Even reports published by prestigious institutions can be flawed and deserve a low grade.  In my own view, this is the case for the Fordham Institute’s new report entitled The State of State Science Standards that was published recently.

Yet when you do a Google search for “Fordham review science standards” there are hundreds of links to articles and blog posts that reference the Fordham report.   Nearly all of these posts accept at face value the results and conclusions that the Fordham Institute makes about the state of the science standards in the United States.  According to the Fordham report (which grades all states on a scale of A – F):

The results of this rigorous analysis paint a fresh—but still bleak—picture. A majority of the states’ standards remain mediocre to awful. In fact, the average grade across all  states is—once again—a thoroughly undistinguished C.

The map of the United States shows the grades that Fordham assigned each state, grading the state A if it was outstanding, and an F if it was awful.

According to the report only California and the District of Columbia had really strong sets of standards, and they scored a straight A. In this scoring exercise, only four other states earned high enough scores to get a grade of A-. Fordham reported that only 25% of the states received grades of B or better, meaning the other 75% of the states have a lot of work to do to improve their standards—according to the Fordham report.

Titles of blog posts paint a picture of science education that is not very flattering. Here are a few:

• Illinois gets a ‘D’ in science ed,
• U.S. State Science Standards are Mediocre to Awful,
• Many States Receive ‘D’ or ‘F’ in Review of Science Standards,
• Errors Mar School Science Criteria.

These are typical of the kinds of reporting about the “state of the state science standards.”  In the Fordham world, science education in America is in sad shape.  They offer solace to states that did not receive high marks, however. They can look to California or to the District of Columbia for a Model A set of science standards, and then re-write them to move the standards into Fordham’s concept of grade A science standards.

But, should we accept the Fordham score card as being a valid and reliable assessment of the state of the state science standards?

The short answer is no.

The long answer is discussed below the map.

Grades for State Science Standards, 2012. Source: State of the State Science Standards, Fordham Institute, p. 6.

Analysis of the Fordham Criteria Used to Assess Science Standards

According to the Fordham report, their

experts employed new and improved content-specific criteria as well as the “common grading metric” that has been used for all of the reports in this cycle of Fordham standards reviews.  (p.5)  Application of those criteria and the common metric yields—for every state in every subject—a two-part score: a tally from zero to seven for “content and rigor,” and a tally from zero to three for “clarity and specificity.” These were combined such that each set of standards obtained a total number grade (up to ten), which was then converted to a letter grade, A – F. (p. 6, The State of State Science Standards)

In the Fordham report there is a section of Methods, Criteria and Grading Metric in which the authors report that they devised  content-specific critieria against which the science standards in each state were evaluated.  The authors divided the science content into learning expectations through grade eight (lists of statements divided into Physical Science, Earth and Space Science, and Life Science) , and learning expectations for grades nine through 12 (lists of statements for physics, chemistry, Earth and Space science, and life science).

I was shocked when I read and then analyzed the criteria that Fordham used to analyze the state science standards.  There are about 100 statements of the content that Fordham thinks students should learn in science K – 12.  Lets call them Fordham’s science standards.  They are roughly divided equally among the seven categories identified above (3 categories of science at the K – 8 level, and 4 categories of science at the 9 – 12 level.

Sample Fordham Science Content Statements

Here are some examples of the Fordham science standards taken from different content categories in the Fordham Report.

• Know some of the evidence that electricity and magnetism are closely related (physical science)
• Trace major events in the history of life on earth, and understand that the diversity of life (including human life) results from biological evolution (life science)
• Recognize Earth as one planet among its solar system neighbors (earth science)
• Be able to use Lewis dot structures to predict the shapes and polarities of simple molecules (chemistry)
• Know the basic structures of chromosomes and genes down to the molecular level (biology)

I analyzed all of the Fordham statements using Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.  I did this because the Fordham statements are written as if they were extracted from the 1960s and 1970s when Bloom’s Taxonomy was used to write educational objectives which we called standards years later.  There are other ways to analyze (science) standards.  I’ll deal with them in another post.  For now, lets use Bloom.

Low Cognitive Level Found in the Fordham Science Criteria

What did I find?  The Fordham standards are low level, mediocre at best, and do not include affective or psycho-motor objectives.  I analyzed each Fordham statement using the Bloom categories in the Cognitive, Affective and Psycho-motor Domain.  Table 1 shows how the 100 Fordham science standards are distributed among the various categories of Bloom.

Ninety percent of all of the Fordham science criteria fall into the lowest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy in the cognitive domain.  Indeed, 52% of the statements are at the lowest level (Knowledge) which includes primarily the recall of data or information.  Twenty-eight percent of the Fordham science statements were written at the Comprehension level, and only 10% at the Application level.  What this means is that the authors wrote their own science standards at a very low level.  In fact of the 100 statements only 10% were at the higher levels.  No statements were identified at the synthesis level, which in science is awful.  Only one science standard was found at the highest level of evaluation.  Cognitively, the Fordham standards are not much to write home about.  And it is amazing, given the low level of the Fordham standards that any state would score lower than their own standards.

The Fordham authors state that quantitative thinking and problem solving are critical to science teaching, yet when you read their criteria, there is no support for this statement.

