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State Science Standards: An Appraisal of Science Standards in 36 States

The Oregon science standards are currently under development. This discussion is based on two draft documents¹⁵⁶ and should be regarded as tentative. The standards will be reviewed and updated every two years; then next revision is supposed to be available for the 199899 school year. At present, the grade 6, 8, and 10 benchmarks are in a reasonably complete if tentative state; relatively little work has been done on the grades 3 and 12 benchmarks.

Oregon's goal is to test every student at the end of grades 3, 5, 8, and 10. Science tests will be administered at the ends of grades 5, 8, and 10 beginning in the 1998-99 school year. By 2002-03, students achieving the 10th grade standards will be awarded a Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM); by 2004-05, students achieving the 12th grade standards will be awarded a Certificate of Advanced Mastery (CAM). These programs are under active development in selected schools. Associated with these certificate programs are a ProficiencyBased Admission Standards System (PASS) based on admission standards for four-year public colleges, to be in place by 2001, and a diagnostic tool called Proficiencies for Entry into Programs (PREP) intended to predict the likelihood of success in a two-year institution, projected for 1999.

The standards and benchmarks are generally wellorganized. Mathematics is wellintegrated into the benchmarks at appropriate places. The importance of written communication receives considerably less attention. One might wish for a more complete treatment of extra--solar-system astronomy, and for assignment of a more central role to evolution in the life sciences.

Because the standards are strongly goaloriented, they tend to revolve about items which may appear on tests. For all its advantages, this tends to shortchange the broad organizational principles so important to the sciences. Nevertheless, one may infer from the systematic lists that the writers knew what they were talking about. It would be well to provide more guidance on organizational principles to the classroom teacher.

Rhode Island

The Rhode Island Science Framework¹⁵⁷ is an ambitious document, more than 300 pages long. Drawing explicitly on the benchmarks of Project 2061, the Framework elaborates on assessment, themes, and processes. Some of the elaborations are interesting and unique:

• Describe in an essay how life would be different in the 1990s in Rhode Island without Route 95. ¹⁵⁸

• What would happen if you dropped a ball in Australia? Dropped it while flying in an airplane?¹⁵⁹

• Compare the astrological signs of the students with the actual constellations in the sky at the time of their birth. Have students keep a journal of daily horoscopes which they compare, ex post facto . . . with actual events. Have them draw conclusions after a month of such data collection.¹⁶⁰

Students are expected to acquire a substantial degree of knowledge of such important matters as DNA sequences and the amino acids for which they code, cell differentiation, and the selectivity of cell membranes. The science is real and specific, and includes considerable laboratory experience.

As in many other highquality standards of the list type, the unity of science must be inferred from the plethora of individual benchmarks and other items.

South Carolina

South Carolina has published a pair of closely related documents, a Science Framework¹⁶² and Standards.¹⁶³ The Framework is wellorganized and easy to read. The importance of communication in words, graphics, and mathematicsis recognized in the introductory material¹⁶⁴ if not stressed in the main body of the document. The major fault of the Framework is a tendency to deal in overbroad generalities. For example, grade 6-9 students "should know and be able to . . . investigate planetary bodies, major constellations, galaxies and other objects in the solar system and universe."¹⁶⁵ Grade 9-12 students should "describe the nature of gravitational, electrical, and magnetic forces."¹⁶⁶

There are also some scientific misunderstandings. Students are to be able to "identify the conversion of the matter form of mass into the energy form of mass."¹⁶⁷ Unfortunately, this statement has no physical meaning.

South Carolina shortchanges its students by treating biological evolution gingerly, skirting the subject without mentioning the word. A similar delicacy affects earth science to a lesser extent.

The section entitled "The Nature of Science," is a onepage list of some of the attributes of scientists. Much more needs to be done.

