Wow. Anyone curious about science and math education–what’s taught, how it’s taught, the political interplay, where we rank against other nations and more– will appreciate the following thoughtful and provocative article written by guest blogger Bart Leahy from Bartacus.com

 Educating the Next Generation, Part Two.

This is part two of a two-part article on the U.S. results from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), in which American 4th and 8th graders placed around the middle of the pack compared to other nations’ students in math and science. While part one dealt with policy and political issues surrounding the TIMSS, this section will focus on what is taught in today’s 4th and 8th grade math/science classrooms, and how it is taught.

What Should We Teach Our Kids?
Engineers do not ask about an end product until they first understand its “mission” and “requirements.” In an educational context, that would mean asking, “If we want American students to be better educated in math and science disciplines, what do we want them to do with those skills, and what would those skills include?” I’ll start with the first part of that question.

What Do We Want Our Children to Do?
-Read, understand, and vote intelligently about science-related newspaper, magazine, and internet content.
-Develop and patent new inventions.
-Start businesses or find other ways to make money.
-Be able to understand and use the machinery of modern civilization.
-Be able to identify and stop improper or unhealthy uses of technology.
-Maintaining a household/family.
-Be able to develop the thought processes and machinery needed to explore and establish civilization beyond the Earth (a personal favorite of mine—I’m a space advocate).

What Should Our Children Know?
-Be able to use and apply addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, money handling, sets, unions, basic algebra.
-Be able to use and apply conic sections and identify how to describe them mathematically.
-Understand and act upon financial statements, including bills, credit card statements, receipts, paychecks, etc.
-Understand the basics of nutrition.
-Be able to use a calculator, ruler, scale, personal computer, basic applications (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations), the Internet.
-Be able to recognize and use basic tools: hammer, saw, drill, screwdriver, plain, lathe, wrench, pliers.
-Be able to recognize and describe the basic functions of the following machinery: stove/oven, refrigerator, air conditioner/heater, crane, bulldozer, aircraft, rocket, ship, submarine, automobile, truck, oil well, windmill, solar cell, nuclear power plant, water filtration plant, electrical power plant, computer.
-Be able to explain the scientific method.
-Be able to recognize and explain the following:atom, proton, electron, neutron, element, molecule, compound, ion, the Periodic Table, fission, fusion, heat, electricity, gravity, magnetism, electromagnetic spectrum, force.
-Be able to recognize and explain the following: cloud, storm, hurricane, tornado, haze, rain, hail, snow, drought, sandstorm, wind, troposphere, stratosphere, ionosphere, space.
-Be able to name the eight major planets, in order of distance from the Sun.
-Be able to recognize and explain the following: star, planet, solar flare, nebula, comet, asteroid, meteoroid, nova, supernova, black hole, galaxy, Wright Flyer, DC-3, 707, 747, A380, X-1, X-15, Sputnik, Project Apollo, Space Shuttle, Mir, International Space Station, SpaceShipOne, Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shepard, Valentina Tereshkova, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, John Young, Bob Crippen, Sally Ride.
-Be able to recognize and explain the following: Theory of Evolution, DNA, RNA, cells, phylum, kingdom, order, genus, species, subspecies, water cycle, plate tectonics, earthquake, photosynthesis, human biology and reproduction, cloning, pollution.
Obviously there are other things we might expect/demand, but this will do as a starting point.

How Should We Teach Our Kids?
I break down this discussion by the various stakeholders:
The National Education Association (NEA), the union that collectively represents the interests teachers and other educational professionals in the public schools; political opponents of NEA; parents and teachers personally known to me; then my own thoughts.

What the NEA is Saying
The NEA generally supports the goals of “No Child Left Behind (NCLB),” the education law that President Bush developed A $40,000 starting salary for all pre-K-12 teachers,
Raises that exceed the cost of living in at least 50 percent of NEA higher education locals.
A living wage, as a minimum, for all education support professionals.
Restore/Increase Funding to Help Ensure Great Public Schools for Every Child
TABOR*: A Proven Failure
Minority Community Outreach: About Us
Building Broad Support for Public Education
Closing Gaps in Student Achievement
Make High School Graduation a National Priority
NEA Policy Publications on Closing Student Achievement Gaps
Obviously there are many other items and issues on the NEA site, but the group’s emphases can be summed up by teacher pay, shrinking classroom sizes, maintaining or increasing spending on public schools, increasing minority access to quality education, and improving the performance of the lowest-performing students.
* TABOR = Taxpayer Bill of Rights, a state-level initiative begun in Colorado to limit government spending.

