Implementation Of NRC Science Standards Moves Ahead, Despite Setbacks For Some

A prominent national science education reform program received a major blow when the National Science Foundation opted to discontinue its support. Sidebar: For Further Information - NAS Science Education Standards 'DISASTER': Without a funding renewal, Bill Aldridge worries about the fate of students and teachers in his project. Educators are devising ways of implementing the National Research Council's (NRC's) National science education standards, which were finalized and released a year ago this month. Four years in the making, the standards are a blueprint for what United States students in grades K-12 should know about science (Notebook, The Scientist, Jan. 8, 1996, page 30). The next step, they agree, is to come up with innovative, long-term commitments based on the recommendations and goals suggested by NRC. The need for such commitments is underscored by recently released reports from the Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) that gave U.S. science education a mediocre rating. One significant standards-based project, however, recently suffered a major setback in its quest for government funding. In late October, after two appeals, the National Science Foundation rejected a two-year, $3.1 million funding renewal proposal for the Scope, Sequence, and Coordination of High School Science Education (SS&C) project. The program is run by the Arlington, Va.-based National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and is one of the first trial implementations of the national standards. It involves teaching 6,400 ninth- and 10th-graders in 13 high schools in seven states and the District of Columbia using hands-on materials designed to achieve the NRC science standards. Bill Aldridge, former NSTA director and SS&C's principal investigator, calls the situation "a disaster." Current NSTA director Gerald Wheeler maintains a philosophical perspective: "We're going to have to deal with the fact that it got canceled. We still think that we have the germ of a very good curriculum project." Projects like SS&C that are designed to help teachers and students achieve the science standards take two approaches. One, explains Wheeler, is developing curriculum materials. Big players in this arena are book publishers, curriculum design firms, and science educators at universities and other institutions. The other area, he notes, is getting communities, teachers, school boards, and parents together to agree on a "common, shared vision" of how to achieve the standards. DEPTH VS. BREADTH: Margaret Cozzens hopes the standards will encourage curricula that emphasize quality over quantity. NSF, as well as many private foundations and national corporations, are footing the bill for various programs now being designed by educators at universities, school systems, state academies of science, and professional societies like NSTA. For example, notes Margaret Cozzens, NSF division director for elementary, secondary, and informal education, the annual budget for teacher enhancement and material development is about $150 million, with two-thirds of that figure going to fund science-related projects and one-third to math-oriented programs. NSF has also played a role in other standards initiatives, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Project 2061. The Project 2061 book Benchmarks for Science Literacy (New York, Oxford University Press, 1993), which outlines science content standards, is already being used to guide the development of curricula in school districts in several states. Other efforts are taking the message directly to the classroom. At the New York Academy of Sciences, staff are running programs to instruct teachers to involve their students in hands-on inquiry, an approach encouraged by the NRC standards and Project 2061. The aim of the workshops is to retrain middle-school teachers in helping students do their own projects and design experiments, and finding the resources they need to accomplish that task. HIGHER EXPECTATIONS: "Because the standards raise the bar," more money will be needed to achieve literacy goals, says Rodney Nichols. But Rodney Nichols, the academy's CEO, cautions, "Because the standards raise the bar," much more money will be needed to "keep the bar up and to help the people get over the higher bar." Maintaining high quality just became more difficult for NSTA's SS&C project, one of the first and largest efforts to implement a framework for achieving science standards in high school classrooms. Since March 1994 the program has been running on a $4 million NSF grant, which covered the first phase of development of ninth- and 10th-grade curricula. The current grant runs through August 1997. The new proposal that NSF declined would have supported teacher training, development of additional 10th-grade materials, and circulation of materials for 11th-graders. But Aldridge says that he couldn't afford to wait until fall. Unless the project was granted more funds by October 1996, it couldn't support 10th-grade in-service activities or develop 11th-grade materials. Besides, he adds, the grant letter for the first phase of SS&C "explicitly called for a Phase 2 proposal on Jan. 2, 1996." Commenting as project director of the SS&C project and not as an official of NSTA, Aldridge remarks that "the foundation incorrectly assessed the quality of the materials using an invalid form and committee, and they've intentionally neglected evidence collected in an independent evaluation." In October, Frances Lawrenz, a professor of science education at the University of Minnesota, released her evaluation of the project. This report showed, in part, that the SS&C ninth-grade science classes were more inquiry- and hands-on-oriented than non-SS&C classes, thereby creating a learning environment in line with the NRC standards. FORGING AHEAD: Despite a setback, the SS&C project will seek creative solutions to keep going, says Gerald Wheeler. NSTA's Wheeler and NSF's Cozzens cite timing as a key issue in explaining why the proposal was declined. Cozzens says that her office encouraged Aldridge to submit the renewal proposal this past September instead of in February 1996, noting that the 1994 grant was only halfway finished in February, so evaluation data and teaching materials were incomplete. Science Education Standards National Academy of Sciences Science Education Standards: http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/nses National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) main Web site: http://www.nsta.org NSTA's Scope, Sequence, and Coordination Web site: http://www.gsh.org/NSTA_SSandC American Association for the Advancement of Science's