The Death of Science?: What We Risk in Our Rush toward Standardized Testing and the Three R'S

Abstract

The authors raise an important question: Will standardized testing -- or, more accurately, the politicization of the standards movement -- snuff out the promise of methods for American education? FROM THE post-Sputnik panic of the 1960s to the landmark Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) of 1997, America's lackluster performance in education has served as a catalyst for education reform. For more than 30 years, teachers, administrators, researchers, and corporate leaders concerned about the future of instruction in America have contributed to significant improvements in curricula and instructional methodology. Today, a model of education exists that is founded on successful practice and validated by profound achievement gains. It has begun to attract the attention of school systems nationwide. Referred to in varying forms as or inquiry-based science, this approach is increasingly associated with a growing network of resource centers operating as part of or in tandem with school systems. Ironically, even as inquiry methods and resource centers stand poised to reinvigorate K-12 education in America, the national movement emphasizing reading, writing, and mathematics instruction, as measured by high-stakes standardized tests, threatens to suppress the effort to make truly revolutionary progress in education. Teachers and school administrators across the U.S. are facing enormous pressure to improve test scores in the basic skills areas. Consequently, they have been forced to reduce -- or in some cases eliminate -- the amount of class time devoted to instruction. Such measures will have a devastating long-term impact on education in America and, subsequently, on the medical, corporate, academic, and industrial sectors that rely on well-educated American students. How many of our scientists, researchers, graduate students, and entrepreneurs first found their interest in sparked by experiences in school? These very experiences are now jeopardized by the standards push in many states. With politicians, education critics, and the news media calling for basic skills accountability and with their attention fixated on improved standardized test scores, our nation's scientific future is at risk. Science Education That Works More than 35 years ago, Highline School District in Seattle began to experiment with a new way to teach in elementary school. Rather than have students passively observe while teachers talked about -- still the way is taught in more than 80% of America's K-8 schools1 -- this new system enabled the students themselves to perform ready-to-use experiments from prepackaged kits. Students learned by doing science, not by reading about in textbooks or by watching their teachers conduct demonstrations. In the Highline program, students began to explore and discover collaboratively, rather than just absorb and memorize in the isolation of their desks and texts. Students were allowed to learn over time -- preparing questions, designing experiments, organizing data, and developing conclusions as real scientists do -- rather than race through the mile-wide/inch-deep material covered in their textbooks. At this early date, the kit-based inquiry movement was born. The inquiry approach was founded on the premise that children learn actively, not passively. Students are introduced to methods and use them to engage in hands-on, minds-on activities that inspire them to discover scientific knowledge rather than being told answers by the teacher or textbook. In the inquiry model, teachers serve as guides and lead students through the experiments. Using the inquiry method, science content is covered in greater depth compared to a superficial traditional textbook approach. …