Science education is still not important to state leaders

The scores for the annual statewide education assessments were released recently and a press announcement from Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran’s office was celebratory. Passing percentages increased in English Language Arts, Mathematics, Social Studies and Biology. Corcoran praised “awe-inspiring” teachers and he highlighted a new law that pushed all testing to later in the school year to allow for more instructional time and less testing time.

But we here at Florida Citizens for Science noticed something missing from the everything-is-wonderful announcement. Biology results went up, but what about the rest of the science scores?

There are three science exams that public school students in Florida must take: the statewide science assessments in grades 5 and 8 and the high school biology end-of-course exam. The fifth and eighth grade tests cover a variety of science topics, such as the nature of science, earth/ space science, physical science and life science. The biology test is the only mandatory statewide science assessment given in high school.

Biology was worthy of mention in Corcoran’s press release because results improved by 2 percentage points over last year — from 65 to 67 percent — and hit their second-highest level in eight years.

But eighth and fifth grade science results? They dropped by 2 percentage points each. The eighth-graders went from 50 to 48 percent and the fifthgraders dipped from 55 to 53 percent. To get the real story, though, flip the numbers. Instead of 48 percent passing the eighth-grade test, reflect on the fact that 52 percent are not passing it, which equals roughly 101,700 students. Also, eighth graders haven’t broken past a 50 percent pass rate in eight years.

The fifth-graders are doing a bit better, but their passing percentages are hopelessly bouncing around the low 50s with no consistent upward trend since 2014.

I’ve been tracking annual science assessment results since at least 2008 and can confidently report that it’s been the same old bad news for more than a decade. And beside the consistently dismal state of test results, there are other worrying indicators that science education is not a subject that’s important to Florida’s elected and appointed officials.

One indicator: teacher shortages. The Florida Department of Education annually reports the subject areas experiencing critical teacher shortages. In this year’s report “Science-General” was ranked the No. 1 critical shortage and has been in the top three for at least four years. The report stated that in the 2018-19 school year there were 1,026 science courses across the state led by teachers without certification in the subjects.

That may be at least partially attributed to the fact that the pool of potential science teachers is shrinking. Another FLDOE report shows that fewer people take science certification exams every year. For instance, the number of people taking the certification exam in Earth/Space Science plummeted from 231 in 2015 to 140 in 2018. And not all of those most recent 140 are ready for the classroom; a little more than a quarter of them failed the exam.

Another indicator is the evaporation of physics from schools’ course offerings across the state. Florida State University physics professor Paul Cottle dug through the data and found that in public high schools with at least 1,000 students, 36 of them did not offer physics at all. This is an increase over the previous year’s tally of 31.

Unfortunately, this trend doesn’t worry some state lawmakers. A bill recently signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis allows students to substitute computer science credits for math and science credits that are required for high school graduation. Promoting computer science skills is worthwhile, but shouldn’t come at the cost of learning about the natural sciences.

The governor flippantly dismissed physics when he said: “Other than trying to keep my kids from falling down the stairs in the Governor’s Mansion I don’t know how much I deal with physics daily. You cannot live in our modern society without dealing with technology or computers in your daily life.”

Our state grapples with problems such as rising seas, invasive species, the quality of our diminishing fresh water resources, and disease outbreaks, just to name a few issues that require a sound background in science to understand and solve. There are also job opportunities in space exploration. Boeing is moving its Space and Launch division headquarters from Virginia to Florida. SpaceX is launching — and landing — rockets here. NASA is testing the Orion spacecraft here. By the way, these high-paying jobs require a physics education, Gov. DeSantis.

When will out state leaders start taking science education seriously?