What NEA Opponents are Saying
The primary objections to NCLB come from conservatives and libertarians, who object to centralized government planning or control of education on constitutional grounds. This opposition goes back at least to the time of Ronald Reagan, who campaigned on the notion of abolishing the Department of Education and returning control of educational policies to the states. NCLB opponents generally also hold the following positions for improving the state of education:
Merit pay for teachers.
Taxpayer vouchers that allow parents to apply their tax dollars toward the school of their choice (including both public and private schools), thereby forcing public schools to compete and improve.
Abolishing or greatly reducing the power of the Department of Education, restoring curriculum control to the states or local municipalities.
“education” degrees for teachers—requiring, instead, for instructors to have degrees in particular fields of study.
Get “back to basics” educational curricula—reading, writing, and arithmetic—and away from “self-esteem-building” education. In short, conservatives emphasize more traditional teaching methods, union busting, decentralization, and a large infusion of capitalism into the educational system.

What Parents and Other “Front-Line” Professionals are Saying
Not having any kids of my own, I asked for inputs from friends with direct experience in these matters. This was hardly a scientific method, as my circle of friends primarily (though not exclusively) consists of middle- or upper-middle-class whites able to afford and use email. However, my “sampling” for anecdotes and opinions includes Boomer and Gen-X single and married parents of children aged 2-18, teachers or instructors of students in grades K-16, and education or other professionals from across the U.S. Once I started asking around, I found no shortage of opinions on the subject of improving science and math education. To obtain additional opinions, I also opened the question to Facebook for a couple hours. In one of my first hallway conversations, a friend at work who has kids in school disagreed with the heavy emphasis on testing, saying that the tests aren’t necessarily good predictors of real-world success. Another coworker, a former teacher, pointed out that testing itself was not bad, per se, but “Students need more hands-on learning, and the tests aren’t conducted that way.”

Other responses as follows:
S, parent and college instructor. “I think I would candidly say…that the damn kids these days don’t have initiative. They lack work ethic and frankly they need more discipline!”

T, college instructor. “Single-sex education and peer-mentoring, IMO, with heavy emphasis on gifted education.”

R, sales professional. “Our kids might do better if the teachers could actually spend time teaching instead of having to discipline kids and teach them the basics in common decency of behavior. A kid does something wrong, and it isn’t the kid’s fault, the parents blame it on the teacher. Kids are not being raised at home or taught the lessons that should be learned at home. Parents should teach children behavior, responsibility, and consequences of actions. Having said that, there are a lot of parents that do. However, the trouble makers are the ones that they end up teaching to and getting all the resources and the ones that actually do what they are supposed to be doing and have the possibility of excelling are the ones that are held back. I just love the No Child Left Behind act. It is more like the No Child Can Get Ahead Act.

L, college instructor. “Our college students are not looking for a challenge…that is my observation. I’ve taught biology, anatomy and physiology courses for a semester at a 4-year college now. They want an easy A. Most students have had a pretty cushy life, and they are not accustomed to busting their rears for anything. So when you put them in a classroom with some challenging material, they resent it as well as the teacher. Our students expect a curve. If they all do poorly on a test, it is the teacher’s fault. (Yeah, right!) The overall attitude is that the students expect to be babied quite a bit, and if they are not, they rip the teacher in their evaluations.

G, parent. “For the state of Florida and others, I believe standardized testing has hindered the teacher/student experience. Specifically, math is learned to do well on the FCAT; any learning outside that is up to the parent to supplement. Also, if you have a student that is ‘struggling,’ the time and effort to assist children isn’t given. It is frustrating to all parties involved. I believe we should go back to the fundamentals (the three Rs) and incorporate some global curriculum to equip our children for living in today’s global environment.”

