Critics
Many critics of standards-based education reform and reform mathematics are also critical of the emphasis of the standards on process and inquiry-based science rather than learning of facts. Science assessments such as WASL in Washington state contain very little factual content, and most assessment is based on the ability of students as young as the fifth grade to construct and interpret science experiments. By contrast, previous generations of high school and even college students were only expected to participate in, rather than design science experiments from scratch, complete with a list of materials. The principles of the standards are similar to controversial approaches taken to mathematics and language arts which de-emphasize basic skills traditionally taught in elementary school as being inappropriate to the ability level of some students. Yet content and skills that were traditionally taught at the college level, requiring "higher order" and "critical thinking" are brought down to K-12 to "raise standards".
Read more about this topic: National Science Education Standards
Famous quotes containing the word critics:
“With a few exceptions, the critics of children’s books are remarkably lenient souls.... Most of us assume there is something good in every child; the critics go from this to assume there is something good in every book written for a child. It is not a sound theory.”
—Katharine S. White (1892–1977)
“Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)