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Making California School Reform Work
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This issue of
Leading Change focuses on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).
How far along is your district in implementing the Next Generation Science Standards? What challenges are you facing in doing so? Have you adopted a traditional or an integrated course sequence in high school math? We would love to talk with you.
Please contact us here.
Thanks for reading!
Erin Brownfield, Editor
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The State Board of Education has just released its new
draft
science framework, the first update to guidelines for teaching science in California in 11 years. The board will collect public comments on it through Jan. 19.
The new K-12 science framework is aligned to the
Next Generation Science Standards, adopted
in 2013.
To help teachers thoroughly examine the draft curriculum framework, the
California Science Teachers Association is holding 10 group review
sessions throughout the state, said Jessica Sawko, executive director of the association. In addition, her organization plans to post a webinar online to guide science teachers as they read the draft and to encourage them to provide feedback. Interested in giving feedback? Go to
this online survey form prepared by the California Department of Education.
Read more.
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A 2015 report from statewide advocacy network CSLNet found that only 43 percent of California's school districts included references to STEM education or identified plans to implement the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in their 2014 Local Control and Accountability Plans.
To help districts prepare to implement NGSS, the organization has published a free toolkit that includes several resources including talking points about STEM education, model LCAP content and an assessment tool.
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This fall 9th-grade students in virtually all California high schools are taking math classes aligned with the Common Core standards, and either using the new "integrated" course sequence, or the traditional one.
The state is not collecting data on which schools or districts are doing what. But EdSource surveyed the largest 30 districts with the largest high school enrollments in the state and found that half of these districts have adopted the new "integrated" approach. This represents a significant departure from how high school math has traditionally been taught in California and the nation.
Read more.
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Last month, Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill,
Senate Bill 359, requiring school districts to adopt "fair, objective and transparent" policies for determining how to place students into math courses when they start high school.
The new policy means that students can't arbitrarily be directed off the college math-ready track. This is good news for ensuring that more students, including more under-represented minorities, acquire the foundational math skills they need before college.
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In an Education Week blog post, Ann Myers and Jill Berkowicz, authors of The STEM Shift, argue that the focus on STEM learning as a separate area of study is an outdated, 20th century approach to teaching. "If we are not careful," they caution, "the baby may be thrown out with the bathwater."
The baby, in this case, refers to their ideal of training each student to become "a confident reader, writer, thinker, problem-solver, mathematician, scientist, artist and historian." The authors point to the liberal arts backgrounds of Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and other tech leaders as evidence for an integrated approach to teaching science and technology that also emphasizes mastery of skills such as imagination, questioning and creativity.
Read more.
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Time capsule report decries 'crisis' in math, science ed
The way we think about STEM education has completely changed since 1982...right?
A report found in the EdSource archive might convince you otherwise.
Authored by none other than
Michael Kirst -- currently president of the State Board of Education -- for the California Commission on Industrial Innovation, this mimeographed report entitled "Improving Math, Science and Technical Education" cites a decline in student math achievement, shortages of math and science teachers, unclear standards and outmoded texts. A possible solution? The "potential of computers to revolutionize our educational systems... to assist students in learning traditional curricular in an individualized, often highly motivating manner."
The commission, which included Steve Jobs of Apple Computer, was headed up by Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr.
Any of this sound familiar?
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Education Week reports that the Federal
STEM Education Act of 2015, which expands the definition of STEM to include computer science programs,
was signed into law in October.
Hard as it may be to believe, there really are bipartisan bills being passed: it was introduced in the House of Representatives by Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas, and Elizabeth Esty, a Democrat from Connecticut, both members of the Science, Space and Technology Committee.
The new law does not add funding, but it does expand the kinds of STEM programs that can be run and funded by federal government agencies to include computer science, which will provide support for out-of-school time science instruction through organizations such as museums.
Read more.
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