An editorial in the Lakeland Ledger cautions against setting kids up for failure in math/science education as bills requiring tougher graduation requirements moves through the state legislature.
Students who don’t receive the necessary groundwork for math and science courses in lower grades — and many American children don’t — could be heavily disadvantaged.
It’s too soon to know whether higher science and math requirements could raise high-school dropout rates, but Florida should take steps to ensure that they don’t.
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Florida will need strategies to close those gaps, create engaging-and-effective math and science curricula, provide remedial help, design tests to measure performance, and hire a lot more certified math and science teachers. All of these have cost implications at a time when schools struggle for revenue.
For one thing, we will have to ramp up teacher education in chemistry and physics very promptly. There will be needs in math and biology as well, but chemistry and physics will present special challenges. For one thing, we will have to recruit and educate much larger numbers of new chemistry and physics teachers than we have in the past.
Yup, and let’s see, the one thing that will NOT promote teachers to seek advanced education is Senate Bill 6. Florida can’t seem to get much right, can it?