L, writer of children’s educational materials. “I’d take a good look at Obama’s new Secretary of Education, who has tried some innovative ideas in Chicago. Also, I saw something on TV about a woman who is head of Washington, DC’s public schools and trying to make a difference. I do think teachers who are inspiring students should be rewarded somehow, even if the kids’ grades aren’t high, but I haven’t heard of a way yet that is really fair to the teachers. Who can decide without any bias? It definitely should not be decided on how well the kids pass the tests. That’s a whole other issue – the standardized tests. I haven’t really looked into them lately, but in the past, I really don’t think they were a good measure of what is important to know. My general education philosophy is that you have to bring the community into the schools and get the kids involved in the community – and on local, national, and world issues, even at young ages. As I noticed when I quickly scanned your article, yes – reducing class size is so important. I had 30 second graders in my first year of teaching. Every month there would be a few who moved away and a few new ones. Class sizes of no more than 20 to 25 would be wonderful. The argument before was that it’s really expensive to reduce the size, since you have to have more classrooms, supplies, teachers, etc. Also, what happens in the classroom, school and regarding homework, needs to answer the question: Why is this important to learn? Students shouldn’t have to sit at desks six hours a day. It’s like prison. None of us adults like to do that. I know it makes for a noisier classroom and possibly chaos, but they need to be up and involved, often working in groups on hands-on, minds-on projects – that go somewhere when they are completed, not just under their bed. NASA has a number of projects where they sometimes support the students by doing webcasts with experts, and sometimes they can send in their research, work and/or artwork and designs to be posted on a website. This is an excellent way to recognize their work as relevant.

D, parent, writer of educational materials. “The data from our area’s schools was published in the papers not long ago. If memory serves correctly, the math scores were improving across the board, but the science scores remain pretty dismal. The main reason that I see for this is that science and math are not integrated into other subjects such as English and social studies or even physical education. For example, kids in kindergarten are taught colors, but instead of using a scientifically-correct rainbow, they have the kids color them any old way—or in some cases, in the WRONG order of the spectrum with red labeled in the middle! Another problem would be the state-level so-called science “standards.” The book publishers slavishly conform to these standards to sell their books to schools, and school administrators and librarians use checklists to determine if the book they are buying meets the published standards. This amounts to “ranking” books using criteria such as the use of key words in the text. This would be okay if the standards actually made sense! In Florida for example, some obviously non-scientifically literate person “clarified” the state standard on forces and motion to say that the student will be able to identify different kinds of motion [so far so good] such as straight line [okay], round-and-round [huh?], and zigzag [are you kidding?]. Thus, as an author, I’m being asked to find examples of round-and-round and zigzag motions caused by forces in nature! Thus the focus is on meeting a standard that doesn’t make sense versus teaching the concept that forces cause motion—and that motion is always in the direction of the force! My editors and I are fighting a battle with the marketing people in publishing. The marketing people say, and rightly so, that they can’t sell books that don’t include the key words, and therefore are insisting that we include them whether it makes sense to do so or not. Unfortunately, the teachers, especially elementary teachers, do not have science backgrounds and are helpless to do much more than parrot what they are given in these books. They are not prepared to answer a child’s question about what forces actually produce round-and-round motions—off center application of a force (i.e. torque) or zigzag—more than one force acting in different directions (friction, gravity, muscles), none of which are likely to naturally produce a zigzag! One solution is to require teachers to take science in-service training like they do for other subjects. The school districts set aside in-service days for other subjects, but not for science. Science has not been a priority because it was not tested until recently. Despite teacher protests, having tests for various subjects has made a huge difference in performance by students. This happened with the math scores very dramatically. Until there was a science test required to be passed by 8th graders, no one really cared if the science scores were low. But when it prevents kids from graduating, they care. So who is to blame for this situation and what can be done about it? The publishers can hire experts in science to help them adjust the content of books to reflect the actual science concepts and ignore the state’s standard wording—instead using national standards that are reviewed by actual scientists with no stake in state politics. This is very difficult for them to do though, because they risk not being able to sell their product. It would work if there were a national textbook review board established by the Department of Education. This board would not tell states what books to buy, simply vet the books being offered—putting them on a list, like colleges get accredited based on certain criteria. All publishers would then endeavor to meet the national science standards, which would be established by consensus of a large number of well-known and respected scientists and science organizations (NSTA would have a rep for example, and NSF and AMA, etc.). The states should limit the power of state boards of education to appoint textbook review committees by establishing strict criteria for the members—science degrees from accredited colleges and have no conflict-of-interest with any textbook or publisher for example. This criteria was “understood” or “assumed” until recently when our state Board of Education blatantly appointed anti-evolution textbook authors (without science credentials) to the committee and then claimed those appointees have no conflict-of-interest because they will donate their share of the proceeds (when the committee votes to use their book) to charity! So I think the legislators should have hearings and set up criteria and force the boards to use them or else remove the board’s authority to oversee this aspect of education.

