Page 466 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

36 Are We Creating the Achievement Gap? 441

mastering standards and addressing areas of weakness or strength for reteaching or
enrichment rather, the standardized test is tied to the student’s grade, credit attain-
ment, and graduation test score in order to obtain a diploma. In order to bring equity
to secondary science classrooms and public schools, the standards movement should
not use criterion referenced tests (CRTs) to evaluate the implementation of the sci-
ence standards. A different philosophy will be argued in this paper.
Criterion referenced tests (or CRTs) promote the alternative conception that chil-
dren are deficient in science when very little analysis has occurred concerning the
environment of the child, the course of science study, and the quality of science expe-
riences. With the student’s future and the perception of a community’s school being
determined by the CRTs, more analysis about the philosophy and psychology of
learning and impact of standards-based curricula should occur. I address some alter-
native conceptions that standards are equitable and the deficit models influencing the
implementation of No Child Left Behind Act of 2001(Public Law 107–110) create a
false assumption concerning achievement among diverse groups of students.

Standards and Equity

Standards-based instruction is a concept deeply rooted in the educational reforms of
the early twentieth century (DeBoer 1991). Sleeter (2005) discusses standards as an
organization of curriculum based upon the efficiency movement where learning
objectives are derived from social and economic needs. Teachers deliver the curricu-
lum and measure student progress against achieved objectives. Current science
standards can be traced to the document, A Nation at Risk, which expresses concerns
against failing educational progress in the United States and cites the needs of the
economy as a driving force to produce more scientifically literate students.
Standards seem to promote equity on the surface because of the general assump-
tion that all students are homogenous vessels who can learn a set of objectives
outlined by “experts” in science teaching and the science disciplines. Many national
science standards documents, such as the Benchmarks for Scientific Literacy
(AAAS 1993) and the National Science Education Standards (National Research
Council [NRC] 1996) are generally accepted as a consensus between some
“experts” in science teaching and professional scientists, but in reality, many of the
objectives in these documents are filled with controversy, especially those concern-
ing the social context of science and multiculturalism (Sleeter 2005). Standards
deemphasize the differences in classrooms with respect to culture and language by
defining the behaviors associated with meeting standards. In effect, if students do
not exhibit correct language, accept content knowledge without question, and reason
using accepted multiple-choice answers to the corresponding standardized test
question, they are, in effect, not meeting standards and assumed to be deficient in
their understanding of science. Because diverse populations tend to demonstrate the
lowest test scores, then it is assumed that schools and teachers are at fault. The
solution is to change the teaching strategies used to engage students through remedial
courses which emphasize passing standardized tests.