence Hall of Science.
John is correct that a PAC or lobbyist will help to keep track of what's
going on politically. This is starting.
The NSF, who paid for the development of many good programs, need to
consider state standards and not just national standards if they want to
see their materials adopted in more states. This is in progress.
It would behoove all who are interested in this issue to make themselves
known to instructional materials developers to assist them in improving the
science and pedagogy of their units. There are many developers of
instructional materials across the nation at many universities and
institutions, and most would appreciate the assistance of competent
reviewers and teachers.
Politically, the key to getting good materials adopted relies on the rules
that the state textbook adoption committees must operate under. Once these
rules are set, the die is cast.
Dr. Lawrence D. Woolf; General Atomics, 3550 General Atomics Court, Mail
Stop 15-242, San Diego, CA 92121