Is the new Portage curriculum "research-based" or "unproven fad"?
The "No Child Left Behind" legislation (NCLB) recently enacted is a good driving force to improve the quality of science education in this country. It also provides some clear guidelines for how to do this in the pages pertaining to science. The following quotations are key.
It says "teachers must use only research-based teaching methods and the schools must reject unproven fads".
It also "requires that federal funding go only to programs that are backed by evidence".
At the parent informational meeting I went to I was looking for some scientific evidence that the change to semester courses was justified, but all I heard were a lot of intuitive arguments that don't carry nearly as much weight as hard facts, at least in the scientific world.
If there is no evidence to justify the switch to semester courses, perhaps a pilot study is needed, not a wholesale change. We shouldn't be running experiments on such a large number of students.
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COMMENT- The NCLB science web page you reference shows that only 18% of our nations 12th grade students were proficient in science based on the 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Does anyone know if Portage students took this test? I'd heard our students do very well in science when they go to places like U of M, and I'm curious if this lack of achievement problem includes Portage or perhaps not.