State Students’ Low Performance in Science

Re “California Students Get ‘D’ in Science,” May 3: We ask, “Can it get much worse?” The answer is unequivocally “Yes,” and with the next published test scores proving the point. I am a teacher at Venice High School and, along with colleagues districtwide, recently spent four days testing ninth- and 10th-grade students. This latest exam, the Stanford Achievement Test, is new to LAUSD this year.

In the 10th-grade social sciences portion of the test, 12 of the 40 questions ask for sheer recall and sometimes interpretation of material not formally introduced until the 11th grade. Six of the questions were pure economics, a 12th-grade course, and the math portion relied heavily on strong reading skills merely to finish within the allotted time. California students and their teachers will never get an “A” report card when the test doesn’t measure what the state and district demand we teach.

JERIE MORRISON

Mar Vista

* California has had a fuzzy, constructivist Science Framework since 1990. It stresses organization of curricula around vaguely defined themes, along with “integration” of disparate concepts. It encourages “higher order” thinking while ignoring the acquisition of basic facts and principles that students need to think with.

I believe California students would be better served by a logically constructed curriculum taught exclusively by teachers who are well-versed in the science. Such a curriculum would be balanced between strong textbooks, hands-on activities that are carefully constructed to illustrate fundamental principles, classroom discussion and direct exposition by the teacher. It would be well-defined in terms of grade level, so that students would take an ever-growing body of knowledge with them as they progress. Ideas would build in a natural order, from the simple to the complex. In such a curriculum, students would also be offered the opportunity to think in more sophisticated ways, but by combining (learned) basic principles and applying them to novel situations. This is how scientists actually work.

MARTHA SCHWARTZ

San Pedro

* California’s students are scoring poorly on national science exams, just like they are on math exams.

The primary reasons are lack of specific standards that students must meet before moving on to the next course and lack of consequences if they do not meet them.

The state has established a Standards Commission to oversee the development of K-12 subject matter standards. As a member of a state committee drafting science standards for California’s K-12 schools, I would like to alert the public and professional communities to insist on seeing and reviewing these standards documents before they are implemented in our schools. Only the public, through its elected officials, can implement change.

STEVEN B. OPPENHEIMER

Northridge