If they really used the science content criteria that they list in their report to evaluate state science standards, it seems unreasonable that any state would score lower than their own criteria.  The Fordham science content statements are in general examples of very old ways of stating objectives, and do not even reflect the National Science Education Standards which were written in the 1990s.  Indeed, they made no attempt to integrate the most recent work done by the National Research Council’s publication, A Framework for K-12 Science Education.

The Fordham list of science content is a sham, and for states to be held to their standards is not only unprofessional, but a disgrace.

When you study the Fordham standards, you find no mention of affective goals of science teaching, nor any real reference to psycho-motor skills.  Students should be engaged with laboratory and hands-on manipulation of equipment, yet the Fordham group choose not to write anything in this area.  Attitudes toward science and technology are important aspects of science teaching, and to ignore them does not represent good practice.

Table 1. Level of Thinking in the Fordham Science Standards

    (Criteria Used to Evaluate U.S. State Science Standards)

Science Inquiry: Little to None in the Fordham Report

One of the areas that is completely missing in the lists of science to be learned are standards for science inquiry.   What is amusing here is that the Fordham authors criticized the states for “poor integration of scientific inquiry.”  If any group showed poor integration of inquiry into the standards, it has to be the Fordham group.  They do mention one inquiry science outcome or objective, yet they slam the states for not integrating science inquiry.  They need to get their own house in order before they go around the country laying it on the states.

The Fordham Institute doesn’t have much faith in inquiry science teaching.  One of the authors of the current report (Dr. Paul Gross) reviewed the NRC Framework for K-12 Science Education, and published the review through the Fordham Institute.  In a recent post about Gross’s report I wrote this:

Gross also observes that, to their credit, the authors “wisely dismiss what has long been held indispensable for K-12 science: “inquiry-based education.”  I am not sure where Gross gets this idea that the NRC report dismisses inquiry-based education because inquiry is prominently identified in the NRC report and in fact the authors of the Framework state that in “all inquiry-based approaches to science teaching, our expectation is that students will themselves engage in the practices and not merely learn about them secondhand.”  The Fordham report is totally off-base here.  The Framework does support inquiry-based learning, and indeed devotes an entire Dimension of its report to inquiry in its section on practices.

Gross claims that the NRC Framework authors “wisely demote what has long been held the essential condition of K-12 science: ‘Inquiry-based learning.’”  The report does NOT demote inquiry, and in fact devotes considerable space to discussions of the Practices of science and engineering, which is another way of talking about inquiry. In fact, inquiry can found in 71 instances in the Framework.  It seems to me that Gross and the Fordham Foundation is trying to make the case that Practices and Crosscutting ideas are accessories, and that the part of the Framework that should be taken seriously is the Disciplinary Core Ideas, or Dimension 3.  This will result is a set of science standards that are only based on 1/3 of the Framework’s recommendations.

So, for the Fordham Institute to make statements about how science inquiry is NOT integrated with content is absurd.

Undermining Evolution:  Who Would Know From the Fordham Content Criteria?

According to the Fordham authors, the way the science standards in U.S. states are written, creates an undermining of evolution.  This is an odd conclusion that they make because their own science criteria has only one science standard that deals with evolution and it is this statement:

Trace major events in the history of life on earth, and understand that the diversity of life (including human life) results from biological evolution (life science)

If anyone is undermining evolution with regards to science standards, it has to be the Fordham Institute itself.  How could they possibly do an honest review of biology and evolution when they make ONLY one statement about evolution.  Yes, they could scan through the online versions of each state’s science standards and look for examples of how evolution is approached or not.

In the section of their report where they identify four ways the science standards go wrong, an undermining of evolution is identified as problem 1.  Yet, when you read this section, its more like a history lesson on science education’s controversy over the teaching of evolution in the context of religious views as presented by creationism, intelligent design and critical thinking about controversial issues.  Their comments are not the result of an analysis of the state science standards, but a reflection on the current status of the teaching of evolution.  This author does not disagree with their conclusions here, but does not agree that these statements emerged from an analysis of science education standards in America.

What is the Status of Your State Science Standards?

You will find a review of your state’s science standards in the Fordham Institute report.  I decided to review the Georgia section of the Fordham report.  Georgia didn’t do too well.  It received a grade of C.  The report was criticized for its unevenness and disorganization, and was considered mediocre in general.  The evaluation ranged from spotty to excellent to pretty bad.

Yet when you go to the Georgia Standards online, a different picture emerges.  If you compare the list of science content criteria listed in the Fordham report to the standards that outlined in the Georgia report, there is no comparison.  The Georgia standards are more comprehensive than the science content criteria that the Fordham report identifies.  There is a stronger presence of science process and the nature of science.

The Fordham group was not pleased with the fact that Georgia science educators offer a wide range of courses at the high school level in addition to the traditional courses in biology, chemistry and physics.  Georgia science teachers developed additional courses such as astronomy, botany, earth systems, ecology, geology, and microbiology.

My score for Georgia would an A.  What score would you give your state?

What do think of this analysis of the Fordham Institute on The State of State Science Standards?  Do you agree with the report, or do you see what I am exploring as exposing some of the fallacy in their reporting.  Tell us what you think.