There is no magic that will turn on a light at 12th grade when the basics didn't start in Kindergarten or Pre-school. This is an entire generation that is now handicapped in the world they live in. How did we ever allow it?
By Marva Hinton
Students in the 4th and 8th grades (click here) are showing more mastery of science, but high school seniors’ scores on the assessment known as “the nation’s report card” stayed flat from 2009.
The results released this morning from the 2015 National Assessment of Education Progress also found that while large gaps remain between black and Hispanic students and their white peers in science, those gaps are narrowing, as is the gender gap in 8th grade.
The tests measure students’ knowledge in the areas of physical science, life science, and Earth and space science in grades 4, 8, and 12. States’ participation in the assessment is voluntary. It’s offered to public and private school students as well as U.S. Department of Defense school system students. In 2015, more than 237,000 students from 46 states and Defense Department schools took the exam.
The average scores for students in both the 4th and 8th grades went up 4 points, to 154, compared with 2009. That’s on a scale of 1 to 300.
During a conference call with reporters, U.S. Secretary of Education, John B. King Jr., called the results encouraging....
Learning science doesn't begin in the 12th grade, it begins at pre-school. How many years ago did I learn that leaf is not an ordinary leaf? It is a fern with spores.
- Take the collection inside, and press the leaves on the sticky side of a piece of Contact paper....
Learning science is about putting all the pieces together. It is about understanding why the water draining out of a bathtub rotates in a certain direction in the northern hemisphere and the opposition direction in the southern hemisphere. Learning science is as basic as knowing where wheat is grown, harvested and turned into loaves of bread. Science is not a luxury. It is not evil. It introduces investigation into a learning environment that leads to adult interested in their world. Science helps inspire invention.
This portrait of the USA's science accomplishments with their students is not the USA I grew up in, it is alien to me. I cannot believe the extent politics in search of religious extremism has caused an entire generation (K-12) to ignore the very basics of science.
Science is reality. There is no room for fantasy. Science is about fact and does not allow dismissal of fact.
What the heck does the science curriculum in the USA look like today? I guarantee it isn't want mine looked like.
..“For the younger students, I think we’re just beginning to come out of a time when there has not been a lot of emphasis on teaching science at the younger grades,” said Evans. “By and large, only English/language arts and mathematics have been tested in the younger grades for quite a few years now. That has really led to a loss in the amount of time and effort that’s gone into teaching science for those younger students. The fact that there’s a gain at all is something that I think we should be encouraged by.”...
This portrait of the USA's science accomplishments with their students is not the USA I grew up in, it is alien to me. I cannot believe the extent politics in search of religious extremism has caused an entire generation (K-12) to ignore the very basics of science.
Science is reality. There is no room for fantasy. Science is about fact and does not allow dismissal of fact.
What the heck does the science curriculum in the USA look like today? I guarantee it isn't want mine looked like.
..“For the younger students, I think we’re just beginning to come out of a time when there has not been a lot of emphasis on teaching science at the younger grades,” said Evans. “By and large, only English/language arts and mathematics have been tested in the younger grades for quite a few years now. That has really led to a loss in the amount of time and effort that’s gone into teaching science for those younger students. The fact that there’s a gain at all is something that I think we should be encouraged by.”...
