{"id":1480,"date":"2012-01-31T11:10:19","date_gmt":"2012-01-31T15:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=1480"},"modified":"2012-01-31T11:15:31","modified_gmt":"2012-01-31T15:15:31","slug":"darn-those-unofficial-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1480","title":{"rendered":"Darn those unofficial reviews!"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I stared at our science standards’ new D grade from the Fordham Foundation<\/a>, I had vague recollections that a couple of Fordham’s reviewers had looked over the standards back when they were being revised. They were quite enthused by what they saw then, I thought. So, I dug through my archives and turned up those comments from a few years ago. Lawrence Lerner said the standards looked like a B to him<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Evaluated with the same methods he has used to assess science standards for over a decade, the current draft would earn a high B. Lerner is delighted: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This draft already represents a dramatic improvement across the board. With a little bit of extra effort, Florida could bring that up to an A.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Paul Gross didn’t offer a grade, but did say he liked what he saw (from St. Petersburg Times 11\/30\/07 article):<\/p>\n

Gross agreed to review the standards as an individual and not as a Fordham representative. But as a scientist, he was impressed: “Clearly, the writing committee, whoever they are, have taken to heart all the arguments that have been made about lousy standards,” he said.
\n“The organization of the plan is entirely respectable, and it pays attention to all the national models,” said Gross. “There’s not a lot of fluff in it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Darn. I guess we needed to be cautious in our enthusiasm over unofficial reviews.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, at Paul Cottle’s blog Bridge to Tomorrow<\/a>, he takes some personal responsibility for letting mistakes slip into the Florida standards. He was on the writing committee and is now slapping his forehead as he reads through the current Fordham report. But he also notes that both time and resources were in short supply during the standards writing process. This then leads Cottle to recommend that Florida seriously consider joining other states in the common core science standards project. Those folks have taken the time necessary and have the proper resources to get the job done right. I completely agree. But Cottle doesn’t seem hopeful that it will happen.<\/p>\n

Education Week’s Curruculm Matters blog <\/a>has a good summary of the Forham report. At least Florida gets credit for treating evolution right, including human evolution.<\/p>\n

The report indicates that only four states\u00e2\u20ac\u201dFlorida, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Rhode Island\u00e2\u20ac\u201dopenly embrace human evolution in their current science standards.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I stared at our science standards’ new D grade from the Fordham Foundation, I had vague recollections that a couple of Fordham’s reviewers had looked over the standards back when they were being revised. They were quite enthused by … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-nS","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":334,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=334","url_meta":{"origin":1480,"position":0},"title":"News Release: Standards can go from F to high B","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The following news release was sent out today as a joint effort of Florida Citizens for Science and the National Center for Science Education. Prof. who flunked Florida science standards says new ones are shooting for an A Expert gave current statewide standards an F but new draft is \"a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the News"","block_context":{"text":"In the News","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1104,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1104","url_meta":{"origin":1480,"position":1},"title":"You earned an A!","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"August 10, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A new study examining the mention of evolution in states' science standards spotlighted us here in Florida for the huge turnaround from a grade of F to a grade of A! Florida\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Over the past decade, Florida has improved its standards more dramatically than perhaps any other state. The 1999\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 4 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 4 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1104#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":891,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=891","url_meta":{"origin":1480,"position":2},"title":"Insights into Florida science testing","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"David Campbell is a Florida Citizens for Science board member and was featured in a New York TImes article about the teaching of evolution. Here on this blog I've been posting about a movement to eliminate the 11th grade science FCAT and replace it with end-of-course tests. (see here, here\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 5 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 5 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=891#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1542,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1542","url_meta":{"origin":1480,"position":3},"title":"State BoE kinda, sorta talks about science standards","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"May 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The Florida Board of Education met today and discussed a wide range of subjects for several hours. One of the topics for discussion was the current status of the state science standards. Our standards did poorly on a review by the Fordham Foundation. They initially were graded as a D,\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 5 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 5 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1542#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":437,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=437","url_meta":{"origin":1480,"position":4},"title":"Reports on the Orlando meeting","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re like me, you have to work for a living and so had no chance to attend today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s public forum in Orlando concerning the new draft of the state science standards. There were apparently plenty of other folks who were able to attend, though, judging from various news accounts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Our Science Standards"","block_context":{"text":"Our Science Standards","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=7"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1502,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1502","url_meta":{"origin":1480,"position":5},"title":"Grading on the curve?","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The Orlando Sentinel School Zone blog reports that Florida's science standards' grade given by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute has been reconsidered. Before the standards were revised in 2008, the standards had been given F after F after F. The first grade issued after the revision was expected to be\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1502#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1480"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1484,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions\/1484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}