Science Ability Down in U.S. High Schools

An anonymous reader writes "According to the International Herald Tribune, a nationwide test has shown that the ability to reason scientifically is less well developed across the board for high schoolers. Fourth graders, ironically, are actually better at reasoning in the sciences now than they were ten years ago." From the article: "The drop in science proficiency appeared to reflect a broader trend in which some academic gains made in elementary grades and middle school have been seen to fade during the high school years. The science results come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a comprehensive examination administered in early 2005 by the Department of Education to more than 300,000 students in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and on U.S. military bases around the world."

Comments

That's what happens

[0racle]

That's what happens when the most important part of your 'academic' life is the Football team.

Re:That's what happens

[mctk]

Well, football has always been (and will always be?) the most important part of some students' academic life for years. But I don't think that's the main issue. To me, it's a question of two things: student work ethic and curriculum.

We Americans are very good at pointing at others and coming up with excuses. But I'll tell you, the Asian students I have aren't good at math because they're Asian, they're good because they (gasp!) actually do homework. That's an investment most students don't care to make.

And why should they? Our curriculum presents science as a static, lifeless adventure. It's a collection of worksheets and vocab lists. The teacher has all of the answers; it's simply a question of memorizing the correct response.

We need a curriculum that supports inquiry and thought. We need to give students the responsibility of choice and experimentation. We need to get them generating real results and using those in real world situations. Reasoning and problem solving skills do not come without authentic practice.

Re:That's what happens

[gardyloo]

Partially agreed with this. *HOWEVER*...

      At my high school (ten years ago, admittedly), the people most into the drugs and alcohol (openly to their fellow students, anyway) were among the smartest people in the school. That's not to disparage the other students, but it seemed to me that among the stoners and drinkers were some very smart (and very bored) kids. Very many of these students are now remarkably successful (by any metric) and happy, several with Ph.D.s.
      It seems that, at least *sometimes*, students into the drugs and alcohol are simply doing that because they're bored with the curriculum (which is, oftentimes, not challenging enough). There are exceptions to this and every human situation, but to blame drugs and alcohol might be misdirected.

Re:That's what happens

[Potor]

No, that's what happens when your gov't realises it must decide between having an intelligent, capable population, and a population that is easily lead.

I am not sure that there is an actual correlation between decreasing scientific ability and the unquestioning surrender of civil rights, but since both are occuring simultaneously in the USA, well, perhaps this needs to be studied.

From the article

[Wellington Grey]

The falling average science test scores among high school students, announced Wednesday, appeared certain to increase anxiety about American academic competitiveness and to add new urgency to calls from President George W. Bush

Yes, if anyone can save science education in the US it's going to be Dubya.

-Grey

Re:From the article

[Wellington Grey]

Why was my comment modded troll? Is it at all suprising that people are less interested in science and teaching when a man like Bush is in charge? This administration expresses active hatred for scientific knowledge. You may be interested to know that I'm an American and a physics teacher, but I work abroad and have no intentions of ever trying to teach in America after I had a friend fired in New York for mentioning the existence of evolution in a class.

-Grey

As a high school senior...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I think there's a big problem with apathy. Most students just don't care about learning. There's a few of us that take honors/ap classes and go to good universities, but the majority are just going through the motions to get out of high school. I also blame a lack of competitive spirit--it gets beaten out of us so nobody can be made to feel bad, the same reason my school no longer does anything to honor academic excellence like it does for sports.

The blame really belongs with the parents, of course. My parents are why I worked to get into the computer science program at UCI.

Re:As a high school senior...

[Kortec]

Yeah, I'd have to agree. In some respects, our cultural trend towards political correctness has really come back to bit us. There's a trend towards mediocrity, as we leave the door open for the unmotivated or unable as long as possible. The result of this is that the students that really could be doing interesting things (weither that happens to be linear algebra, or Chaucer) in their early years are kept in pretty repetative classes, or meaningless requirements, and end up joining the unmotivated masses.

