By Sherry Posnick-Goodwin
Kindergarten teacher Carole Delgado.
The kindergartners at Audubon Elementary School in Foster City stare intently at the goldfish swimming in a bowl. They are amazed to learn fish actually breathe through gills. They are intrigued to learn fish are covered in “scales” instead of regular skin, have eyes on the sides of their head, and move with the help of dorsal and lateral fins. Carole Delgado asks them to draw “missing” body parts on a diagram of a fish before they leave the table and make way for the next group of students.
“Science is important, and kids love it,” says Delgado, a member of the San Mateo Elementary Teachers Association. “The world is an exciting place, and it’s important for them to learn about it. But it’s so hard to find the time to teach science. If I could, I’d teach three science lessons a week. But I’m lucky to fit science in once a week.”
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know science education is becoming extinct in California’s schools, producing a negative impact on society. It’s a domino effect: Science gets short shrift in elementary schools that focus mostly on English and math due to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements. Students enter secondary school lacking a foundation in science, and their classes emphasize rote memorization instead of hands-on learning. With schools unable to afford materials for science labs, students think science is boring and pursue careers in other fields. Without a new generation of scientists, America loses its edge in creating new technology, finding cures for diseases and improving the overall quality of life.
“It’s scary,” says Tim Williamson, president of the California Science Teachers Association (CSTA). “We have a huge population of baby boomers who are retiring, and we’re going to have a huge number exiting science and technology careers. Unfortunately, what we’re doing in K-12 is not getting kids ready to go into that pipeline. My big fear is that administrators in the California Depart-ment of Education will hit their heads like Homer Simpson and say, ‘D’oh, we should have had science instruction!’”
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS SHOEHORN IN SCIENCE
Christina Conner, a second-grade teacher at Bertha Taylor Elementary School in San Jose, took several semesters of life science and physical science at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo so she could teach science in her classroom. But she doesn’t have time.
“I don’t feel as if I’m living up to my potential for teaching science,” laments Conner, a member of the Oak Grove Education Association. “There is so much stress about NCLB and so much drill-and-kill instruction before the state test that there just isn’t time for science. It’s sad, because kids love to learn about bugs and space and motion. It gives them something to look forward to.”
The best she can do is integrate science instruction with literacy lessons and throw in some facts to help them comprehend the text they are reading. “At least we have science fairs, so parents can help kids with hands-on science projects as an extracurricular activity,” she says.
A 2007 study of science education in Bay Area elementary schools found that 80 percent of K-5 teachers who are responsible for science instruction spend one hour or less each week teaching science, with 16 percent spending no time at all on science. The study, conducted by researchers from UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science and WestEd, also found that a majority of elementary students have science instruction no more than twice a week, and many teachers feel less prepared to teach science than they do to teach math and reading. Teachers say they are so strapped for time that they typically have to “shoehorn” science instruction into reading and math lessons.
Students are missing the first six years of science curriculum mandated by the state’s content standards, says Williamson, a CSU Long Beach professor and a California Faculty Association member. This makes it tough for students to catch up when they get to middle school and high school.
Williamson sees the effect in his own classroom. He teaches future teachers how to deliver science instruction. Many of them lack a strong science education themselves, and as a result they are fearful of teaching it.
“Students are comfortable teaching biology, but scared to death of conducting science labs for chemistry, electricity or sound,” says Williamson. “But when they get out of my class, they realize the fun and beauty of teaching the physical sciences. Now if they could just find the time.”
When youngsters aren’t exposed to science, they tend to think that it’s something they “aren’t good at,” according to an article, “Subject Matters: Science has an image problem,” on www.cnn.com. And when science is finally introduced, students are often instructed to memorize the “right” answers instead of being asked to think like a scie-tist — which is to pose a question and conduct experiments to draw conclusions that either answer the question or lead to further research.
“What’s great about science is that students think about what might happen and develop a trial-and-error mentality that allows them to become critical thinkers,” says CTA Board member Toby Boyd, a member of the Elk Grove Teachers Association. “Society has forgotten about the importance of problem-solving skills that will help children in the future and the workplace. Because of the lack of science instruction, we are now seeing students who are unable to show curiosity.”
