Thursday, November 16, 2006
Students in Major Urban Areas Do Worse on Science Test
CNN reports that students in major urban areas generally do worse on a standardized science test than students in other areas.
One thought I have is that students in urban areas have less contact with "real" science in their lives. Living in a rural area, my kids have a creek behind our house, see plants and animals on a daily basis. Kids that help with farm work learn about chemistry, biology, earth science as part of daily life. Having these experiences, they are more easily able to relate the material they learn in school to real life. Thus, they remember and understand it more easily.
My son and I can look for fossils in nearby limestone cliffs and road cuts. We've watched calves be born, planted, grown and sold corn which is more complex than you might imagine. In urban areas such experiences are much harder to come by.
A few years ago, my niece's science class built a genuine rowing scull to demonstrate principles of physics. They had engineers and rowing coaches consult with them. They learned quite a bit during the course of the year. (The teacher received Teacher of the Year honors for Kentucky.) Basic classroom instruction is boring. Schools could incorporate projects like this one into their curriculum.
If schools integrated more hands on experiences with the formal studies, students would quite likely perform better academically. It's worth investigating.
Fourth-graders in nine of the 10 city districts had lower average scores than public school students nationally. The only exception was Austin, Texas, where they performed at the national average.The article does not identify and cause but does note "high teacher turnover and a lack of emphasis on teacher training as problems in urban school districts."
In eighth grade, all 10 urban districts had average scores below the national average.
The science scores are from the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test given nationwide periodically on a range of subjects. It is viewed as the best way to compare student achievement across state and district lines.
Besides Austin, the urban districts that participated in the comparative look were: Atlanta; Boston; Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Cleveland; Houston; Los Angeles; New York and San Diego.
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The topics covered on the tests include earth science, physics, chemistry and biology.
One thought I have is that students in urban areas have less contact with "real" science in their lives. Living in a rural area, my kids have a creek behind our house, see plants and animals on a daily basis. Kids that help with farm work learn about chemistry, biology, earth science as part of daily life. Having these experiences, they are more easily able to relate the material they learn in school to real life. Thus, they remember and understand it more easily.
My son and I can look for fossils in nearby limestone cliffs and road cuts. We've watched calves be born, planted, grown and sold corn which is more complex than you might imagine. In urban areas such experiences are much harder to come by.
A few years ago, my niece's science class built a genuine rowing scull to demonstrate principles of physics. They had engineers and rowing coaches consult with them. They learned quite a bit during the course of the year. (The teacher received Teacher of the Year honors for Kentucky.) Basic classroom instruction is boring. Schools could incorporate projects like this one into their curriculum.
If schools integrated more hands on experiences with the formal studies, students would quite likely perform better academically. It's worth investigating.
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