State Changes Standards For Science Students

SEBRING - Wearing goggles and protective aprons, Sebring High School chemistry students grind up Tums and Rolaids tablets with a mortar and pestle.

The heartburn remedies are harmless, but the students are using these antacid granules to neutralize hydrochloric acid.

It's called titration, which is the process of gradually adjusting the dose of a medication until the desired effect is achieved.

State educators are near the end of the process of updating the academic science standards for grades kindergarten through 12.

After receiving an "F" grade in a 2005 study, new state science standards have been drafted and could be approved next month.

It's a good thing that Florida is reworking its science standards, according to the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The current documents are reasonably well organized but sorely lacking in content.

The study by the Washington, D.C.-based institute gave flunking grades to 15 states, including Florida, and another seven states earned "D" grades.

Their handling of physics, stronger than for the other subjects, is disappointing, due to a prevalence of errors in fact and presentation, the study showed.

Sebring Middle School science teacher Shawn West believes the proposed revisions are an improvement.

Basically the major change is the four major clusters are now referred to as "big ideas," she said. Seventh grade had 73 standards that had to be covered and the new proposed standards have only 28 "benchmarks" that have to be covered.

"I think it's an improvement," she said. "As an educator you have to be prepared every single year for change and I'm ready for this change. I'm ready for new and improved standards and I think we have it."

Sebring High science teacher Steve Picklesimer said, "I hope they go to a point where they have more specific content-based standards than generalized science for just one test."

"Our goals were more specific on the content of the course," he said, about when he taught in West Virginia. "The FCAT [Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test] standards are more generalized and we end up having to worry about FCAT standards because we have an FCAT test.

Picklesimer reminds his chemistry students that a lab report is due next week.

"We titrated vinegar to see what concentration of acids are in vinegar," he said. "Now we are titrating to see what might be the better antacid using the knowledge we learned from acids and bases."

Working in teams of three or four, the students carefully measure the solutions and compounds they are mixing, and record the progress in their scientific journal.

Many of the students in this advanced class are considering careers in science, but their immediate task at hand lies in a small beaker.

One student on each team gently shakes a beaker of the mixture as they look for an indicator of success - the liquid changing color from gray to light pink or fucia.

One team sees pink and breaks into a cheer.

"It's amazing; last time it took us two days to do it; now we just did it in five minutes," said junior Christian Perilla. "That little pink trick gets old after about 15 minutes when you just can't get it."

In contrast to most of his classmates, science will likely not be a career focus.

"I took an aptitude test a couple of years ago, they gave here, and that said I'm either interested in economics or homeland security," Perilla said. "I guess I'll try that; I'm not really sure that's what I want to do."

Chemistry is fun when you get it right, but very aggravating when you don't, he said.

Junior Olivia Bullouck, one of Perilla's lab partners, said, "it's really tedious if you have wait for it to show even a hint of pink and then the pink goes away. So you really have to wait and wait and wait."

The University of Central Florida is currently her first choice in furthering her education.

"I want to major in science ... specifically forensics," she said.

But science studies are also important for her other career choice - pharmacy, which she would likely study at Florida A&M University.

Dermatology interests junior Clarissa Antioquia.

"I'm really into skin and stuff," she said.

Junior Heather McIntyre said she will probably enter a career involving science.

"I like this class; it's a lot of fun," she said.

Wednesday's Bell-Ringer

The seventh-grade science students in Shawn West's seventh-period class start with a problem from last year's eighth-grade Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT).

Every Wednesday class begins with an FCAT "bell-ringer," to prepare students for the state assessment test.

The FCAT question: how much more force (measured in Newtons) will the heavier of two cars require to accelerate 3 meters per second/squared. With the mass of the two vehicles provided, the students' task includes determining the correct formula to solve the problem.

"Do you know what percentage of eighth graders [state-wide] actually passed or scored well on this gridded response?" West asked her students.

After two students guessed 17 percent and 21 percent, West said only 34 percent of the students answered the question correctly.

West reminded her students that they were given an FCAT science reference sheet at the beginning of the school year, which includes the mathematical equations they will need to solve the FCAT questions.

West asks which equation would solve the problem. Then her students take turns at the interactive whiteboard to write out the equation and perform the calculations.

After determining the correct answer, the students use a number 2 pencil to fill in the answer sheet, as they would when taking the actual FCAT.

With the FCAT primer behind them, the students use wireless laptop computers and the Internet to learn about their birthstone for a report that is due this week.

Davis Stephens researched the sapphire.

"It's the second known hardest mineral," he said. "It can be mined in just about everywhere in the world. It comes in every single color except ruby, which is red."

Science On The Global Scale

Years of reports showing U.S. students lagging behind many countries in math and science has a new report to confirm there is room for science academic improvement.

The Program for International Student Assessment's study, comparing 15 year olds internationally, shows that the average combined science literacy scores for U.S. students was lower than the overall average of the 30 participating countries.

But the positive news from the report, which was released Dec. 4, shows a high percentage of students from the United States scored in the highest of the six levels of proficiency.