Comments at December 15 School Board Meeting
My name is Norman Jansen and I live at 2746 Pfitzer. My wife and I have three children attending Portage Schools and I've got three short comments about the Science curriculum.
As a customer of Portage Schools, what I'm looking for in the High School Science Curriculum is a broad and comprehensive background upon which students can build further in college. I realize not everyone is going to go to college and not everyone who goes to college is going to choose a scientific or technical field of study, but many do, and four years of high school science should prepare these kids for the challenging courses they'll see after they leave Portage. I believe the best way to achieve the breadth and depth needed to be successful in college is full-year science courses in each of Chemistry, Biology, and Physics. Taking a second year in one of these areas will give them added depth in that area, but taking 2 1/2 years in one area, and only one short semester in the others simply does not provide enough depth in most areas (and in one area probably provides more depth than is needed at such a young age).
Besides my obvious interest in my kids, I have another interest in Science. I work in manufacturing for a global pharmaceutical company, and technology is the edge we use to compete with companies have much lower labor costs than ours (e.g., Asia). If we don't maintain our technological advantage, it's a fact that we're going to see more jobs move offshore, and that's not a good thing. Our schools need to do much more than just prepare students to pass the MEAP and meet NCLB (No Child Left Behind) goals. We also need to produce students who will in the future be able to help us keep our technological edge in a very competitive international economy. This is very important, not just for the technology gurus themselves, but also for the men and women who work out on the floor, and also for all citizens who count on successful companies to pay local taxes and provide jobs to friends and neighbors.
Finally, I expect that our schools would not experiment with our children, unless the needs justify the risk. Portage has many excellent and dedicated science teachers, and our students have a well-earned good reputation at places like U of M because they are currently well-prepared for the rigor of challenging college courses. Changes made to the science curriculum should be based on scientific evidence that it will work. In spite of scouring the PortagePS web site and attending informational meetings, I've not seen any evidence that semester science courses will be an improvement over the current full-year courses. The basis for change seems to be intuitive, maybe with a dose of wishful thinking. And I don't understand why we're in such a rush to implement something that may turn out to be a mistake. I think it's now acknowledged that the Integrated Math curriculum turned out to be a mistake for those who are now struggling so much with college calculus. Rather than repeat history, I think it would be wise to delay implementation of these semester science courses for a year to allow time for the curriculum to be properly written and reviewed, and for the many questions concerning this change to be answered.
Thank you for the opportunity to talk about this.
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