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Alabama Course of Study: Science
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Alabama Course of Study: Science (ACOSS) revisions

Detailed review of the 2004 draft ACOSS standards by national science standards expert Lawrence S. Lerner

Outline

Introduction
Lerner's comments in Word format
Lerner's "General Comments on Alabama Draft Science Standards, October 2004" (HTML format)
Comments by Lerner on the text of the Alabama evolution disclaimer (HTML format)

Introduction

In 2000, Lawrence S. Lerner reviewed the science standards for all 50 states for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative-leaning educational policy group. In "Good Science, Bad Science: Teaching Evolution in the States," Lerner concluded that "[m]ore than one-third of the states get low grades for the standards they have developed for teaching evolution." In 2000, he gave Alabama's science standards a 68%, equalling a "D."

Lerner kindly agreed to review the draft Alabama science standards, and has allowed Alabama Citizens for Science Education to reproduce them here. In a general evaluation, he gives the draft standards a 40% grade (F), and on the treatment of evolution he gives Alabama a negative score (F-minus), concluding:


[T]he Alabama draft shares with the now discarded Kansas standards of 2000 the dubious distinction of a negative score for the treatment of evolution.

Lerner's comments have been submitted to the Alabama Board of Education, and are available as a series of Word documents below. Excerpts in HTML are also provided.

Lerner's comments in Word format

(Right-click, Save As for each file to avoid browser crashes)

Lerner's "General Comments on Alabama Draft Science Standards, October 2004"

Lerner's summary comments are available below. For the footnotes, Appendix A and B, and rating system, see the Word version (AL_comments_eval_10-041.doc).


General Comments on Alabama Draft Science Standards, October 2004

Attached are the draft documents to which I have added detailed comments throughout. It has been my intent from the beginning to evaluate the draft according to two sets of criteria. The first is the one I used in making overall evaluations of many state science standards in two publications;1,2 these criteria, as slightly modified in Reference 2, are set forth in Appendix A below. The second set is the one I used in evaluating the treatment of evolution in the science standards of 49 states and the District of Columbia;3 these criteria are set forth in Appendix B below.

I was disappointed to find that the draft standards are so badly written and so unsatisfactory in every way that the application of these criteria is of limited utility. I have nevertheless applied them, with the results given in Tables I and II respectively.

Table I: General Evaluation
Criterion Grade
A.11
A.22
A.3 0
A.4 1
B.1 3
B.2 1
B.3 1
C.1 1
C.2 2
C.3 2
C.4 2
C.5 0
C.6 1
C.7 1
C.8 1
C.9 1
D.1 0
D.2 0
D.3 0
D.4.a 1
D.4.b 1
E.1 0
E.2 3
E.3 3
E.4 2
Total 30
Percentage
Score		 40%
Letter Grade F (< 65%, very
unsatisfactory)

Table II: Treatment of Evolution
Criterion Grade
A.11
1 5
2 10
3 0
4 10
5 5
6 0
7 -10
8 -25
Total -10
Percentage
Score		 n/a
Letter
Grade		 F-

However, it is worthwhile to comment on the main categories of shortcomings in the draft standards. Each category is manifested throughout, as may be seen by reference to my comments in the draft itself. The footnotes refer to examples from the draft, of the many that might have been chosen. In the footnotes, my suggested elisions from and additions to the text are represented by strikeouts and underlines respectively, and my comments are [bracketed]:

  1. The individual standards are very uneven in coverage. Some present nearly trivial material while others lump together very large amounts of subject matter, some of which is often unrelated to the rest.4
  2. The coverage is spotty. Some subject areas are overrepresented while others are shortchanged or completely ignored.
  3. The order in which material is presented is often chaotic and illogical.5
  4. The bulleted items are supposed to present subjects essential to the standards to which they are appended, or matters essential to the understanding of the standard. In a shocking proportion of cases, the bulleted items are irrelevant to the standards, even when they are significant in themselves.6,7
  5. The Examples appended to bulleted items are likewise too often irrelevant or distracting.8
  6. The statements at all levels are riddled with errors, many of them quite elementary.9
  7. Independent subjects are often conflated.10
  8. The language is often vague or confusing, and suggestive of poor understanding of the subject matter.11,12
  9. The treatment of evolution is grossly inadequate, is segregated in separate sections and rarely if ever applied to the rest of the life science standards, and is for the most part presented hypocritically under such code words as "diversity," "variation," and "change."
  10. When evolution is discussed, it is only as a separate category. It is not used to illuminate or inform other biological matters. This is akin to discussion geology with no more than a passing reference to plate tectonics, or chemistry with no more than a passing reference to the law of conservation of matter.13
  11. A good deal of creationist jargon is used in the guise of scientific discourse.14

