Florida Big Bend, Panhandle lag badly in physical science education and face steep climb to new grad requirements

Florida’s Big Bend and Panhandle counties face some of the greatest challenges in the state as they aim to help their students meet the new “chemistry or physics” requirement for high school graduation in several years, according to new figures released by the Florida Department of Education and posted by School Zone.

While 71.1% of Florida’s 2008-2009 high school graduates would have satisfied the “chemistry or physics” requirement that takes effect for the graduating class of 2017, only one of the eighteen Big Bend and Panhandle counties listed in the table shown below exceeded the state rate – Leon, at 77.7%.  At 37.4%, Bay County had the lowest rate of any district in the state graduating more than 1,000 students from its high schools.  The other large districts in the Panhandle also had low rates – Escambia at 48.7%, Santa Rosa at 58.8%, and Okaloosa at 65.8%.

While the “chemistry or physics” rates in the rural counties of the Big Bend and Panhandle were low as well, rates were also low for rural counties throughout the state.  In South Florida’s Glades County (58 high school graduates in 2008-2009), only 19% of the graduates would have satisfied the “chemistry or physics” requirement.

Among the Big Bend’s rural counties, Wakulla was notable for its poor “chemistry or physics” rate at 45.8%.  Some parents who work in Tallahassee live in Wakulla because they believe that county provides a better education than that available in Leon County schools.

While the state faces a severe shortage of qualified chemistry teachers as it prepares for the implementation of the new “chemistry or physics” requirement, the Panhandle will face an even greater shortage because it is starting so far behind.  With the concentration of military bases in the Panhandle, it might be prudent to focus the state’s “Troops to Teachers” program on recruiting scientists and engineers from Panhandle military installations to meet the region’s imminent needs.

County	08-09 grads	Chem/Phys rate (%)
STATE		71.3
Bay	1421	37.4
Calhoun	118	22.9
Escambia	1957	48.7
Franklin	64	60.9
Gadsden	227	57.7
Gulf	147	51.7
Holmes	191	29.3
Jackson	358	52.2
Jefferson	37	43.2
Leon	1640	77.7
Liberty	57	68.4
Madison	152	48.9
Okaloosa	1862	65.8
Santa Rosa	1509	58.8
Taylor	154	43.5
Wakulla	214	45.8
Walton	344	31.7
Washington	203	64.5

Why do some people think the new high school graduation requirements are a “huge unfunded mandate”?

I think I get it now.  I understand the argument that leads some folks to believe that the new high school graduation requirements are a “huge unfunded mandate”.  It’s just that the argument is wrong.

School Zone posted a link to my op-ed on the chemistry teacher shortage that the Orlando Sentinel published yesterday.  An Orlando-area chemistry and physics teacher named Steve argued that the “chemistry or physics” requirement (really just a chemistry requirement) will cost the state $50 million per year in salaries for new science teaching positions – he said 900 of them.

Here is why Steve’s argument is wrong:  The new grad requirements do not increase the number of science courses each student will take – it is three now, and it will continue to be three.  The total number of science courses being offered in Florida high schools will not increase, and we will not have to increase the number of science teachers we have now.

What will change is how those science courses are distributed among different subjects.  Students who have been taking low-octane science courses to meet the present graduation requirements will have to replace one of those low-octane courses with chemistry.  So we will need fewer teachers to teach low-octane courses, and we will need more teachers highly qualified to teach chemistry.

But the gentle reader might ask, “How are we going to replace teachers who are not qualified to teach chemistry with teachers who are?”

First of all, there is a certain amount of normal attrition.  Every year, some science teachers leave the teaching corps.  Every one of them should be replaced with a new teacher highly qualified to teach chemistry.  (If the colleges of education and alternative certification programs can produce them, that is.  And as I pointed out in the op-ed and elsewhere, Georgia-style differential pay would help.)

Second, the state should come up with the funds – from Race to the Top, or the National Science Foundation, or somewhere else – to provide opportunities for science teachers who want to do so to retrain to become highly qualified in chemistry.  Based on my limited knowledge of the gold standard in professional development in physics – the University of Washington program – I’d say that such a program would require 6-8 eight weeks per summer for three summers, and would cost a total of $25,000 per teacher (including a stipend for the teacher).

Third, the state should aggressively expand its alternative certification effort and recruit practicing science and engineering professionals into the teaching force.

