Comments on a Review of the Portage High School Science Curriculum Revision

In a well-researched description of the basis for the Portage Public Schools (PPS) 2004 high school science curriculum revision published at http://cc.kzoo.edu/~k03td01/SIP%20body.htm, the author seems to imply parents were resistant to the curriculum revision because they were uncomfortable with changes they weren't able to understand or appreciate, and that they were simply more comfortable with the status quo since they're naturally conservative.  It's unfortunate the author didn't appreciate that many of these parents have jobs where they're responsible for developing and implementing innovative improvements for their very livelihood, so they're hardly opposed to change. Yet they don't automatically implement things just because they seem new and exciting, rather they first evaluate the proposed improvement for both intended and unintended consequences, and then choose carefully.  One would hope when the product is our community's children, our schools would want to be careful too. The Portage Parents for Quality Education (PPQE) website is still online at http://portagescience.org where many parents contributed thoughts about the revision.

While Project 2061 goals to improve scientific literacy are of course important, switching to semester courses wasn't necessarily the best way to achieve this, and many parents were skeptical that a bigger driver for the PPS change was the 2-year IB-HL science course IB students take their junior and senior years.  One of the unfortunate consequences of IB (besides the high cost and the inflexible curricula) is that the HL (high level) course students interested in pursuing careers in science usually take is a two-year long course.  So unless they double up on science at the expense of other aspects of a good liberal education, they'll graduate from high school with five semesters in ONE of the three main sciences (biology, chemistry, or physics) and just one short semester of the other two.  This is not the type of broad background that prepares students for college, especially when so many students change their minds about what they want to study in college.

The author of the 2004 curriculum revision review provides rationale for why the order of presentation is important (e.g., the "physics first" paradigm).  Buying into the idea that order is important, parents in Portage were concerned that half of the students would be taking chemistry before physics and the other half physics before chemistry.  And the same for biology and earth science in the sophomore year where one would think concepts of ecology are predicated on biology fundamentals such that the order of presentation does indeed make a big difference.

Below are a few quotations from the review of the 2004 curriculum revision followed by a comment of what PPQE members were saying in 2003-2004 when they were concerned that the changes were being "rushed" through without adequate thought. Most of those thoughts from 2003-2004 still apply today.

"Having all students exposed to the four areas of science before the junior year MEAP assessment should also help raise student performance"
While it's true this will probably improve MEAP test scores, it's not at all clear it will help students perform at a higher level in college or whatever they do after high school.  While parents understand why schools are concerned with MEAP scores measured only partway through high school, parents are MORE concerned about the capability of the student when they graduate from high school (the finished product of the PPS experience).

"If the traditional sequence of year-long courses were to be one extreme, sequences of semester-long courses would represent some middle ground, and courses called 'integrated science' might be the other extreme.  While each individual school district must determine the extent of curriculum reform that it can realistically pursue under its particular circumstances, the call for greater integration of the traditional science subject areas is clear"
While he makes the pitch for semester courses being a new and innovative happy medium between the two extremes he mentions, one wonders where a 2-year-long IB-HL biology or chemistry or physics course falls on his continuum between the old-fashioned year-long courses and the idealized integrated science course.

"A semester of earth science that invoked physics, chemistry and biology concepts would be excellent preparation for the MEAP because earth science topics are often featured in the process-based science questions common to those tests."
It's interesting to note one third of the graduating classes of 2005 did not have any earth science in middle school or high school due to the CIPS science experiment at West Middle School, yet their MEAP scores were still good, so maybe earth science is largely common sense.  The recent PPS initiative in 2011 to move earth science from high school back to middle school is an excellent development.

Regarding the obvious integrated nature of science, nothing should prevent a good biology teacher from covering chemical and physical aspects of the material being taught in the biology course, and PPS has teachers talented enough to do this without force-fitting survey-type semester courses on everyone where the "diameter" of the "spiral of learning" is just as fixed/rigid/constant as it is with year-long courses.  The real problem in the eyes of many parents was that the amount of material that could be covered in a semester wasn't much more than half of what could be covered in a full-year class, and that was a problem for those planning to study science or engineering at some of the more competitive universities where their future classmates had more rigorous preparation in terms of both breath and depth.  And by rigor, parents don't mean just facts and figures, of course parents want concepts and ideas taught, as the good teachers employed by PPS do whether in semesters or full years.

Perhaps the root of the disagreement in 2003-2004 was that those who teach science (and those who teach science teachers) saw things quite differently than those who went through perhaps an even more rigorous scientific course of study than most educators, and then had the added experience of practicing science for their profession.  Most parents understand the interdisciplinary nature of science very well (just as math and science are intertwined), yet they didn't want the rigor of the previous year-long science courses watered down to semester courses that looked like they would be little more than glorified survey courses that touched on a large number of topics without going into any substantial depth.  Parents wanted PPS to be able to produce a few good scientists at least as effectively as they produced a few good basketball players.

Now that it's been eight years since the curriculum change, it's concerning to hear anecdotal reports of PPS graduates who struggled in college science classes where there classmates seemed to have a head start, and it would be nice to see PPS analyse the outcomes of the curricular change they made in 2004.

A "one size fits all" curriculum may be more convenient to implement and maintain, but it ignores the wonderful diversity in talent that exists within our student body. Even with honors as a second level, it's sad to see that our school system offers more for students wishing to excel in sports than they do for those who want to excel in science (more).

The survey presented in the review is interesting even though as noted by the author himself, it's flawed in that participation was dominated by freshmen and sophomores rather than juniors and seniors.  Furthermore, one wonders how much "coaching" students may have received about the survey given that some of the questions sound rather leading (e.g., "Which class format do you like best:  Full-year courses with the same teacher all year, or semester-based courses that give you a fresh start with a new teacher after winter finals").  Even so, some of the survey results are interesting (click here for link to survey).

In summary, many parents in Portage are concerned that the Public School system hasn't been doing more to nurture those students who have special interests and abilities in science. Parents understand that while not everyone wants or needs to be a scientist, SOME students will hopefully become the problem-solvers our society needs to meet the great medical and technical challenges ahead of us. The curriculum revision of 2004 was not only inadequate, but was a step backward toward mediocrity.