By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
In the 1980s, a Kansas student was only required to take two sciences courses. That “science” requirement could be fulfilled by taking a course in home economics and a course in “shop” or vo-tech.
Under enlightened leadership, a new education commissioner and state board members defined “science” courses to be the real science disciplines of biology, chemistry, physics and earth science. By the mid-1990s, the number of high school graduation science requirements was raised to three.
Kansas had been one of the last states to establish criteria for admission to its public universities. In 1997, the Kansas Board of Regents finally established “Qualified Admissions” standards that required that one of those three high school courses had to be either chemistry or physics. Current high school students were “grandfathered” and the requirements became effective for high school graduates in Fall of 2001.
The effect of more rigorous science requirements caused a major change in local Kansas schools, the large majority of which are small rural schools. Overnight, Kansas went from having a small surplus of biology teachers to having a major shortage of physics and chemistry teachers.
Before 1997, an interviewing new biology teacher was only asked “What sport can you coach?” and maybe “Can you keep order in the classroom?” Now the new teacher was asked how close they were to completing a chemistry or physics endorsement, because they all had taken some basic chemistry and physics in their biology teacher program.
And since the No Child Left Behind state assessments became universal in 2001, state school boards and administrators asked for a change in how they were accredited. Until that time, if a school lacked a qualified teacher (earlier called “certified” and now called “licensed”), the school would lose its accreditation after two years without a qualified teacher. With this NCLB assessment system in place, they asked for that criteria to be dropped since performance assessments would show whether the teaching was adequate. Thus, this statute went through public review and the KSBE ended the requirement. Today we know that state assessments merely promote teach-to-the-test memorization. The competency of well-trained teachers is far more important.
Some Kansas biology teachers would add the chemistry or physics endorsement to their teaching license by either taking summer courses or passing the chemistry or physics content exams. But that supply soon dried up. Today, a growing number of rural schools lack a qualified chemistry or physics teacher.
But as university enrollments began shrinking a few years ago, the Kansas Board of Regents removed the “chemistry or physics” and other detailed requirements from Qualified Admissions, and adopted a very general level of test scores for admission. While this “eliminated a barrier” to students attending college, it likewise undermined the science requirements of high schools statewide. Unless detailed in a USD’s distinct curriculum requirements, small schools no longer need to offer chemistry or physics.
The Kansas Legislature is currently considering joining an Interstate Teacher Mobility Compact that would allow shallow-trained general science teachers to flow in from our border states and take jobs at full pay without meeting Kansas’s higher standards. Kansas students will learn far less under these imports. And our current qualified Kansas high school teachers will have to support their next-door untrained colleague.
This erosion in science is nationwide and has been underway for several decades. California dropped algebra requirements for college and many states are following. Many states are continuing online science “courses” that lack lab and fieldwork and were proven ineffective during the pandemic. The result is that the U.S. no longer leads the world in production of STEM graduates, of published science research papers, of science patents or of authorship in top-cited research.
As state legislatures and education boards across the nation continue to make decisions to “eliminate barriers” by lowering standards for graduation and for teacher training, the U.S. will decline further in science literacy and new discoveries. In Kansas, this problem may not seem important to those older legislators who graduated high school and took only home economics and vo-tech as “science”!
. . .
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.