When Boyd taught at Prairie Elementary School, the campus had a fully stocked science lab for students to conduct experiments. Due to budget cuts and increased emphasis on math and language arts, the science lab was “gutted,” and science instruction practically disappeared. Many schools these days rely on after-school programs to teach science, says Boyd, because there isn’t enough time in the regular day. Boyd was involved with an after-school program in his district called MESA (Mathematic, Engineering, Science Achievement).
“If it wasn’t for that after-school enrichment program, I wouldn’t have been able to expose children to things they needed to learn,” he says. “Sometimes I had 35 to 50 students who came to learn about science, in grades from kindergarten to sixth grade.”
An Education Week article, “Role of Science Learning Outside of School Grows,” confirms that schools are indeed turning to outside sources such as museums, astronomy and robotics clubs, after-school programs, and science competitions. This benefits children who have access to such enrichment opportunities, but many students are not being exposed to science at all, says Boyd.
“It’s too bad. You never know whose light might be turned on by science and who will come up with the cure for cancer or a technological wonder that will help man-kind unless they are given the opportunity.”
SECONDARY SCHOOLS LACK LABS AND MATERIALS
Teams of students in Teresa Casallas’ freshman science class at West High School in Bakersfield dash to work stations, where they perform quickie experiments for “The Amazing Science Race.” They string beads and yarn together to show the visible light spectrum. They rub balloons to create static electricity and make ribbons float in the air above them. They use Play-Doh to create models of volcanoes. They cut out pictures of Earth’s continents and glue them together to create Pangaea, the supercontinent that existed about 250 million years ago. Every team wants to finish first and be declared the winner.
“I try my best to make science fun and an everyday part of their lives,” says Casallas, a member of the Kern High School Teachers Association and Teacher of the Year for Kern County in 2009. “I think kids can relate to what I’m doing. Science should be hands-on, and I let them get down and dirty with science. I don’t think it should be all about reading and memorizing facts.”
She creates activities like “The Amazing Science Race” (based on the reality TV show “The Amazing Race”) as an alternative to teaching science out of a textbook. Since her district has scant money for science, she pays for these homemade labs out of pocket. There is no way she could afford money for real lab equipment, but her classroom — a former art room — isn’t equipped for science labs anyway.
Most science teachers at West High School don’t have sinks in their rooms. Casallas recalls students in her biology class having to trek to the bathrooms for running water when doing a lab on DNA synthesis. It was “quite an adventure” in teaching under adverse conditions, she says.
Science classrooms are indeed not up to snuff overall. According to a policy brief by California Science Education Initiative (CSEI), there is no guarantee that students will work with modern science equipment or any laboratory equipment at all, and the state hasn’t provided guidance as to what equipment or materials should be used to provide hands-on learning experiences considered vital in science education. With no minimum level of laboratory experience, equipment or materials established, school districts “can ‘certify’ they are providing sufficient science instructional materials when in fact their students are provided with a clearly inferior science education.”
There are “big equity issues” when it comes to science education. The CSEI policy brief describes a school near Sacramento where students have state-of-the-art science classrooms and engage in labs using modern equipment of the same type used in industry and university labs. This unnamed school is compared with another school a few miles away, where classrooms lack lab benches, sinks and other materials normally found in science classrooms, and equipment is aging and in poor condition. In this school, students engage in “paper” labs, where they are asked to predict the outcomes of experiments they are unable to perform.
Kevork Madooglu, a teacher at John Burroughs High School in Burbank for 16 years, finds it increasingly difficult to teach AP physics and chemistry with aging equipment that’s badly in need of repair. He points out hot plates and electric balances that are unusable, because there’s no money for repairs or replacement.
“Last year, our entire budget for equipment and supplies was $2,000 for 14 teachers,” says Madooglu, a member of the Burbank Teachers Association. “It’s definitely not enough; we need twice that amount to continue the way we have been teaching.” Science teachers at the school signed a petition challenging the amount and won an increase — to $4,500 — but this year the amount they’re expected to share is down to $1,000. “We’re protesting again, but we can’t do this every year,” says Madooglu.
“Budget cuts have impacted the way I teach,” he says. “I have been doing fewer labs with my students, so it’s less interesting and less hands-on. I’m doing more demonstrations for them if they can’t do the experiments themselves.”
