According to a recent study, Bay Area elementary schools are not
providing students with an adequate science education, but Morgan
Hill Unified School District officials say the district’s nine
elementaries meet state standards.
Morgan Hill
According to a recent study, Bay Area elementary schools are not providing students with an adequate science education, but Morgan Hill Unified School District officials say the district’s nine elementaries meet state standards.
Pat Blanar, director of curriculum and assessment for the district, said she was aware there is a concern about science and social studies due to the emphasis on math and language arts because of the federal “No Child Left Behind” requirements, but with state standards requiring students to take biology in the ninth grade, the district makes an effort to make sure students are prepared.
“We are working hard to give them time to do a lot of the scientific investigation that is so critical, to learn the language of science, the vocabulary, just as we are using the language of math, so that they are using the appropriate language from the beginning,” she said.
The study, funded in part by the George and Betty Moore Foundation and conducted in spring 2007, focused on data collected from the districts in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma counties.
Of the K-5 multiple-subject teachers that took part in the study, 80 percent responded that they spent 60 minutes or less per week on science. Districts participating in the survey said that 50 percent of elementary classrooms spent 60 minutes per week or less on science. Of the teachers involved in the study, 16 percent said they spent no time at all on science.
However, the authors of the study caution, “We expect that those district personnel and teachers who took the time to respond to the survey were more likely to be more engaged in science education than those who did not.”
Blanar said there is no district requirement for how much time teachers spend each day teaching science, but there are state standards required to meet.
Teachers at the elementary level are under pressure to include a variety of topics during their day, unlike secondary teachers who typically focus on one subject during a class period. One of the ways elementary teachers work in science and social studies, Blanar said, is by incorporating reading materials on science and social studies topics as a part of the daily reading curriculum.
Barrett Elementary School Principal Lisa Atlas said teachers use non-fiction books on science and social studies, as well as National Geographic materials. Science, she said, is an important part of the curriculum for Barrett students.
“Everyone teaches science here according to state standards,” she said. “At Barrett, we spend our afternoons on science and social studies. You have to fit it all in. Not only are there state standards we must follow, but also we want our students to be exposed to a wider variety of topics, we want them to have a well-rounded education.”
For example, Barrett fifth-grade students enjoy studying the human body, which they divide into groups, each taking a system, such as the respiratory or circulatory, and creating a project explaining the system. Then, Atlas said, the “buddy class,” usually a first- or second-grade class, is invited in to the fifth-grade class which presents the projects to the younger students.
Blanar said the district is in the first year of new science textbooks for K-8 students.
As part of the new textbook adoption, the district has created a curriculum requiring a certain number of experiments in the classrooms. After this year, she said, the district will gather feedback from teachers to see if they found the number of experiments required to be appropriate and if the experiments were suitable or if others should be required.
