No Child Left Behind/Science Education

No Child Left Behind

The No Child Left Behind program needs to be changed significantly, with appropriate input from teachers. There is too much standardized testing going on in Connecticut schools!

Science Education

I feel strongly that we need to change the way we teach science to our children. Over the past ten years I have gone to my children’s schools and spent a period teaching on some area of science at every grade level 1-8. I’ve concluded that we need to change the science curriculum in grades 4 and 5: kids need to be taught about the basic nature of the universe! They need to understand the big picture, in qualitative terms, starting with fundamental building blocks of matter up to galaxies. They also need to be taught about HOW to solve problems, and the scientific method. Kids are smart! They can understand fundamental things on a general, qualitative level, before they have the math skills necessary to do real analysis. We need teachers that are trained as science generalists, and do nothing but teach science to kids in grades 4 and 5.