Reading Eagle/Reading Times
Reading, Pa.
Thursday, September 30, 1999, p. C19


School science books get failing grade from experts

* An analysis says the texts cover too many topics and are irrelevant regarding
key ideas.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The most widely used middle-school sciene textbooks flunked an
evaluation by the nation's largest organization of scientists.

Most of the books cover too many topics and don't do any of them well, said the
report released earlier this week by the American Association for the
Advancement of Science.

The analysis said the texts "include many classroom activities that are either
irrelevant to learning key science ideas or don't help students relate what they
are doing to the underlying ideas."

George Nelson, director of Project 2061, which evaluated the books, said: "It's
a credit to science teachers that their students are learning anything at all."

Nelson said that despite the scientific accuracy of a book "If it doesn't
provide teachers and students with the right kinds of help in understanding and
applying important concepts, then it's not doing its job."

The study rated how well textbooks for the middle grades can help students learn
key ideas in earth science, life science and physical science.

Each text was evaluated by two independent teams of middle school teachers,
curriculum specialists and professors of science education.

	"This study confirms our worst fears about the materials used to educate our
children in the critical middle grades," said Nelson. "Because textbooks are the
backbone of classroom instruction, we must demand improvement so that our
students can acquire the knowledge and skills they will need for more advanced
learning in high school, college, and the workplace."

The study also looked at three stand-alone units that are not part of any
textbooks. Developed at Michigan State University and the Michigan Department of
Education through research aimed at how students learn, the units rated much
higher than the textbooks.

"We understand that these negative evaluations will be disturbing for schools
using these texts, but teachers should be able to use the explanations in the
full reports to start looking for ways to compensate for the text's
shortcomings," Nelson said.

Full reports on each book evaluated are to be released next year.

	Middle school science tests evaluated in the project  were "Glencoe
Science," "Macmillan/Mc Graw - Hill Science," "Middle School Science and
Technology .. .. Prentice Hall Science," "PRIME Science,""Science 2000,"
"Science Insights ... .. Science Interactions," "SciencePlus: Technology and
Society" and "Matter  and Molecules."