H, parent, school board member. “Wisconsin is one of a number of states working to modify their curriculum to meet the needs of the changing world. This is well beyond “we need foreign language.” It emphasizes the skills of problem-solving, innovation, technology, etc. beyond the core subjects and 21st century themes. Any improvement of public education requires the support of the federal government; something that is not truly in place at this time. There is a tug-of-war between the needs of schools/students and the actual support system in place to make this happen, well beyond just funding. I wish I had the answer to that part of the puzzle! 

R, education/training professional. “I’m pretty sure the Asian counterparts of U.S. parents don’t browbeat and bullyrag their kids’ teachers to dumb down the grading system and generally lower standards for teaching. Not sure that the quality of teachers in the U.S. is at par with those in higher scoring countries.Florida hasn’t done all that well with state/local control – They have “A” schools that teach for the FCAT, and little else.”

What I’m Saying
My own concerns aren’t far removed from the parents’—before educating the kids, we need to address the environment in which they are supposed to be learning.
Basic discipline and civility: It is often nearly impossible—unless you’re a self-taught, self-motivated student with access to learning materials outside the classroom—to learn anything of value in an environment where the teacher cannot be heard over the noise of chatter. I recall hazing several substitute teachers in high school, and I no doubt owe them all apologies. As bad as my peers and I might have been 20 years ago, that behavior can now be found in the regular teachers’ classrooms. Using “Sir or ma’am?” Forget about it!
To drug or not to drug:Some treat dyslexia and attention deficit disorder (ADD) as an impassable block to teaching students to read, while others are looking at Ritalin as a way to control or quiet normal childish behavior with drugs because discipline has broken down, or isn’t allowed.
Lawsuits and “zero tolerance” policies. Let’s face it: kids can run roughshod over teachers yet face expulsion over giving a classmate an aspirin because lawsuits have grown out of control. Rampant paranoia has led to “zero tolerance” laws for things like drugs while teachers cannot do anything to restrain out-of-control students, short of calling the police, without facing the possibility of legal action.
Intrusive parents.One phenomenon cell phones have made possible is the “helicopter parent,” those who keep in constant touch with their kid throughout the day. There is now a unhealthy expectation that Mommy/Daddy can and should be contacted several times a day. What happened to “cutting the cord?” What about independence? What about teaching and learning about trust? Privacy? Never mind that—just call the kid up or track them via GPS. And don’t forget…the kids now have an expectation of staying home through and/or after college.
Intrusive government.I heard an interesting angle on why parents don’t spank their children these days: they’re afraid that the local/state Department of Children and Family Services will come in and take their children for child abuse. Spankings can be effective if they are infrequent and memorable (as I recall, I received at most five over the course of 18 years, and I do not consider myself psychologically scarred by the experience). However, in an effort to protect seriously abused children,all parents are now treated like the worst offenders, and run the risk of being stigmatized as “child abusers” for a slight slap on the tail.
Testing, testing, and more testing: Teachers, schools, and administrators have come under increasing pressure to get students’ test scores up, or face cuts in funding. This is a spinoff of NCLB, which bases school funding on “results.” Testing has its place because you want to know what the kids have learned, but wouldn’t practical exams be more effective than just fill-in-the-blank or multiple-choice Scantron exams? If all the kids learn is how to take a math or science test, that is not the same thing as learning math and science.
Another spinoff of NCLB is that teachers spend so much time getting the kids on the low end of the scale up to average that kids on the right side of the Bell Curve become increasingly neglected. “Gifted” has almost become a dirty word in our overly egalitarian society. When kids all get trophies just for participating, it’s very difficult to recognize real achievements.

I can probably think of more, but that will probably be enough for now. Nevertheless, before we delve into how we improve test scores, we might consider this: “There’s so much publicity about Americans not scoring well on tests, but few people ask the question: Then why are we producing so much innovation from our scientists?” China is catching up and has been enjoying double-digit growth in their economy; however, they have an economy that grows through mass production of hardware invented elsewhere. Meanwhile, America remains an incubator of invention, creativity, and progress, and still has the largest economy in the world. Perhaps the problem isn’t with our test scores, but with the tests. We could always have our kids do better, but we cannot maintain a First World economy if we have a Third World educational system. Will testing ensure that First World economy?

Obviously these issues are not going to be solved in the space of a blog—or even several thousand blogs. I have attempted, rather, to provide a survey of the range of opinions on improving science and mathematics test scores in the United States. Before we set to work on that many-headed monster, we need to “get back to basics” ourselves and decide what we mean by “improving”—and then decide what’s to be done to make the improvement(s) happen.