Summary of January 26 2004 School Board Meeting
PPQE asked one of its members to summarize the January 26 School Board meeting for parents who were unable to attend.
A standing room only crowd was present for the January 26 PPS Board of Education meeting in Portage Michigan, and for the fourth meeting in a row, the hottest topic was the new science curriculum. Four teachers & professors spoke in favor of the change which they felt would help meet "No Child Left Behind" goals, while 10 parents expressed concerns, including that the new curriculum was untested and would not adequately prepare students for college.
Kelli Palsrok teaches at Central High School and doesn't want to let a few parental complaints obscure the fact that the science curriculum has been made stronger by adding 20 benchmarks while dropping none. PPQE appreciates the thought and the good work that went into the new semester course design but doesn't believe even our best teachers can convey much more than half as much content in a semester as they could in a well-designed full year course. Portage students who go on to college will be competing with other students who've had solid full-years of each of the core sciences. Let's not let the use of benchmarks and standards to describe teaching objectives obscure the fact that counting the number of benchmarks/standards doesn't very accurately describe the amount of useful content actually taught, or say anything about the depth with which each topic is treated.
Jeff Bartz, who teaches chemistry at Kalamazoo College, favors the new plan because it provides a broad background in four disciplines in two years. PPQE agrees that a broad background is important, and that the semester plan appears to be a good idea for those who only take two years of science. However, when he compared course outlines, the new semester course didn't cover as many of the topics "K" teaches in their introductory course as does the current full-year chemistry course. This is exactly the concern many parents have: that Portage graduates will be at a disadvantage if they only take one semester. Prof. Bartz showed an outline of a hypothetical second semester chemistry course that covered the items missed in the first semester, and that may be one way to add the needed depth. But it's not immediately obvious how all the pieces would fit together if PPS offered second semester courses, and whether there would be honors sections of them, and how they would interface with the IB-SL and IB-HL courses? PPQE believes students taking three or four years of core science deserve the same broad background advocated by Prof Bartz and with the greater depth his charts seemed to be indicating are needed to prepare for college science. Those students who want more than a single semester of science should be able to take full-year courses so they have a healthy balance of breadth and depth without having to double up (unless they want to).
Paul Vellum is a parent member of the curriculum team and also has extensive experience in Science Education where he's currently a professor at WMU. He reiterated that the new semester plan will be an improvement because it provides instruction in all four sciences in two years. He also felt the teachers who worked so hard developing the curriculum need to know that their work is valued. PPQE agrees that covering four disciplines in two years is an advantage for those students who wouldn't otherwise receive good instruction in all four areas, but what about those who take three or four years because they want and/or need added depth in each subject area? PPQE also values the effort that went into this plan, and believes that effort will pay dividends for the two-year science students who will benefit from it. But for students who take three or four years of science, the deciding factor should NOT be whether the creators worked hard developing the curriculum, but rather whether the curriculum will prepare these students for what lies ahead of them. Let's keep our eye on the ball.
Bob Walker (President of the Portage Educators Association) correctly pointed out that if Thomas Edison had been afraid of change, he never would have invented the light bulb. While everyone can agree Edison ran many very innovative experiments during the development of his remarkable inventions, PPQE reminds us that the historical record reveals many of Edison's experiments were failures at first, and the key word is "Experiment". There can be little doubt that the innovative but untested curriculum changes proposed by PPS fit the characteristics of an experiment, as Mr. Walker acknowledges by his analogy. Those who believe the new curriculum will benefit Portage students should surely have to acknowledge it might not work as well as expected for all subgroups of students, and no data exists either way. What is highly contradictory and concerning to parents is that the No Child Left Behind legislation, which specifically prohibits using untested curriculum on our children, is being used by PPS to justify changing away from the very curriculum that PPS admits currently does quite a good job of preparing Portage students for college. Why is this important NCLB warning being ignored in Portage Michigan?
Terri Thompson gave an example of one of the risks of experimenting with curriculum and assuming satisfactory adjustments can be made later "on the fly". Over 100 current 11th graders have never had any earth science because they went through a pilot of the then-new CIPS program in 8th grade at WMS when other 8th graders were taking earth science. No adjustments were ever made, and this is another example of a change that was made without thinking through all the ramifications. Who is responsible if some of these kids miss qualifying for the $2500 MEAP scholarship because they do poorly on the earth science questions this April (between 1/6 and 1/5 of the questions are usually Earth Science so that could be a pretty big handicap to start from)? It's the parents who may have to pay for this mistake. And $2500 is quite a chunk of change!