In summary, the science teacher salary pool might increase by a few million dollars per year if a large number of Florida’s districts implement differential pay for starting chemistry teachers.  And the state might spend as much as $10 million or even $15 million one time to retrain in-service science teachers to become highly qualified in chemistry.  But that’s it.  The $50 million-per-year cost of creating 900 new science teaching positions in the state is just a fiction.  Sorry, Steve.

Steve also mentioned that he anticipates an enormous drop in the graduation rate due to the chemistry-or-physics requirement.  But the experiences of Brevard and Duval counties – where SB 4-style graduation requirements have been in place for years – do not support Steve’s assertion.  Neither does the experience that the Chicago Public Schools had following their 1997 implementation of tougher graduation requirements in science.  And very soon now, we will see how Michigan does with graduation requirements that are identical to ours and that were enacted in 2006.

Update (2:45 pm): Steve asked what science courses I would cancel to compensate for the additional sections of chemistry that will be necessary, if the science teaching corps is to remain at a constant size.  A summary of the answer I posted is given by the Gang of 90 white paper – any science course that is not on the Gang’s “approved” list should not be taught.

Orlando Sentinel op-ed on demand for chemistry teachers

My op-ed in the Orlando Sentinel on the huge demand for chemistry teachers Florida is facing is here.

Extensive professional development of practicing science teachers probably best hope for addressing chemistry teacher shortage

After talking with a range of people in the science, science education and K-12 communities (and even some folks in the media) about the looming severe shortage of chemistry teachers in Florida, I’ve concluded that the bulk of the 300-600 additional highly qualified teachers needed will have to come from professional development (or retraining) of science teachers who are already employed by the schools and who are teaching subjects other than chemistry.

The chemistry teacher shortage can be addressed via three routes:  undergraduate teacher education programs at the state’s universities (both public and private); alternative certification programs that recruit and educate professionals who are presently in fields outside of teaching; and, the professional development of teachers who are already in the public schools.  However, Florida’s undergraduate teacher education programs are probably producing fewer than 20 new chemistry teachers per year (although hard statistics are not available).  There are substantial obstacles to growing this number enough (a factor of five?) to make a real difference, including the lack of a statewide differential pay program and the biology-focused orientation of the state universities’ science teacher education faculty.  There may be opportunities for large scale alternative certification programs to make an impact – as in the case of the layoff of thousands of engineers from the space shuttle program in Brevard County – but the prospects for success of such programs do not seem to be clear enough to attract the attention of universities and funders.  And the prospect of accepting a starting teacher’s salary may be too much for a successful aerospace engineer to bear.

In contrast, the idea of a major professional development push seems to fit the circumstances.  The major effect of SB 4 will be to redirect a large fraction of the effort of the state’s high school science teaching corps to chemistry, a subject which will attract 50,000 additional students per year because of the new “chemistry or physics” graduation requirement (physics enrollments will probably not increase because chemistry is a prerequisite for physics in Florida’s school districts).  It is not necessary to create new science teacher positions because SB 4 does not increase the number of science courses required for graduation.  But some of the science teaching effort that is presently allocated to courses that are not required for graduation under SB 4 will have to be redirected to teach the additional chemistry classes that will be needed.  Therefore, retraining the teachers that are presently in existing science teaching positions makes some sense.

What would it take to retrain 500 non-chemistry science teachers to become highly qualified chemistry teachers?  Being a physicist, I am much more familiar with physics education resources, such as the terrific summer institute at the University of Washington Physics Department.  But that program may give us a hint about what will be required for the large scale professional development program needed in Florida – each teacher attends a summer program for three years, six weeks or so each summer.  And follow-up will be critical.  Depending on who you talk with, the cost per teacher varies from $15,000 to $25,000 (the cost includes a stipend for each teacher of $3,000 or so for each summer).  Let’s take the upper cost number ($25,000 per teacher) and do the math for 500 teachers:  $12.5 million.  There should not be any curriculum development costs for the program because a successful model program demonstrated (and assessed) elsewhere should be adopted.

Is $12.5 million a lot of money to transform chemistry education in the State of Florida?  Hardly.  The Gates Foundation is dumping $100 million into a single Florida school district (Hillsborough) to change the way teachers are evaluated and compensated.  Somebody somewhere should see the value of an investment in Florida’s science education future.

Are new biology teachers qualified to teach chemistry?

