Read about an absurd analogy that's actually quite telling about the problem with the new PPS science curriculum.
Our schools have the very challenging task of meeting the needs of a wide variety of students. In particular, they must meet the following three goals.
Meet No Child Left Behind (NCLB) goals and improve the percentage of students who attain at least a "proficient" score on the MEAP and HSPT (high school proficiency test).
Meet the needs of the bulk of Portage students, most of whom will go on to college, and all of whom will be living in an increasingly technologically challenging world.
Challenge, interest and prepare some of our students to be the future Doctors, Scientists, and Engineers who will be needed to keep us healthy, and to lead us to a future where complex problems are successfully met and solved.
Strangely, this latter group is a little bit like basketball players. We don't need a large number of them, but we sure need some good scientists a whole lot more than we need good basketball players. And yet our school system does a better job of producing outstanding basketball players than outstanding scientists. Why is this?
Imagine the absurd: what would happen if our government decided basketball was important and we needed to raise the level of basketball proficiency. To do this, the curriculum director decides to require ALL students (whether or not they have any interest or ability in basketball) to take one of two levels of basketball: either "regular" or "honors". While this strategy would raise the minimum level of basketball competence, which is good, it is highly doubtful that an "honors level" basketball class would yield half as many outstanding players as the current system does, simply because they wouldn't be as challenged as they are now. To excel, these players need to train with a subgroup of more talented players, and that's the opportunity the high school basketball team gives them today. Do our schools care as much about producing outstanding scientists?
A science curriculum with only two levels (regular and honors) is not likely to produce near as many outstanding scientists as other schools that have three levels of science. Outside opportunities including KAMSC (like AAU basketball) are not available to all promising students, nor are all promising students willing to leave their home school and give up music and other elements of a broad liberal education..
What's needed in Portage Public Schools are three levels of science, with somewhere between 15-50% of all students in each-
Semester courses for students who only want to take two years of core science in high school. State benchmarks in the core sciences will be taught in these classes to meet the minimum standards required for these subjects. These survey courses will do a good job of teaching basic proficiency in science.
Full-year courses for students who will take three or more years of core science in high school. This will allow them to cover the three main subject areas in greater depth than would be possible in semester survey courses, and will better prepare them for the future, whatever that may hold.
Full-year honors courses available all four years, including advanced courses in 11th/12th grade for those students who will take four years of high school science and have shown an aptitude for (and interest in) higher level learning in this subject.
The PPS position is that it would cost too much to develop even the first two levels. Yet they've been planning to develop both regular-level and honors-level semester classes. It's hard to believe they couldn't redirect the time that was going to be spent writing curriculum for the honors-level semester courses (which don't fit well with the honors-level IB courses) toward a simple modification of the current full-year courses so they cover missing benchmarks. Then the following year they could write coursework for the honors level first year courses. That is if they cared about producing at least a few outstanding scientists.
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