By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
Last week, the Kansas State Board of Education heard a report from their staff encouraging them to promote Kansas joining the Interstate Teacher Mobility Compact. Similar to states across the country, Kansas schools are experiencing growing vacancies statewide.
Kansas is one of only eleven states that require high school science teachers to have in-depth education in either biology, chemistry, physics or earth sciences. To be a high school biology teacher, Kansas universities provide from 32 to 48 credit hours of biology coursework, from ecology to molecular biology to microbiology. Human anatomy and physiology are critical for teaching students about our immune system and other defenses against disease. Chemistry and physics and earth science teachers all require basic and advanced courses with laboratories and field trips critical to understanding science in depth. They can then provide high school students with hands-on experiences, motivating some to continue on into a science career. Biology teachers must also have basic courses in chemistry, etc.
However, for middle school science teachers, Kansas only requires one or two introductory level courses in each of biology, chemistry, physics and earth sciences—preparation that is barely adequate to teach those younger students. Yet that one-size-fits-all general science training is what the other 40 states (includes DC) require for their high school teachers. That lack of in-depth teacher preparation, along with very low K–12 science and math requirements compared to Europe and the Far East, has contributed to the widespread public science ignorance that has been very obvious during these last three years.
For over 40 years, I have always wondered whether the U.S.—that is falling desperately behind in public science literacy and no longer leads the world in many areas of science research—will ever turn around and teach more science in K-12 and require more depth of science training of HS teachers.
The answer during this accelerating shortfall of teachers is as expected: a dilution to the lowest common denominator. To understand the problem of making interstate transfer of teachers automatic, we have to look at these substantial differences in teacher content knowledge across states.
Kansas mainly draws out-of-state teachers from its border states (CO, NE, MO and OK), all of which have the weak one-size science teacher. As presented to KSBE, the Interstate Teacher Mobility Compact would simply accept shallow-trained general science teachers to come into KS and teach high school biology, chemistry, physics and earth sciences without any further training and at full pay.
There is another problem with the Interstate proposal. It is a design that requires adoption by each state’s legislature. Across the country, there are a wide range of state education governance systems. Some states appoint boards of education or elect a commissioner or have a mixed system often involving their state legislature. In four states, there is no state board and the chief is an “education czar.” But in many states, their legislature is thoroughly entangled in education policy. But legislators are not experts on education for the same reason that patients are not experts on medicine.
Kansas is one of only eight states where the State Board is elected and then appoints their Superintendent or Commissioner. States without elected Boards have seen education policy whip-saw from one pet reform to another. We can readily expect such states to rapidly adopt this compact, focusing only on the teacher shortage and ignoring the need for teachers trained-in-depth.
But the Kansas Board of Education can focus solely on the complexities of Kansas schools and maintain stability with overlapping terms in office. Future Kansas teachers should not come from neighboring states with watered down requirements. Indeed, if our future U.S. generations are to become more science literate, it is the 40 states (including DC) that should adopt the rigor required in Kansas and ten other states. Otherwise, Kansas and the broader U.S. will not have a science future.
Nevertheless, the answer to my nationwide question on whether the U.S. will increase science literacy via more coursework and deeper-trained teachers, or descend further into the science literacy level of undeveloped countries is becoming fairly clear: states will not move to requiring more depth. And through actions such as adopting this Interstate Teacher Mobility Compact, we will accelerate our race to the bottom.
. . .
John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities during 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.