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Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Is Test Mania Killing Interest in Science Teaching? - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher

Is Test Mania Killing Interest in Science Teaching? - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher:


Is Test Mania Killing Interest in Science Teaching?

Last week I got some disturbing news from a science educator in Kansas. John Richard Schrock is a biologist who works at Emporia State University in Kansas, preparing science teachers.

In September he wrote about a visit from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan,and shared this graph, with the following caption:
KSBio.jpg
The number of new licenses awarded by Kansas State Department of Education KSDE to biology, chemistry, physics and earth science teachers over the last decade, all show a dramatic drop immediately after No Child Left Behind was imposed, and remain low under Duncan. The biology graph is representative. The science teacher pipeline declined dramatically over the last decade with the imposition of NCLB and standardized testing.

I was very curious about this. After all, one of the greatest concerns we hear about education is that we are not