Teaching K-12 Science and Snow Days

This winter has been the snowiest on record for many cities in the eastern US. My local district has declared its fifth day with a delayed start in two weeks. This means that students and teachers have missed 8 hours of instructional time that is not required to be made up to meet the required 180 days of school.

What happens to science teaching on a delayed start day? In elementary schools, the curriculum is compressed; maybe science is canceled or postponed. In middle and high schools, it means that a teacher either misses an entire class (or two) or has every class truncated. One delayed start day isn't a big deal.

But several delayed start days begin to have a cumulative negative effect. In block scheduling, you're missing a proportionally greater amount of instructional time. Scheduled laboratory activities that typically take 30 or more minutes cannot be completed during a compressed schedule. If classes are canceled during a delayed start, the classes that meet may have an alternative activity in order for the teacher to keep all classes on the same schedule.

Students barely have time to get settled and started on the day's work before the class is over and the next one begins. Labs that need a full five minutes or more for clean-up are put off until a full day of school. Tests may be delayed to keep all the students on the same schedule or because there isn't enough time.

Any new topics that are introduced the day prior to a delayed start or snow day need to be reviewed again, as many students will simply see a day off as a vacation day and not do any studying or preparation for their return to school. It disrupts the learning process, disrupts the instructional schedule, and disrupts laboratory investigations so much that they may be dropped entirely.

Teachers of many other subjects do not have the same difficulties as science teachers when dealing with days off for weather or delayed start. If chemical solutions have been mixed prior to a lab class, they may need to be discarded before being used if a school is closed for a day or two due to weather. Biological materials may die or become useless if stored past a certain time frame. Setting up a complex lab takes time that might not be available on a compressed schedule.

I've thought for a long time that our school year should be lengthened. When schools can continue to meet legal requirements for the number of days held (180), even after losing several days' worth of instruction due to delayed starts, maybe it's time to look at changing from an agriculturally-based school year to one that reflects the demands of the 21st century instead of the 19th.

Recent NAEP results

The 2009 NAEP results were released yesterday. According to the New York Times, "Only one or two students out of every 100 displayed the level of science mastery that the department defines as advanced, the government said."

Due to changes from the 2005 test, the results cannot be compared to earlier years. Regardless, it shows that American students' achievements in science are dismal.

The Basic level denotes partial mastery of the knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at each grade. Seventy-two percent of fourth-graders, 63 percent of eighth-graders, and 60 percent of twelfth-graders performed at or above the Basic level in science in 2009.

The Advanced level represents superior performance. One percent of fourth-graders, 2 percent of eighth-graders, and 1 percent of twelfth-graders performed at the Advanced level. (From The Nation's Report Card: Science 2009)

How can we possibly compete with industries from China and India when we can't even being to train our OWN students to master topics in basic science fields?

Norm Augustine, the former CEO of Lockheed Martin and a major author of Rising Above the Gathering Storm, has been calling for science education reform for over half a decade, to little avail. Industries are alarmed; students are falling further behind; but parents and the schools think that the status quo is just right.

While parents and the public understand the value of STEM skills, there’s still a gap between the way the leaders and public see the problem. Few Americans think it is absolutely essential for students to understand advanced sciences like physics (28%) and advanced math like calculus (26%). When it comes to their own child, few parents want more emphasis on advanced math and science like physics (42%) and calculus (42%). Additionally, nearly 7 in 10 Americans say science can wait until middle and high school. (From Are We Beginning to See the Light? at Public Agenda.)

I've had many people tell me that what our country needs is another "Sputnik moment" to spur us into action about reforming science education. I think we've passed it -- and very few people have noticed.