Experts Say Education Goals Need More Time : Schools: A massive retraining of teachers is called necessary to achieve President Bush’s timetable for excellence in science and mathematics.

A call by President Bush on Wednesday to improve math and science education nationwide was praised by Orange County educators, but they added that the changes needed to dramatically raise test scores in those subjects would require a drastic overhaul of the educational system.

“Education is the one investment that means more for our future because it means the most for our children. . . . That’s why tonight I am announcing America’s education goals,” Bush said in his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress.

Among his goals, the President said, is to make American students “first in the world in math and science achievement” by the year 2000.

While all of the educators interviewed Wednesday agreed that Bush’s goal for math and science can be achieved, most doubted it could be done in a decade. They said that the drastic changes in curriculum needed to improve test scores would probably take three to five years to develop and perhaps another three to five years to implement.

That, along with the critical shortage of properly trained teachers, would make the President’s 10-year goal difficult to achieve, they said.

“It’s possible, if you go full speed, to do it in 10 years,” said Phillip Daro, executive director of the California Math Project and director of the American Mathematics Project. “I don’t think it’s likely.”

Traditional methods of teaching math, science and other subjects would have to be almost entirely scrapped and replaced with practical lessons that relate to day-to-day activities, Daro said. Such a radical change, he said, could take years to gain acceptance among teachers.

“There are 120,000 teachers in California who are teaching math, and every single one of them is going to need time for change,” Daro said. “They’re going to need time to talk to each other; they’re going to need time to develop changes; they’re going to need time to err and learn. We have to sponsor time for teachers to do the work of changing.”

Still, Daro and other educators agreed that curriculum changes already under way are being enthusiastically received among many teachers and that student scores in math and science are slowly rising.

“To be first in the next nine years is really tough,” said Maureen Allen, a science teacher at Brywood Elementary School in Irvine. “We have to change the attitudes of society, but we have to start with the teacher, we have to provide teacher training and have them find time in their day for more planning. But it’s certainly a goal worth striving for.”

Dr. Robert Peterson, superintendent of the Orange County Department of Education, said the county’s students are already well on their way to improving math and science scores. Orange County students have scored an average of 20 to 30 points higher than the statewide average on California Assessment Program math and science tests in the last four years, he said. SAT scores for high school students were also above the state average.

“We’re better than most of California, and there’s some contributing reasons for that,” Peterson said. “We have a competitive society here, and that helps quite a bit, and we’ve had a tradition of helping youngsters become fascinated with science and math. . . . Math and science are crucial for every resident in Orange County because we’re such a high-tech society.”

But, he added, while Orange County does well compared to other counties, “we’re not anywhere near achieving what we would want, so the sky’s the limit.”

That limit, however, could be drastically lowered without a concerted effort toward retraining teachers, many of whom are leading math and science classes despite their own deficiency in those subjects, other educators said.

“One of the major problems, especially in my area of physics, is we do not have enough qualified people to teach physics,” said William Leader, a physics teacher at Loara High School in Anaheim and a director of a teacher training program at Cal State Fullerton. “I think it (the President’s plan) is a very unrealistic goal until we have better trained teachers.”

The problem, Leader said, is that most trained physicists opt for high-paying jobs in the private sector upon graduation from college, often forcing schools to assign unqualified teachers to physics and other science classes to fill the gaps.

A similar problem exists in math classes, said David Pagni, a Cal State Fullerton mathematics professor who conducted a study of teacher qualifications in California.

“We have a real problem in California where we have people in the classroom teaching math and science who really aren’t qualified,” Pagni said. “There’s a large portion of math departments that don’t have mathematics majors in them. Less than half of the (teachers) in math departments have a BA in mathematics.”

Such poor training, the educators said, leads to a downward educational spiral for students. In fact, statistics show that students who do well in math and science in early grades often drop off in test scores when they get to high school.

“The discrepancy between generally accepted curricula at various grade levels vis-a-vis what students actually know and can do appears to widen as students progress through school,” according to a 1988 report entitled, “The Mathematics Report Card: Are We Measuring Up?” issued by the Princeton, N.J.-based Educational Testing Service.

Daro, head of the California Math Project, blamed such findings on traditional testing methods, which he said do little more than test students’ ability to memorize answers.

Allen, the Brywood Elementary School science teacher, agreed that traditional teaching methods will have to give way to less rigid, more hands-on methods in the classroom if Bush’s goal is to be attained.

She added that she has already started such a program in her class. Her efforts were recognized when she was one of six teachers in the state honored with the Herb Strongin Award for Excellence in elementary science teaching last year.

Allen added that she believes American students can be first in the world in math and science if educators dedicate themselves to teacher retraining, better teacher recruiting, higher salaries and changed curricula.

“There’s something to be said for the excitement of setting a goal and having everyone focused on it and rallying around it,” she said. “I really think we can pull it off.”

THE NATION’S REPORT CARD

The following questions were asked in tests by the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, N.J., for the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Questions were administered to students ages 9, 13, and 17 nationwide to test their levels of science proficiency. LEVEL 150: Knows Everyday Science Facts

Students at this level know some general scientific facts of the type that could be learned from everyday experiences. They can read simple graphs, match the distinguishing characteristics of animals, and predict the operation of familiar apparatus that work according to mechanical principles. LEVEL 300: Analyzes Scientific Procedures and Data

Students at this level can evaluate the appropriateness of the design of an experiment. They have more detailed scientific knowledge in interpreting information from text and graphs. These students also exhibit a growing understanding of principles from the physical sciences.

Source: The National Assessment of Educational Progress

SCIENCE EDUCATION GAP--Lack of a national strategy makes it difficult to meet science education goals. A21