All in all, these standards are unsatisfactory in every way. Although the prefatory material makes much of reference to highly regarded national models and other relevant literature,15 there is no evidence that lessons were learned from these sources. [In particular, the Alabama draft shares with the now discarded Kansas standards of 2000 the dubious distinction of a negative score for the treatment of evolution.] The standards must be rewritten, preferably from scratch. I venture to suggest that reference be made to the science standards of neighbors North Carolina [online link] and South Carolina [online link, see grades 9-12], both of which are highly satisfactory and have stood the test of actual use.


Comments by Lerner on the text of the Alabama evolution disclaimer

The following is taken from endnote 14 of Lerner's concluding summary, "General Comments on Alabama Draft Science Standards, October 2004." Lerner quotes the Alabama evolution disclaimer and intersperses comments.


[Lerner's endnote 14 begins here]


The following position statement regarding scientific theories is included in this document. The word "theory" has many meanings. Theories are defined as systematically organized knowledge, abstract reasoning, speculative ideas or plans, or systematic statements of principles.

This statement distorts the scientific meaning of theory. Although working with scientific theories involves abstract reasoning, theories are not abstract reasoning. And scientific theories are certainly not "speculative ideas or plans." Moreover, a scientific theory involves systematic statements of principles but is not merely such statements because logical structure and connection of scientific observations is an essential part of scientific theory. Thus, the entire statement is grossly misleading.


Scientific theories are based on both observations of and assumptions about the natural world. They are always subject to change in view of new and confirmed observations.

Many scientific theories have been developed over time. The value of scientific work, however, is not only the development of theories but also what is learned from the development process. The Alabama Course of Study: Science was developed within the context of trying to establish scientific literacy, not to question or diminish one's beliefs and/or faith. To that end, this document includes many theories and studies of scientists' works for examination by students. The works of Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein, to name a few, have provided a basis for much of our knowledge of the world today.

Curiously, Darwin is not cited here but is an implicit subject of the following paragraph, which singles out evolution among all possible scientific theories that could have been used as examples.


The theory of evolution by natural selection, a theory included in this document, states that natural selection provides the basis for the modern scientific explanation for the diversity of living things.

This is misleading in that natural selection is but one of the two essential components of evolution, the other being genotypic variation which results in the phenotypic variation on which natural selection can act. Moreover, other mechanisms such as genetic drift can also act to produce evolutionary effects.


Since natural selection has been observed to play a role in influencing small changes in a population, it is assumed, based on the study of artifacts, that it produces large changes, even though this has not been directly observed.

This is a typical bit of creationist jargon. One might just as well say that "it is assumed, based on the study of artifacts, that atomic nuclei are held together by quark interactions, even though this has not been directly observed." Or, perhaps, "Since precession of the equinoxes has been observed to play a role in influencing small changes in the position of the North Star, it is assumed that the earth's axis makes one complete revolution in 25,000 years, even though this has not been directly observed."


Because of its importance and implications, students should understand the nature of evolutionary theory. They should learn to make distinctions between the multiple meanings of evolution, to distinguish between observations and assumptions used to draw conclusions, and to wrestle with the unanswered questions and unresolved problems still faced by evolutionary theory.

Here again, one wonders why the students are not expected to wrestle with the unanswered questions and unresolved problems of fundamental particle theory, or of silicon chemistry, or of any other scientific field one might set forth.


There are many unanswered questions about the origin of life.

This is a non sequitur, since biological evolution does not deal with the origin of life but with what happens once life appears. The origin of life is the subject of the infant field of prebiotic evolution, which is linked to but separate from biological evolution.


With the explosion of new scientific knowledge in biochemistry and molecular biology

("biochemical biology" is redundant)


and exciting new fossil discoveries, Alabama students may be among those who use their understanding and skills to contribute to knowledge and to answer many unanswered questions.

Well, E. O. Wilson is a good example of an Alabamian who has made great contributions to knowledge!


 
Alabama Citizens for Science Education
P.O. Box 36561
Birmingham, AL 35236
Email: alscience@mindspring.com
Web: www.alscience.org