It shouldn’t be like that, says Madooglu, who emigrated from Turkey partly because he was impressed with America’s enthusiasm for science during the Space Race era. “In the ’60s and ’70s, science was promoted and kids were encouraged in every possible way to go into science. That’s not happening anymore. It’s been pushed to the back burner in every possible way.”
Madooglu believes students should view science as though they are detectives figuring out how to solve a mystery. “I tell them they should be like the scientists on ‘CSI,’ trying to solve a problem and explain why something is happening, which leads to solving the next puzzle. When science is taught this way, it’s exciting and stimulates the mind.”
Unfortunately, he says, science has become less about solving mysteries and more about memorizing facts for tests, which is turning students off to science.
THE TRUTH ABOUT SCIENCE TESTS
Because of the way science is treated, it’s not surprising that California’s students score among the lowest in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests given to fourth-, eighth- and 12th-graders nationwide. Other factors may also be involved. The San Francisco Chronicle and other sources have pointed out that 51 percent of the California students who take the test are Latino, compared with 22 percent nationally. Also, in California English learners aren’t exempt from taking the test as they are in some other states.
Casallas wasn’t surprised by NAEP scores revealed in January. Ninth-graders, she says, enter her classroom totally lacking in the fundamentals of science. “The majority are unprepared. They don’t know the difference between an atom and a cell. They don’t understand water is not a living thing.”
George Cachianes, who teaches biotech at Lincoln High School in San Francisco, agrees that high school students are unprepared. He has to “start from scratch” and assume they have no prior scientific knowledge, even when it comes to understanding the metric system.
“Yet if you get students engaged, you can quickly make up the deficiencies,” says Cachianes, a member of United Educators of San Francisco. “You have to give them a chance to do something interesting and apply that knowledge.”
Cachianes, a researcher for 15 years at a biotech company and at the university level before becoming a teacher, does just that. His students work on cutting and recombining DNA, transforming cells by injecting them with foreign DNA, and using National Institutes of Health databases to compare DNA sequences taken from their bodies with those of others. His students have entered science competitions and sometimes beaten out students from Ivy League universities.
But that type of knowledge isn’t measured on standardized tests, says Cachianes. He believes that state and national tests don’t measure what students really know and fail to measure creativity, problem-solving and critical-thinking skills that are key factors in science.
“Tests fail to measure much of anything,” he says. “I hear about kids bubbling in Christmas tree patterns and not taking the test very seriously at all, because it’s boring and unengaging.”
While there is a great deal of hand-wringing in the education community over poor science test scores, science is in a Catch-22 situation: Science scores don’t count much on California’s Academic Performance Index (API). And since science doesn’t count much, science is not empha-sized much. For years students weren’t tested at all in science, and they now take the science CSTs (California Standards Tests) in grades 5 and 8 and high school. Science doesn’t count at all in the AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) requirements of No Child Left Behind.
“When you have science counting 5 or 6 percent, and English and math with a 20 or 30 percent weight, which subject do you emphasize?” asks Tim Williamson. “You emphasize the subjects where you can be most penalized for not doing well, and that’s math and language arts.”
THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE?
America has always prided itself on being No. 1 in science, but it is slipping. In the 2007 TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) test, students from Singapore took first or second place in all science catego-ries, and the U.S. ranked 11th. President Obama has com-plained about the U.S. lagging in science education, and has said that improving science education is a top priority. A report from the National Research Council recommends science learning be tested as frequently and taught as vigor-ously as math to ensure a high status in U.S. classrooms.
Teresa Casallas worries that K-12 science instruction is no longer offering a bridge to university-level classes, and that students from low-income backgrounds won’t see science as a career pathway and will instead view science as “something for old white guys in lab coats.” Career opportunities abound in the fields of medicine, technology and science, and qualified people are being recruited for jobs from other countries such as India, she says.
“Science is expensive to teach, but creates the wealth of our society and is worth the investment,” notes the CSEI policy brief. “Science is increasingly the standard by which we will be measured as a society. Between climate change and global competition, California can only hope to remain a leader if we are successful in creating a population of scientifically literate and upwardly mobile people. We must innovate, invent and create our way into future prosperity. These are the processes carried out by scientists and engineers who are, only sometimes, being nurtured in K-12 science classrooms today.”