Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/42291
THE TRUTH ABOUT SCIENCE TESTS ยป Because of the way science is treated, it's not surprising that California's students score among the lowest in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests given to fourth-, eighth- and 12th-graders nationwide. Other factors may also be involved. The San Francisco Chronicle and other sources have pointed out that 51 percent of the California students who take the test are Latino, compared with 22 percent nationally. Also, in California English learners aren't exempt from taking the test as they are in some other states. Casallas wasn't surprised by NAEP scores revealed in January. Ninth-grad- ers, she says, enter her classroom totally lacking in the fundamentals of science. "The majority are unprepared. They don't know the difference between an atom and a cell. They don't understand water is not a living thing." George Cachianes, who teaches biotech at Lincoln High School in San Francisco, agrees that high school students are unpre- pared. He has to "start from scratch" and assume they have no prior scientific knowledge, even when it comes to understanding the metric system. "Yet if you get students engaged, you can quickly make up the deficiencies," says Cachianes, a member of United Educators of San Francisco. "You have to give them a chance to do something interesting and apply that knowledge." Cachianes, a researcher for 15 years at a biotech company and at the university level before becoming a teacher, does just that. His students work on cutting and recombining DNA, transforming cells by injecting them with foreign DNA, and using National Institutes of Health George Cachianes, Biotech teacher in San Francisco databases to compare DNA sequences taken from their bodies with those of others. His students have entered science competitions and sometimes beaten out students from Ivy League universities. But that type of knowledge isn't measured on stan- dardized tests, says Cachianes. He believes that state and national tests don't measure what students really know and fail to measure creativity, problem-solving and critical-thinking skills that are key factors in science. "Tests fail to measure much of any- thing," he says. "I hear about kids bub- bling in Christmas tree patterns and not taking the test very seriously at all, because it's boring and unengaging." While there is a great deal of hand- wringing in the education community over poor science test scores, science is in a Catch-22 situation: Science scores don't count much on California's Academic Per- formance Index (API). And since science doesn't count much, science is not empha- sized much. For years students weren't tested at all in science, and they now take the science CSTs (California Standards Tests) in grades 5 and 8 and high school. Science doesn't count at all in the AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) requirements of No Child Left Behind. "When you have science counting 5 or 6 percent, and English and math with a 20 or 30 percent weight, which subject do you emphasize?" asks Tim Williamson. "You emphasize the subjects where you can be most penalized for not doing well, and that's math and language arts." SCIENCE IS IN A CATCH-22: SINCE IT DOESN'T COUNT MUCH IN API SCORES, SCIENCE IS NOT EMPHASIZED MUCH. 18 California Educator / September 2011