A Textbook Case

This is a tale of reading, writing and rejection.

A few years ago, teacher Leigh Hoven-Severson decided to gather a few colleagues together and tackle a daunting task--writing a science textbook for grade-school students.

After toiling on their own time, the teachers submitted their finished product--a series of books for kindergarten through fourth grade dubbed “Exploring Science”--to the state of California’s science textbook selection committee.

Hoven-Severson and her co-authors figured they had a winning recipe--educational guidebooks full of stimulating experiments and lesson plans to fan the critical thinking skills of young students.

But the state textbook selection committee didn’t share that view. The panel gave the humble-looking texts a blistering review. Rejected from the A-list, “Exploring Science” was ineligible for most of the state money that school districts around California heavily rely on to buy textbooks. For a small scholastic publisher, that can be a mortal blow.

Battered but not beaten, Hoven-Severson and company tried a different tack, marketing their books on the Internet, pushing them into a national catalog of school science supplies and then haunting educational conferences to pitch the program.

Now, five years after the Fountain Valley teachers first set pen to page, they’re seeing a few signs of success.

What California rejected, the state of Utah has welcomed on its list of recommended science texts. Apparently a schoolbook, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder: The Utah review called the texts “new, exciting.”

Hoven-Severson’s own classes at James H. Cox Elementary School use the book and have finished first in the state three years running in a NASA science education contest. One third-grade team, which finished second nationally in 1994, consisted of three students whose native languages were Hindi, Farsi and Chinese.

In Ohio, a low-income district that latched onto “Exploring Science” has seen a remarkable increase in performance. Classes that used the text are now scoring higher in science than districts in wealthy surrounding communities.

“If you take a short look at their manual, you want to push it aside because it looks very black-and-white, it doesn’t have the frills and the fluff,” said Mary Linton, curriculum director at Struthers City School District in Ohio. “But it’s got the content, it’s got the meaning.”

None of the recent accomplishments have quelled the bitter feelings the California selection process left with Hoven-Severson and her team, which includes fellow Cox Elementary teachers Kathleen Davis Manuel and Carrie Luger Slayback, as well as the district’s special projects director, Linnea Nell Haley, and Harriette “Jerry” Bolliger, a 45-year veteran teacher who retired in 1992.

Hoven-Severson said the idea of publishing a book hatched one day in 1991 when she talked with her cousin, a school administrator in Kern County who had just returned from a conference and was brimming with excitement about the state’s newly crafted science text framework.

Hoven-Severson had the seed money from an inheritance from her parents. Her husband, Larry, was willing to leave his job in the aerospace industry to act as day-to-day pitchman for the project.

They set up their own publishing house, called Macro Press Inc., and sat down to write. No one took a salary. Everyone worked long and hard after the final school bell.

The result is, at the least, a primer on how to make the best of a low budget.

For starters, the “Exploring Science” texts are priced considerably less--at $15 per pupil--than those produced by big publishers, which can cost three or four times more.

And the books contain exercises that don’t require expensive microscopes, laboratory specimens or pricey computers. A typical experiment might involve a piece of bread that is weighed, studied and then toasted, only to be weighed and studied some more. The lesson? To demonstrate changes in density and allow students to hypothesize about how and why it occurs.

“Part of what drove us to do this was idealism, part was naivete,” Hoven-Severson said. “We really thought we could make a difference. We just had no idea what we were up against, and we had faith in a system we now believe is flawed.”

The review committee scalded Hoven-Severson’s text as containing “many errors of interpretation or fact.” One example it cited was the statement “a billion is a million millions”--it’s actually a thousand millions.

Reviewers said the texts also did not clearly explain why certain scientific concepts are important. Though hands-on learning is used at least 40% of the time, “children are often treated as passive learners,” the committee said. Moreover, it said, opportunities for “multicultural experiences” are missed.

Hoven-Severson couldn’t believe it.

“When we first started, we told them we couldn’t put this in a really polished form in the time we had left,” she said. “They said don’t worry. Then the reviewers dinged us for just the sorts of things they said they would roll with.”

Today, state education officials say “Exploring Science” was judged fairly along with the more than two dozen other science texts submitted in 1992.

“It should be seen as nothing more or less than a point of view,” said Glen Thomas, state assistant superintendent for elementary education. “It doesn’t mean these materials shouldn’t be used in schools.”

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School districts are given leeway to spend 30% of the state instructional material money they get on any books they choose, including “Exploring Science,” Thomas said. The pitfall, however, is that the state approval provides marketing cachet both in California and across the country.

The harsh summation “Exploring Science” drew from the California reviewers contrasts sharply with the findings of several teachers who have used the texts in other states.

Claud Greenlee, president of Science Teachers of Missouri and a science instructor in Russellville, Mo., said the program not only helps interest pupils in science, it also tutors them in math, reading, literature, history and social studies.

For instance, children learning about ecology are urged to write a poem. To remember what they’ve learned about the senses of eyesight and hearing and taste, children sing a song.

“I like the fact it has students making a paper airplane out of a rubber band and a discarded Kleenex box,” Greenlee said. “Reviewers look at that and say it isn’t sophisticated science because you’re using all this junk. But to me it’s creative. I’m sold on the program.”

Ruth Ann Davenport, a first-grade teacher in Wasatch, Utah, calls it “a good user-friendly program” for students and teachers.

“California is the loser for not accepting this as far as I’m concerned,” she said. “This program has been put together by teachers. They’re the best ones to do it--they’ve been down in the trenches. They know the difficulties you’ll face in the classroom.”