AFT NCLBlog: Weird Science

Weird Science
from NCLB: Let's Get it Right! by Beth

I expect to see more articles like this one as science assessments come online as required by NCLB in 2007-08.

The narrowing of the curriculum because of NCLB’s focus on math and language arts is not news, but the fact that it is done at the expenses of science is shockingly shortsighted for a couple of reasons:

* It is not like we didn’t know about the 2007-08 deadline for science assessments back in 2001 when the law was passed. Any decision to cut science instruction in say, 4th grade was obviously going to have implications for science assessment results in middle and high school.
* There is a big push now for high schools to focus on 21st century skills/ international competitiveness/college readiness. Though science is one of those subjects that requires less sequential building upon content (you can learn about the solar system and the structure of plants without knowing anything about volcanoes, for example), you can’t just start high school biology without an understanding of the basic structure of plants or what a cell is. And schools can’t just ignore high school science if they expect kids to go to college or to compete globally. I would not have been eligible for the state university I attended without three years of high school science.

But what to make of the fact that NAEP science scores rose at exactly the same time that schools were supposedly decreasing time allotted for science instruction? Maybe the increased focus on language arts has increased students’ comprehension so much that they’re doing better on the comprehension-dependent science questions. Or maybe we can conclude that we don’t have to add science to AYP in order to see scores rise. Or maybe two years of test data is not enough from which to draw major conclusions?