Florida’s high schools looking for ways to teach chemistry to 50,000 additional students per year, and there clear challenges in recruiting the 300-600 new chemistry teachers needed to meet this demand.  Starting salaries for new bachelors’ degree recipients in chemistry run about $5,000 per year higher than those for starting teachers.  While the State of Georgia has begun a differential pay program for new math and science teachers, the prospects for such a program in Florida seem remote, even if the state’s Race to the Top application is approved.

But one of Florida’s public universities – Florida State University – seems poised to begin graduating large numbers of biology teachers in the next year or so through its FSU-Teach program, funded by the National Math and Science Initiative and the Helios Foundation.  While the FSU program is still struggling to recruit students in chemistry and physics teaching (as is its parent program, UTeach at the University of Texas – Austin), I’ve been told by one person attached to FSU-Teach that the biology teachers being educated by the program will be well-qualified to teach high school chemistry.

Let’s examine that claim.

	Biology FSU-Teach	Biological Sciences	Chemical Science FSU-Teach	Physical Science FSU-Teach w/ chemistry conc.
General Chemistry A	X	X	X	X
General Chemistry B	X	X	X	X
Organic Chemistry Survey				X
Organic Chemistry 1	X	X	X
Organic Chemistry 2		X	X
Analytical Chemistry			X	X
Physical Chemistry Survey			X	X
Inorganic Chemistry			X	X*
Biochemistry Survey			X	X*
Calculus-based Physics A				X
Calculus-based Physics B				X
Algebra-based Physics A	X	X	X
Algebra-based Physics B		X	X
Modern Physics				X

The table above lists the chemistry and physics courses taken by students in four majors at FSU.  The first column lists the now standard biology teaching major (listed as “Biology/FSU-Teach” in FSU’s Academic Program Guide) being taken by the program’s 100 or so prospective biology teachers.  The second column lists the university’s standard “Biological Sciences” major.  The differences between the standard biological sciences major and the biology teaching major are attributable to the fact that the teaching majors must take 26 credit hours of courses in pedagogy and still meet the 120 hour limit for degree programs imposed by the State University System.

The third column is the “Chemical Science/FSU-Teach” major that was approved for prospective chemistry teachers by FSU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.  The final column lists an innovative major (“Physical Science/FSU-Teach”) housed in the university’s Department of Physics.  This major requires students to take a core of physics courses and then allows them to select a “second concentration” of courses in chemistry, computer science, mathematics, or modern physics topics.  The courses listed in this major’s column are taken by a student who chooses chemistry as her or his second concentration.  The chemistry courses required for this concentration were selected by one of the Co-Directors of FSU-Teach in consultation with the chemistry faculty.

Some explanation of the courses listed is in order.  Courses listed as “survey”, such as “Organic Chemistry Survey”, are abridged and less rigorous versions of the “non-survey” courses.  All of the regular Biological Sciences majors and the Chemical Science/FSU-Teach majors take the two-semester organic chemistry sequence, while the Biology/FSU-Teach majors take only one semester of organic chemistry.  (The Physical Science major requires only the organic chemistry survey.)

The Chemical Science/FSU-Teach major then requires four additional chemistry courses – Analytical Chemistry, Physical Chemistry Survey, Inorganic Chemistry, and Biochemistry Survey.  The Physical Science with chemistry concentration requires Analytical Chemistry and Physical Chemistry Survey, and then requires either Inorganic Chemistry or Biochemistry Survey (the choice being signified with the asterisks).

The Biology/FSU-Teach major doesn’t require any of these four courses.

The bottom of the table lists the physics courses taken by students in the four majors.  Majors in Chemical Science/FSU-Teach, Physical Science/FSU-Teach and the regular Biological Sciences programs each take two semesters of physics (not surprisingly, the Physical Science majors take the more rigorous calculus-based sequence and then top it off with a full semester course on Modern Physics).

It is important to note that the first semester physics course covers the topics of classical mechanics (the things you can see everyday like throwing and driving) and thermodynamics.  The second semester covers the incredibly important topics of electricity and magnetism, including the forces that hold molecules (including organic molecules like DNA) together and the operation of electrical circuits and magnets.  The electromagnetic force is the force that drives life, and the Biology/FSU-Teach majors never learn about it.

The bottom line is this:  Will newly graduated Biology/FSU-Teach majors be qualified to teach chemistry?  No.