Project 2061: http://www.aaas.org National Center for Educational Statistics Third International Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS): http://www.ed.gov/NCES/timss.html New York Academy of Sciences: http://www.nyas.org Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley: http://www.lhs.berkeley.edu/foss.html Cozzens and Aldridge give distinctly different descriptions of how the proposal was handled. The proposal was "turned down initially on the grounds that there was insufficient evaluation data," says Cozzens. The evaluation form used to assess materials submitted with the proposal, she says, was designed for grades five through 10, so it covered the proposal's scope validly. And as for the legitimacy of the review process, she calls the two review panels that examined the proposal "absolutely appropriate." Aldridge also contends that NSF neglected evidence collected in the Lawrenz evaluation. "That was not available at the time of the declination," replies Cozzens, noting that NSF's declination was sent out in May and the first time she saw "snippets" of the evaluation data was in August. "[Aldridge] had the evaluation in time for his two appeals, but the appeals are based solely on whether the process of declination was appropriate at the time it was done." Aldridge says it's "complete nonsense" that NSF needed the results of the Lawrenz evaluation to get the continuation funding for the program. "It's like saying that [NSF] will not fund the completion of an experiment for which four years of data must be collected unless we can give them the result after only one year." Aldridge claims that what's really driving the funding rejection is differences between his interpretation of implementing the standards and NSF's. "That's categorically false," retorts Cozzens. "The integrated high school science approach [that SS&C uses] is something we would very much like to have an example of, and that's why we awarded the Phase 1 grant in 1994." The SS&C program is designed to replace the current "layer cake" approach to high school science --in which students take one year each of earth science, biology, chemistry, and physics -- with a four-year interdisciplinary curriculum. "The thing that concerns me is that the foundation [NSF] is basically trying to take an approach that will force on the states and curriculum developers their own interpretation of the science standards," comments Aldridge. He says the SS&C materials contain only information on scientific facts, concepts, theories, and relationships, whereas NSF's focus is more on science as it relates to civics and social action. For example, in SS&C's unit on heredity and genetics -- in which topics concerning genes, chromosomes, and DNA are introduced -- there is no information on such related social issues as genetic testing. "Revisiting the old arguments" of whether to include or emphasize the social aspects of science vs. scientific principles alone "does not advance the cause of improving the quality of science education in America," says Bassam Shakhashiri, a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "Frankly, this situation seems to be a management issue." PATIENCE REQUIRED: Reforming science education will take a 10- to 15-year effort, predicts Bruce Alberts. Although National Academy of Sciences president Bruce Alberts has no specific comment concerning the current SS&C issues, he does note that "the effort has produced some very useful materials for teachers, but I cannot judge how the cost-effectiveness of this program compares to that for other projects with similar aims against which it competes for funds. " "The most important thing right now is that we play out the existing grant so that the 10th-grade students do not have a discontinuity during their year," comments Wheeler. He will be taking over as SS&C's principal investigator when Aldridge retires later this month. "I suspect we'll be doing some very creative thinking mid-winter about what to do next," notes Wheeler. NSTA will reapply for NSF funding and seek interim funds from the private sector. On a larger scale, the science education reform community received sobering news when performance measures for eighth-grade math and science students were released in last month's TIMSS report, along with the TIMSS curriculum comparison report released in mid-October. The international survey compares student achievement, curricula, textbooks, teaching methods, and student life in more than 40 countries. In the assessment, U.S. student achievement and curricula received mediocre ratings compared with other countries surveyed. More reports are due throughout 1997. The results show there is a long road ahead for the U.S. science education reform movement. "The implementation of the science standards will take time," remarks Alberts. "Our education system cannot change rapidly for several reasons. Most of our science teachers are unlikely to make a massive change in their style of teaching until we have developed outstanding curricula for them that matches the standards. In addition, most teachers will require an extensive education and mentoring process in order to change the way that they teach science." One issue that needs to be creatively resolved in any reform effort, agree observers, is how to present scientific content in textbooks and other teaching materials. As Wheeler sums up "A Splintered Vision," the curriculum segment of the TIMSS report, "U.S. curriculum is a mile wide and an inch deep." The report found that overall U.S. science teaching lacks coherence and presents subjects in a disjointed way. For example, average U.S. science texts at the fourth-, eighth-, and 12th-grade levels cover between 50 and 65 topics; whereas in Japan, eighth-grade texts have five to 15, and Germany seven subject areas. But the assessment that American science materials are long on breadth and short on depth is nothing new to the science education reform community. "We've known that for some time," remarks Cozzens. "Our hope is that the standards will cause school systems and developers to think more in terms of depth than breadth. But it's a tough battle. Everyone always wants their pet project." Alberts also calls on scientists to play a role in changing science education: "We need large numbers of scientists, empowered and educated by their understanding of the standards, to help move this broad agenda forward in their local schools." But, he adds, "we must be patient and recognize that this is a 10- to 15-year effort. There are no quick fixes to this important national problem."

Implementation Of NRC Science Standards Moves Ahead, Despite Setbacks For Some

Dec 8, 1996

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