The Standards does expand to some extent on the specifications of the Framework, but not always satisfactorily. For example, the grade 6-9 investigation of planetary bodies, etc., is expanded in only two sentences: "Identify major constellations and star groupings visible in the northern hemisphere," and "Describe ways in which information about the universe is obtained and measured."¹⁶⁸ This is still much too vague to be useful. The grade 9-12 item concerning forces is expanded into seven items. But each of these is still far too broad to enable a student to demonstrate a real competence; e.g., "Investigate and analyze magnetic fields"; "Construct complex electrical circuits."^16-9

It is unfortunate that the division into grade levels does not coincide in the two documents. The Framework uses grades PreK-3, 36, 6-9, and 9-12 (the overlap itself being a source of ambiguity); the Standards uses PreK-3, 4-6, 7-8, and 9-12.

Tennessee

The Tennessee Science Framework¹⁷⁰ is very clear on some important concepts concerning science that are too often glossed over or even ignored. Four are worth quoting:

• The content of the science curriculum must be composed of significant and accurate scientific concepts and reflect thoughtful coordination across science domains and with other curricular areas.¹⁷¹

• Young people build critical thinking skills and scientific habits of mind when they are allowed to become scientists rather than simply studying science.¹⁷²

• The process of science follows no single pathway but involves imagination, inventiveness, experimentation and logic, and evidence to support results.¹⁷³

• One example can never be used to prove that something is true, but sometimes a single example can prove that something is not true.¹⁷⁴

One may also take issue with some statements in the Standards. Many appear to be the result of sloppy editing. For example, "The collection of data requires the most accurate degree of precision."¹⁷⁷ Beyond the offense it gives to the nonspecialized eye, this statement ignores the distinction that scientists make between precision and accuracy. Worse, it is not true; the precision required of data depends on the purpose of the measurement being made, and scientists are just as sensitive to excessive precision as to inadequate precision. Surface area, mass, and volume are said to vary "exponentially" with linear dimensions,^17-8 but the truth is that they vary according to a power law. Far too many benchmarks simply don't make sense. Here are just a few:

• Mathematical statements can be used to describe the magnitudes of change one quantity has on another.¹⁷⁹

• The cellular organelles, internal biochemical processes, and involved interactions can be described using appropriate models.¹⁸⁰

• Mathematical symbols and anthropological concepts can represent the principles of Mendelian inheritance and population genetics.¹⁸¹

• Matter and energy are interchangeable. The rate and degree of change depends on the availability of matter and energy and the duration of the interaction.¹⁸²

• Interdependence conveys a need for all organisms within the environment to develop a natural, uninhibited, rate of change.¹⁸³

• Some changes in organisms may be predicted using genetic inheritance and other theories of system change.¹⁸⁴

• Logical connections can be found among different parts of mathematics.¹⁸⁵

What do these statements mean?

The word energy is used loosely in various contexts throughout the Framework, but is never defined. Newton's laws are essentially ignored, even at the "Physics" level, and there are many vague and inaccurate statements in the Physical Science and Physics categories.

Most embarrassing of all, however, is the fact that the treatment of biology in Tennessee seems not to have changed since the notorious "Monkey Trial" of 1925. Biological evolution is not merely euphemized, as is a widespread practice in Southern states, but it is entirely absent. Moreover, geological evolution is slighted and cosmological evolution completely ignored.

Texas

The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills or TEKS¹⁸⁶ is a very detailed document. It is divided into subchapters for elementary, middle, and high schools and for advanced courses, health science technology, and technology education/industrial technology. The elementary and middle school subchapters are further subdivided into gradebygrade sections.

While the detail will undoubtedly be useful to classroom teachers, textbook publishers, and others, an overall discourse is lacking, giving the document the flavor of an extended shopping list rather than a guide to the teaching of the highly structured discipline of science. Textbook publishers in particular are likely to be misled by this approach (as many have been in the past), and this is especially significant because Texas (with California and Florida) is heavily influential in the development of textbooks.

