By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
Published: December 8, 2005
WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 - Nearly half the states are
doing a poor job of setting high academic standards for
science in public schools, according to a new report
that examined science in anticipation of 2007, when states
will be required to administer tests in the subject
under President Bush's signature education law.
The report, released Wednesday by the Thomas B. Fordham
Institute, suggests that the focus on reading and
math as required subjects for testing under the federal
law, No Child Left Behind, has turned attention away
from science, contributing to a failure of American
children to stay competitive in science with their
counterparts abroad.
The report also appears to support concerns raised by a
growing number of university officials and corporate
executives, who say that the failure to produce students
well-prepared in science is undermining the country's
production of scientists and engineers and putting the
nation's economic future in jeopardy.
Dozens of academic, corporate and Congressional leaders
emerged from a meeting on competitiveness here on
Tuesday to warn that the nation needs to expand its talent
pool in science to stay ahead of countries like China
and India that put vast resources into science education.
"Many states are not yet serious about teaching science,"
said Michael Petrilli, vice president for national
programs and policy of the institute, a group that supports
education reform. "The first step is to set higher
expectations, and too many states have low or a lack of
expectations to respond to the new global competitiveness."
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, a strong proponent
of more testing to measure how effectively schools
are teaching, said she was not surprised by the findings.
"I'm a what-gets-measured-gets-done kind of gal," she
said in an interview. She cited the reluctance of many
districts to teach algebra before high school as an
illustration of the nation's problem with science and math,
adding, "If children are not taking it until the ninth
grade or ever, we are in a world of hurt."
The report set out to identify how states set academic
standards for science, asking whether their courses
include suitably challenging content, whether they are
properly organized and whether they incorporate
"pseudoscientific fads or politics," a reference to
the recent drive to teach intelligent design as an
alternative explanation to evolution.
The results, a grade ranking for each state and the
District of Columbia, serve as a marker for progress as the
next phase of the No Child Left Behind law approaches.
Starting with the 2007-2008 academic year, science will
become a subject that students will be tested on at
least once in grades 3-5, once in grades 6-9 and once
in grades 10-12 - although the results will not be used to
measure whether a school has made "adequate yearly progress,"
as is the case with reading and math. Schools that fail
to make progress are subject to sanctions.
Ms. Spellings said she favors using testing for additional
subjects, like science, to assess progress. The authors
of the report analyzed each state and awarded a numerical
score that translated to a grade. Only seven states,
including New York and California, got an A, with 12
receiving a B, and 8 plus the District of Columbia
receiving a C. Seven states got a D, and 15 got an F.
Iowa was not included in the report because it does not
set standards for any subject.
In a separate assessment of how states are currently
teaching evolution, the authors awarded 22 states a D or
F, with Kansas winning a special distinction, F minus,
for its recent decision to redefine science so that it would
not be explicitly limited to natural explanations, and
allow for the teaching of alternative theories, an opening to
consideration of intelligent design.
The report cited mounting "religious and political pressures"
over the last five years as undermining the teaching
of evolution. But Paul R. Gross, its chief author, said in
an interview that a willingness by schools in Kansas and
elsewhere to consider alternative theories to evolution was
only a small part of a "larger cultural problem."
Mr. Gross said that more critical has been a retreat from
an emphasis on all science instruction, which is leaving
students ungrounded in basic subjects like biology, human
physiology and the environment.
"In general," Mr. Gross said, "science education is not
good enough now in the context of what people need to
know in a reasonably effective way in our culture."
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