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Title : Ballard's Science Department Uses Logic on the District; Will It Work?
link : Ballard's Science Department Uses Logic on the District; Will It Work?
Ballard's Science Department Uses Logic on the District; Will It Work?
From the Ballard High School Science Department (and good for them):A group of science teachers headed by Ms. Welch has been working diligently to develop a rollout plan for the district’s need to address the state’s adoption of the NGSS. It has been made clear to us recently that this rollout plan is already underway.
Despite the professional efforts on the part of the transition team this curriculum adoption plan is so fundamentally flawed that we feel we must protest. If this adoption goes forward as proposed we fear it will generate many more problems than it is attempting to address. We will detail our logic below.
First, as to the specifics offered by the NGSS transition team within the last few weeks on this curriculum adoption: over the past year we and several colleagues in our department (collectively with nearly 100 years of teaching experience) voiced strong opposition to the draft proposals. We believe these fact-based objections and suggested alternative approaches were not adequately addressed.
Faced with the challenges of the Core-24 transition, this is not the time to launch the proposed profound alterations to the scope, sequence and very titles of established science courses.
No evidence has been produced to verify that the curriculum changes proposed are fully formed and fully vetted, despite the samples provided on the Science Wiki pages.
Furthermore, no evidence has been substantiated that there is district funding to support the facility impacts, the textbook needs or the teaching material requirements, not to mention the STEM components of NGSS that haven’t been addressed.
No concrete and verifiable proof has been offered to establish that the course name changes, content alterations and profound sequence shuffling will be accepted without question by colleges and universities nationwide. Telling an application acceptance office at Dartmouth University that 9th grade chemistry or physics is college preparatory is a very risky path that is wholly unnecessary at this time.
Tangentially, most of our 9th graders will be academically challenged by “Physics A” and “Chemistry A”, unless the content of these courses is reduced to non-algebraic thinking.
Furthermore, separating the course content over more than a year to a year and a half is folly, necessitating vast losses of time in re-teaching forgotten concepts.
Most critically, there is absolutely no evidence that parents have been advised of these plans - not after the fact, but before the plan is formed. There are no details on how we, the teachers in the trenches, will deal with the new science demands on our special education students.
Second, as to the process of the recently presented curriculum adoption plan, there was no guidance sought at the IC level, and more egregiously, no apparent advice or consent was solicited from our Building Leadership Team for such a profound transformation within our building.
To add insult to injury, the parents - as mentioned - of the impacted students would not be brought in for consultation until well into the adoption process. The Race and Equity tool created by the District puts great import on having community input before any significant change is made and to date this input has not been sought.
Finally, there has been no mention of School Board approval for such a vast curriculum change. This current adoption process can only be described as alteration of a 100+ year-old platform by fiat.
Fortunately, it is not too late to address these issues and delay this transformation to give it time to be developed more cautiously.
We and our colleagues have repeatedly suggested that many of the NGSS changes sought can be addressed by adapting the curriculum of the current Physical Science/Biology/Chemistry/
We propose layering needed content into the existing courses and sequences that will enable a more thorough vetting of the deliberate morphogenesis by all involved parties in a more manageable period of time that will, quite importantly, not put us in conflict with Core-24 changes nor leave our Special Education students at risk.
India Carlson
Dewey J. Moody, Ph.D.
Science Department Co-Heads, Ballard
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