Preserving NYS Science Programming

Dear Friends,

The letter below was sent to our New York State Board of Regents, our NYS Educational Administration, and the Assembly and Senate Education Committee members today.

I hope that you will forward your concerns as well. The "we" referred to in this letter are my colleagues from the suburban, urban, and rural schools in and around the Capital Region. My thanks to this group of dynamic and wonderful educational advocates who it is truly a pleasure to work with and advocate for.

For contact information please see the links at the bottom of this post.

Friday, March 05, 2010

To: Commissioner David Steiner and the Honorable Members of the Board of Regents

We write to express great frustration with Dr. John King’s recent communiqué (dated February 23, 2010) to the EMSC Committee regarding the “need to reduce costs of NYS Assessments.”

Among Dr. King’s items is the elimination of “3 of the 4 Regents exams in Science.”

We urgently request that you consider this action as one that should not be taken. As one can note from the following, the cost to New York State students will be far greater than the modest savings if this action is taken:

• The current status of students entering the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields is at a critical shortage. This will ultimately have a devastating effect on the overall economy of our state as we work to enrich, enhance, and embed 21st century skills into our science curriculum to better prepare the workforce of the new economy, which is innovation-based by all accounts.

• Regents Examinations in Earth Science, Living Environment, Chemistry, and Physics provide all of the State’s students with the opportunity to demonstrate their competence and proficiency in these subjects regardless of their backgrounds and access to quality education. Without these examinations, equity of opportunity for all children will be jeopardized and lost.

• Regents Examinations in Science help ensure that our public schools provide appropriate curriculum programs of sufficient rigor, obtain qualified science teachers, and procure resources to support laboratory-based instruction. There can be no assurance that public schools would continue to support high school science education at its current levels if 3 of the 4 Regents Science Examinations are terminated.

• Students’ participation in Chemistry and Physics must come to be regarded as an imperative and foundational core for any and every citizen’s Science Literacy
o Current trends indicate that if this action is taken, an immediate decrease in enrollment will ensue (based upon current Regents level enrollment in Living Environment, Earth Science, Chemistry, and Physics, where, because of our graduation requirements, far too many students do not enroll in a 4th science, and far too many students do not take any form of Chemistry or Physics).

• New York State’s assessment structure (Regents examinations) in the Sciences has perpetually distinguished our program from other states’ and if this action is taken, our program, not to mention our reputation, would be put into immediate jeopardy.

• As an example of the value placed in our programming, an official from the SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering recently pointed to New York State’s program generally, and specifically to students’ preparation in Chemistry and Physics as elements that would likely become required criterion for entry into the program. This same official decried the shortage of students who have engineering experience and correlated this to the shortage of high school pre-engineering programs across the country. If this action is considered, it will immediately jeopardize strong students’ ability to remain competitive in seeking admittance into our nation’s most competitive collegiate-level STEM programs. If the loose structure placed upon schools to maintain any form of pre-engineering programming is to serve as an example, we may deduce that similar trends would follow in students’ participation in Chemistry and Physics.

On behalf of the Capital Area Science Supervisors Association in addition to the science teaching professionals of our region, and the families we seek to support, we urge you to address this action immediately by removing it from consideration. Any alternative action will severely jeopardize New York State’s science program.

Respectfully,

Michael Klugman
President
Capital Area Science Supervisors Association (CASSA)
K-12 Science & Technology Supervisor
Bethlehem Central School District
(518) 439 – 4921
mklugman@bcsd.neric.org