Within the limits of this approach, TEKS is wellorganized, logical, largely errorfree, and carefully graded according to demanding but realistic expectations concerning the intellectual development of growing children.

Some of the expectations are striking. For example, conservation principles are subtly introduced at the 4th grade level:

The student knows that change can create recognizable patterns. The student is expected to . . . illustrate that certain characteristics of an object can remain constant even when the object is rotated like a spinning top, translated like a skater moving in a straight line, or reflected on a smooth surface, and use reflections to verify that a natural object has symmetry.¹⁸⁷

The best science combines deep insight with a childlike vision of the world, as this excerpt illustrates.

At the 6th grade level the student is introduced to the key ideas of Newtonian mechanics, and, most laudably, is expected to "define matter and energy."¹⁸⁸ In 7th grade the student is explicitly introduced to Newton's first law of motion, and is expected to understand the distinction between kinetic and potential energy. Newton's second law is introduced to 8th graders.¹⁸⁹ This sort of systematic development is followed in other scientific areas as well. For example, the student's vision of the heavens is expanded from the solar system to the cosmic scale in eighth grade.

The importance of laboratory experience is made clear. The highschool science standards, for example, all specify that at least 40% of class time be spent in field or laboratory work.

The modern perspective is especially clear in the description of the astronomy course.¹⁹⁰ Far too many astronomy courses, even at the college level, devote most of their attention to solarsystem astronomy. TEKS makes clear the importance of dealing with the universe as a whole, including the evolution of the universe, the structure of galaxies, and the life cycles of stars, as well as more local matters.

TEKS would have scored B if its list format had not obscured such general principles as the importance of written and oral expression, of error analysis, of students' growing abilities in various areas, of the significance of scientific methodology, and of the connections between science and technology.

Utah

The Elementary Science Core covers grades K6; the Secondary Science Core¹⁹¹ covers grades 7-8, a "Ninth Grade Integrated Science Course" entitled Earth Systems, and six high school courses: the traditional collegeprep biology, chemistry, and physics courses, two additional courses entitled Agricultural Biology and Human Biology, and one called Physics: Principles of Technology.

The Elementary Science Core describes objectives grade-by-grade. The arrangement is fairly standard; each grade description is introduced with a oneparagraph essay followed by a list of standards, each with subsidiary objectives, and each objective exemplified by several indicators.

Mathematics as a tool of science is explicitly introduced in 1st grade, though it is not mentioned again until grade 6. Connections with social studies are introduced in grade 4. As early as grade 3, students are challenged to "describe the relationships between active volcanos and related geological features"¹⁹² --an innovative introduction to plate tectonics at an early age. The exceedingly varied biomes of Utah--past and present--are introduced at grade 4, ¹⁹³ as is the richly varied and economically important geology of the state:

• Discuss the value of rocks and minerals to Utah's economy. . . . Identify the modern and historical importance of minerals and mining.

• Collect and analyze data about Utah's fossils and infer how fossils are formed. . . . Make inferences about origin of fossils. . . . Predict where fossils might be found, based on inferences.

• Explain how Utah fossils can be used to draw inferences about Earth's history. . . . Formulate hypotheses about the geological history of Earth from study of fossils and compare then to accepted scientific theories. . . . Research what scientists have learned about the history of the Earth from fossils.¹⁹⁴

The processes of science are well-presented. In 9th grade, for instance, the student is expected to "distinguish between [sic] theory, law, evidence, fact, and superstition."¹⁹⁶ Occasionally, there is a bit of silliness. For example, "Describe similarities and differences in the production of heat, light, and sound. . . . Describe the significance of the roles heat, light, and sound have played on [sic] different cultures."¹⁹⁷ Or, under "Microorganisms," "Describe in [the students'] own terms how a microscope works."¹⁹⁸ To the best of my knowledge, there is only one explanation of how a microscope works, and it involves an understanding of the function of lenses.

The college-prep courses are outlined in detail, in depth, and systematically. For the biology course, typical examination questions are supplied.