Ann Soper is concerned about implementing a plan that's not being used by any other school anywhere in the country, and for which there is no supporting data. She also felt there has to be a better way to teach important earth science benchmarks than to move 8th grade content into high school and take important time away from the key core sciences. This seems more like a step backward than a step forward for most students.
Sherri Draayer works in Early Childhood Education and just went through the college application process with one of her children. What is emphasized over and over in that process is the importance of a competitive and challenging high school experience. Students who choose the more competitive courses will be at an advantage. However, that assumes rigorous courses are available and sometimes we forget about the student "in the middle". What will become of the student who doesn't get into honors and has other interests so they don't want to double up on science? Honors or not, many students will graduate with only a semester of some core sciences when they used to receive a full year.
Cathy Johnson is concerned that the new curriculum is untested, and reminded us that the customer should "buy into" a change before it is implemented. She also pointed out that getting into college is only the first step. Once in, students have to survive the "weed-out" courses most of us still remember vividly where they will compete against other students who benefited from tried-and-tested curricula at other high schools. It's not fair to use our kids a guinea pigs in this experiment.
Steve Soper is a Physician who, like many of us, bought a home in Portage because of the good schools. Dr. Soper wondered how a single semester can provide sufficient preparation for a college course in that subject, when the other students in the subsequent college class will have had a full year of preparation. The school board should not rubber stamp proposals without asking tough questions first. He asked the board to put the semester-based plan on hold.
Terri Hecker has a senior who just went through the college admissions process and will be going to U of M this fall. From that experience it's clear that a strong curriculum is important in enabling the student to have the choice of what college they want to go to. She doesn't want her younger child to be a guinea pig for an untested curriculum that doesn't appear to prepare students for college science. She advocated choice: full years or semesters depending on the needs of the student.
Melanie Kurdys corrected her previous statement about No Child Left Behind legislation regarding minimum standards versus standards for excellence. Although Massachusetts and other states have specified standards for excellence, Michigan has not and is not required to do so by law. Even so, Michigan DOE strongly recommends that we work closely with Universities to make certain our curriculum adequately prepares students for college.
Dave McCarthy also advocated choice and pointed out that offering two pathways was a good idea for the math several years ago, and offering two pathways is a good idea for science now. Students taking the semester plan followed by the honors-level IB-HL course in 11th/12th grade will graduate with five semesters of one type of science but only a single semester of the others. Hardly the balanced background we expect our students to graduate with. Offer choice so all students will be able to take what they need for their unique situation.
Kim Roehm does not want to experiment with Portage students. She does not want to see students have to give up art or other important courses to double up on science. She also took issue with a comment by one of the school board members that KAMSC is a viable option for those more interested in science, because there are only a limited number of slots available at KAMSC. PPS should be responsible for offering more challenging science courses to the many who are interested. Let's make sure the new science plan satisfies the needs of many of those interested in science who might not be fortunate enough to go to KAMSC (the large number of Portage kids who take IB science in 11th and 12th grades is a good indicator of the high level of interest in rigorous science!).
Ann Austin was concerned that at the January 22 informational meeting for current 9th graders, in response to a question, PPS told a packed auditorium of interested parents that the full-year science courses are not available for future 10th graders, yet when another parent asked the same question right after the meeting, they were told the full-year courses were available, but you had to ask for them. What about the ethics of giving that answer when the question is asked in private, but not sharing the same information with the many other parents present who had the same interest? When the school board approved the semester plan on November 24, they promised "flexibility". That flexibility should include full-year courses for those who want them.
Additional concerns were discussed by parents talking to each other after they left the meeting room. How is it that course sequence is so important when only half the students are going to take chemistry before physics while the other half will take physics before chemistry? And the same for biology before or after earth science. Due to some of the integrated aspects of these subjects, doesn't it mean TWO different sets of curricula are going to have to be designed depending on which subject is taught first each year. There's going to be a lot of debugging to do the first time through these new courses. Sure seems like it would be better to put a little more thought into the entire plan before we try to implement it.
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