The American Physical Society, as one of the leading scientific societies in the nation, with more than 40,000 members, has followed the evolution of the California Science Content Standards with great interest, and has expressed its concern about the path this evolution has taken. Notwithstanding the assertion that the proposed standards are "world class", my colleagues and I view these standards as currently written to be seriously flawed and in need of major revision. This revision is absolutely necessary in our view and in the view of more than 10 major scientific societies representing the scientific community, if science education in California is to achieve its goal of preparing students for the next century.

We do not call lightly for a major revision at this relatively late date. I have expressed our concerns about previous drafts of the standards, but there is no evidence that our concerns were addressed. If anything, the document as it evolved moved even further in a direction that we consider to be ill-suited to the needs of students. Moreover, it is incumbent upon us to state our objections publicly because the opinions of a few scientists who have strongly backed this document have been portrayed as the views of the scientific community. They are not.

The proposed standards are overstuffed. There is a strong bent toward including every aspect of a subject, often in a level of factual detail well in excess of either the needs or the interests of students. This is likely to dampen students' enthusiasm for and appreciation of science - a serious problem for a document that is intended to guide science education for all students in grades K-12. Whereas some students might pursue some science topics to the level of detail proposed by the standards, there simply is not enough time for even the best students to meet all of the standards unless the subject matter is covered in only a superficial manner. We believe that high quality science education should allow students to gain important scientific concepts along with an appropriate amount of factual knowledge.

Two national consensus documents have been at the core of science education reform for the past few years. These documents -- Benchmarks for Science Literacy, developed by the AAAS, and National Science Education Standards, developed under the leadership of the National Research Council -- represent years of work by thousands of leading scientists and educators. Both documents demand that the understanding of scientific concepts, not the simple recall of facts, be the goal. Both documents make a very conscious effort to reduce the total amount of content in order that students have time to develop mastery of the most important concepts. The importance of this approach has been reinforced by the results of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), a massive study of science education in more than 40 countries. This study found that science and mathematics courses in the US cover far more topics with far less time per topic than curricula in other countries, and that the achievement of US students in these subjects is comparatively very weak.

This draft of the California Science Content Standards moves in exactly the opposite direction from the national consensus represented by those documents. More content has been added since the previous draft, which itself was overloaded. The high-school chemistry standards are a painful example. Reading through the eleven major headings, one is appalled at the thought that this huge breadth of material will be the minimum course coverage for a single year. A course covering this much material would be far more appropriate for science majors at research universities.

The amount of detail is only one part of the issue. The larger problem is that these proposed standards place too much stress on just knowing facts, and leave little or no time for understanding concepts and acquiring scientific habits of thinking. Of course, one must know facts in order to gain understanding, because otherwise there is nothing to understand. But both common sense and modern educational theory tell us that students, when asked to memorize disconnected facts without truly understanding them, quickly lose interest in the subject. If these standards are adopted, they may turn a whole generation of California students away from careers or even an interest in science.

These standards also ignore the needs of the much larger numbers of students who will not pursue careers in science, yet who must become scientifically literate in order to function effectively in modern society. Children who are trained just to accept and memorize facts tend to grow up without the ability to question and analyze what, as adults, they read or are told. Also, these standards fail to recognize that all students need to learn how to relate science and technology to other aspects of the world in which they live and to issues on which they will be required to vote. Nowhere in these standards can one find any mention of scientific issues in society or the history of science. Once again, the big picture suffers because of the focus on details.

The proposed standards also ignore what is known about the cognitive development of children. For example, the atomic nature of matter and the periodic table are introduced in the third grade. These concepts involve significant abstractions well beyond the recognized cognitive abilities of such young children. Content that is widely regarded by the cognitive research community as developmentally inappropriate has been included in lower grades in a false pursuit of rigor and high expectations. It is especially ironic that in a document that is intended to be a guide to exemplary instruction in science, an important body of scientific knowledge seems to play no role.

For all of these reasons, and for others that are too lengthy to discuss here, I and my colleagues at the American Physical Society view the proposed standards as counterproductive to science education in California and the country as a whole. Thus we join with our fellow scientific societies in calling for a major revision of the standards.

Specifically, we propose that the revision be coordinated by a group of eminent California-based scientists to be known as the Scientists' Standards Panel. This group, whose names and credentials we have attached, could lead a revision that would remedy the defects of the proposed standards and be ready in time for the November deadline set by the legislature. This group would fairly represent the views of the scientific community, and would produce a document that could indeed serve as a model for the nation.

Attachments:

1) Detailed Critique of Proposed California Science Content Standards

2) Synopsis of Plan for Revising the California Science Content Standards