That's not to say that public schooling need not be regulated -- the recent debacle over intelligent design should be suffiicent evidence of that. It's a difficult problem to administer such a large system as the public schooling of a state -- let alone 50 -- with out administering the very life out of it. The only hope is that most schools end up with a small crew of truely gifted educators, the sort of folks who know when to ignore the rules and when not to, and are actually passionate about their topics, and that makes the experiance slightly bearable.

Interesting

[Wellington Grey]

Michael Padilla, a professor at the University of Georgia who is president of the National Science Teachers Association, said that the problem is not that universities are failing to train sufficient numbers of science majors or that too few opt for classroom careers, but that about a third of those who accept teaching jobs abandon the profession within five years.

Wow! I've just finished my first year as a teacher. Only four more to go before I'm filled with apathy and burned out on my chosen profession. I can't wait.

-Grey

If your heroes don't have it, you don't need it...

[Distinguished Hero]

Makes sense. After all, science plays no prominent role in hip-hop "culture," sports "culture," or Hollywood "culture." When you have a whole generation which idolizes only members of those three groups, what else should one expect?

A Comparison

[clragon]

I am a Canadian citizen, immigrated to Canada when I was 10.

Now, even thou the article is focusing on American education, I just thought I bring Canadian and Chinese education into the mix.

First 10 years of my life, I went to school in China. In kindergarden, addition and subtraction were briefly introduced to us. We were easily able to do one digit addition/subtraction, however some parents like mine pushed us to do more, so as a result, on the first day of school in grade 1, I was able to do two digit addition and subtraction already.

School in China was hard, since the starting of grade one I had to do homework constantly from after school (around 5pm) to 8, or 9 PM. On the weekends most kids were sent to private lessons for various kinds of things like piano, English (you dont start learning English in school until grade 5, but parents send grade 1 kids to English lessons so that they can have a head start), or just for core classes like Math or Chinese.

In elementary school, there are two exams, one is midterm and the other is final. These were basicly your report cards, everything you do in the year basicly prepares you for these tests. Much is dependant on the result of your final exam each grade. I remember my teacher saying "if you got below a 90 on the final exam, it would be the equivilant of failing." She wasn't exatrating either, middle school in China accepts students based on their final exam mark in grade 6. If you did not get a good mark on that exam, too bad, you will have to go to a crappy middle school. To people living in Canada or the US, they would probably say "so what, it's just middle school." It's much more than that, if you were in a bad middle school, high school wont even take a look at your application despite your mark. Universities will do the same to bad high schools. So it was made very clear to us when we were in grade 1, that if you were to do bad on the final exam in grade 6, your whole life is ruined.

Then I moved to Canada.

Everything changed. I was living in Vancouver at the time. (I had to take a 45 min bus to my school, because all the schools near my house were "over populated", but thats another issue)I walked in a Canadian classroom for the first time and found out these kids were doing two digit addition and subtraction, the same ones I knew how to do when I started elementary school in China. All of the sudden, I became a "genius". But soon I discovered that being a genius in a Canadian school isn't all that great. you see, in China your popularity depends a lot on your marks, just like in Canada and the US, but in an opposite way. If you had the best marks in the class, everyone will want to be your friend. If you were failing, you would be that "failure", or loner that everybody stays away from. In Canada however, I found out the hard way that if you were getting good marks for classes like Math, the chances are you will be pretty unpopular.

I had another thing to discover in Canada, when I went into high school I found myself hang around people who are "gifted". I found out that kids in Canada take a test in grade 3 and 6 to see if they have a high than averge IQ. They are put into the same class and were taught harder things than the normal kids.

Now, why did I write all that? It is to give you a bit of info before I present my opinion about why the quality of education here is not as good as it could be.

First, a lot of kids in Canada and the US have this weird ideology that if they arn't born smart, there is no way in the world for them to become smarter. I was considered a genius by kids in my class when I came to Canada, but they didn't say that because they knew about all the homework I did in grade 1 in China, they said it because they thought I was born smart since I was Asian or something. They refuse to work harder to achieve things because they believe that there is no point because they are not smart to start with.

On the other side, you had many of these gif