CALIFORNIA'S 4TH-, 8TH-GRADERS NATION'S WORST ON SCIENCE TEST.Byline: Dana Bartholomew Staff Writer California students ranked dead last in a national science exam given last year to fourth- and eighth-graders, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. a U.S. Department of Education report card released Tuesday. The voluntary test ranked the Golden State behind such states as Louisiana and Mississippi, with more than half the participants unable to grasp basic scientific principles. Critics on Tuesday gave the state school system an F. ``There's nothing wrong with the kids, there's nothing wrong with the teachers, it's the management, stupid,'' said Bill Ouchi, co-chairman of the Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. Alliance for Student Achievement, a school reform advocacy group. ``All the strings are held in Sacramento, and that makes it difficult for local school districts to meet the specific needs of their kids.'' California fourth-graders who took the 2000 National Assessment of Education Progress exam scored an average of 6 points lower than students in 1996 - dragging California from the bottom third to last among states. Only the territories of Guam, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa American Samoa, officially Territory of American Samoa, unincorporated territory of the United States (2000 pop. 57,291), comprising the eastern half of the Samoa island chain in the South Pacific. fared worse. Among eighth-graders, Hawaii tied with California for last place. The Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), as part of the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES), collects, analyzes, and publishes statistics on education and public school district finance information in the United States; conducts studies test, given to fourth-, eighth- and 12th-graders, is the only continuing survey of student achievement in core subjects. Nationally, the report shows that average fourth- and eighth-grade scores differed little from 1996 and 2000, while scores for 12th-graders declined slightly. High school seniors challenged by tough questions answered 18 percent correctly, down from 21 percent in 1996. Nationwide, 53 percent of 12th-graders knew the basics, a slight drop. Top states included Vermont, Massachusetts, Montana, Ohio and North Dakota North Dakota, state in the N central United States. It is bordered by Minnesota, across the Red River of the North (E), South Dakota (S), Montana (W), and the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba (N). , which scored 160 or better out of 300 points. Average scores were around 149. California scored 131 and 132 in the fourth and eighth grades, respectively. Science curricula boosters, while distraught over the results, were not surprised. ``You can't expect to see big changes in student achievement when we haven't made big changes in the way students learn science,'' NSTA NSTA National Science Teachers Association NSTA National School Transportation Association NSTA National Spasmodic Torticollis Association NSTA National Substitute Teachers Alliance (Fresno, California) President Harold Pratt said in a statement. State school officials conceded that science has not been a priority in many schools, but criticized the exam as not being statistically valid. Testing 3,300 California students - of which 26 percent struggle with English, compared with 6 percent nationwide - does not reflect the performance of 6 million students statewide, they said. ``Our current state testing program does not include a science component until ninth grade,'' state schools Superintendent Delaine Eastin Delaine Eastin is a California politician. She served as the California State Superintendent of Public Instruction from 1995 to 2003. A native Californian, Eastin received her bachelor's degree from the University of California, Davis, and her master's degree in political science said in a statement. ``As I've always said, what gets measured is what gets done.'' New science standards are in place, she added, and will decided upon by the state Board of Education next month. A Los Angeles schools The Los Angeles School of Urbanism is an academic movement emerged during the mid-1980s, loosely based at the University of Southern California and UCLA, that poses a challenge to the dominant Chicago School of Urbanism. spokeswoman said that while reading and math instruction remain paramount, ``improving science (education) is part of our expanded focus to improve secondary education.'' Science educators, however, say improving skills in a state that once led the aerospace race to the moon is much more complicated. What's needed, they say, is: --Proper science and training for teachers, many of whom are liberal arts liberal arts, term originally used to designate the arts or studies suited to freemen. It was applied in the Middle Ages to seven branches of learning, the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. graduates not given the tools needed for proper science instruction, including ongoing development. --Statewide science standards set by science educators, not politicians. --Proper classroom supplies conducive to science instruction, with lower classroom sizes and less emphasis on expensive textbooks that haven't proved their mettle met·tle n. 1. Courage and fortitude; spirit: troops who showed their mettle in combat. 2. Inherent quality of character and temperament. . ``A curriculum, a textbook, they're no magic pill if a teacher does not know how to set up a proper learning environment,'' said Wayne Snyder, assistant director of the Caltech Precollege Science Initiative, which encourages science instruction in Pasadena and inner-city schools across the nation. ``I know (science) teachers with 40 to 50 students per class, with one teacher with 59 students at the beginning of class,'' he said. ``That's a problem throughout the state.'' ``There's very little science being taught,'' said a California State University, Northridge CSUN offers a variety of programs leading to bachelor's degrees in 61 fields and master's degrees in 42 fields. The university has over 150,000 alumni. It's also home to a summer musical theater/theater program known as TADW (TeenAge Drama Workshop) that leads teenagers through an , high school preparedness administrator who asked that her name not be used. ``When you take an entire school day built on reading and math, you're not going to get science in there.'' CAPTION(S): box Box: SCIENCE SCORES SOURCE: Department of Education Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. |
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