If you’ve ever been frustrated at having to explain the difference between a scientific theory and a hypothesis, you’re hardly alone. But it’s not just folks without a science background who get confused over the terminology; even some science grads have trouble telling a fact from a law. And some in the scientific community worry that this signals a deeper problem with current science education.

James Williams, a science education lecturer at the University of Sussex, teaches university graduates with science degrees who wish to become science educators. In this month’s issue of The Scientist, Williams wrote that his graduate students, despite possessing adequate technical knowledge, frequently fall short on the basic language of scientific practice. In surveying 74 such graduates from various universities, Williams reports that:

• 76% equated a fact with ‘truth’ and ‘proven’

• 23% defined a theory as ‘unproven ideas’ with less than half (47%) recognizing a theory as a well evidenced exposition of a natural phenomenon

• 34% defined a law as a rule not to be broken, and forty-one percent defined it as an idea that science fully supports.

• Definitions of ‘hypothesis’ were the most consistent, with 61% recognizing the predictive, testable nature of hypotheses.

The results show a lack of understanding of what scientific theories and laws are. And the nature of a ‘fact’ in science was not commonly understood, with only 11% defining a fact as evidence or data. Here are just a few of their definitions of a scientific theory: "An idea based on a little evidence, not fact"; "an idea about something, not necessarily true"; "unproven ideas."

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How well students and schools – from kindergarten through high school – succeed in mastering a curriculum that includes English Language Arts (ELA), mathematics, and the social and natural sciences, strongly influences how well the students fare in higher education.

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) used state assessment data reported for the school years 2002-2003 through 2006-2007 to project the growth in student proficiency through 2014. Data was drawn from more than 4,900 California elementary schools. The researchers used three different growth models (represented by the blue, grey and green lines) to project average annual growth in proficiency for mathematics (solid lines) and English language arts (dotted lines). Models are plotted out to 2014 to illustrate that the available data (through 2007) does not indicate the accelerated growth in proficiency required to meet legislated goals. California’s benchmarks for adequate yearly progress (AYP) under No Child Left Behind are shown in the red lines. More information on this research appears in the Sept. 26, 2008, edition of Science magazine. (Credit: University of California, Riverside)

In California, student mastery in ELA and mathematics is measured with the California Standards Tests (CST). To determine how the challenge of mastery is being met, a research team led by UC Riverside’s Richard Cardullo examined several years of CST data.

The researchers report in the Sept. 26 issue of Science that mathematical models they used in their analysis predict that nearly all elementary schools in California will fail to meet the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirements for proficiency by 2014, the year when all students in the nation need to be proficient in ELA and mathematics, per the "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001" (NCLB).

Under NCLB, AYP measures a school’s progress toward meeting the goal of having 100 percent of students meet academic standards in at least reading/language arts and mathematics. AYP constitutes a series of calculated academic performance factors for each state, local education agency, school, and numerically significant student subgroup within a school.

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Legal Newsline)-Parents do not need teacher certification to teach their own children at home following a change of legal opinion issued by the California state Appellate Court on Friday.

The victory for home-schooling organizations reverses the court’s previous opinion issued in February, which organizations viewed as a ban.

Supporters argued the ruling could seriously damage the growing business of home schooling, while impinging on a parent’s right to choose the course of education for their own children.

The court’s latest opinion on the subject states, "California statutes permit home schooling as a species of private school education."

With an estimated 166,000 children currently being home-schooled in California, the impact of the decision and the potential precedence for other states to follow suit posed a significant threat to the industry as a whole.

"This is a great victory for home-school freedom," said Home School Legal Defense Association Chairman Mike Ferris, who was part of the legal team that argued the case in court.

Friday’s ruling seemed highly unlikely following the initial ruling, he said.

"It is unusual for an appellate court to even grant a petition for rehearing as this court did in March," Farris said. "But it is truly remarkable for a court to completely reverse its own earlier opinion."

Jerry Brown (D)

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n this dependency case, we consider the legality of, and restraints upon, home schooling in California.1 We will conclude that: (1) California statutes permit home schooling as a species of private school education; and (2) the statutory permission to home school may constitutionally be overridden in order to protect the safety of a child who has been declared dependent.   [underlining added]

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Anyone interested in the nearly criminal mismanagement of the nation’s government-run schools need only do research on the acronym LAUSD. In March 2006 Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraiogosa gave a speech blasting the LAUSD-Los Angeles Unified School District-for its "culture of complacency" and described the dropout problem in the district as "the new civil rights issue of our time." These aren’t the words of a conservative education reformer, but of a liberal Democratic mayor with close ties to the teachers’ union. He is the latest in a string of LA mayors who have tried to deal with a school system that’s immune from serious reform, not to mention unable to keep students safe. I offer this as a background to an article on homeschooling for this simple reason: California officials operate some of the worst education bureaucracies in the nation. Yet some officials here are concerned not so much with the government-run schools, but with the possibility that a fraction of the state’s students are being educated by their non-credentialed parents at home. This is the "let no flower bloom" approach to public policy, as government officials and public-sector unions react against small private successes in their midst, mainly, I suppose, because of the embarrassment it entails. If for a few bucks a year parents can teach kids who go on to excel in state tests, get accepted to Berkeley, and win spelling bees, then why can’t the professional "educators" do as well with $11,000 or more per student each year taken from taxpayers?

In California this issue of homeschooling had been dormant for about five years, after the current superintendent of public instruction overruled his predecessor’s policy of harassing homeschools. But a February ruling by the state district court of appeal brought back reminders of the bad old days after it ruled that "parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children. . . . Because parents have a legal duty to see to their children’s schooling within the provisions of these laws, parents who fail to do so may be subject … to imposition of fines or an order to complete a parent education and counseling program." The court even issued a threat to parents that they could lose custody of their children if they persist in teaching them at home: "the juvenile court has authority to limit a parent’s control over a dependent child."

This ruling-which stemmed from a Child Protective Services action against a Los Angeles County homeschooling parent accused of physically and emotionally harming his kids-was remarkably broad and viewed by most observers as outlawing homeschooling. My newspaper columns argued that parents had much to fear from the ruling, which could give local school districts the rationale to declare homeschooled kids truants. The case needs to be overturned, but two significant things happened in the ensuing weeks.

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Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Can California force parents to send their children outside the home for their education, regardless of the quality of instruction they receive at home? Today, the California Court of Appeal in Los Angeles will hear arguments in a case raising this issue - the constitutional rights of parents to direct the education of their children. The case arises out of a dependency hearing in which court-appointed attorneys for Jonathan and Mary Grace, two minor children who had been receiving instruction at home, asked the trial judge to order them to attend public school. The judge refused on the grounds that the parents have a constitutional right to homeschool their children. But the Court of Appeal reversed the ruling and interpreted California law as requiring homeschooling parents to have teaching credentials.

Understandably, the appellate court’s decision in February created an immediate controversy with homeschooling and parental rights’ advocates across the nation. Subsequently the Court of Appeal, in an unusual move, decided to withdraw its first decision, request additional briefing, and hear the case again.

But - should the court ultimately rule the same way - a mandate against homeschooling, rather than a focus on the merits of this individual case, makes no sense. For one, the court can resolve the appeal without addressing the constitutional issue by interpreting state law not to require credentialing for homeschool instructors.

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DEBATE ON WHETHER TEACHING CREDENTIALS ARE NEEDED REOPENS

With the battle lines drawn, a state appeals court in Los Angeles today will once again consider a controversial case that could drastically affect the growing home-school movement in California.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal will hear arguments in a legal fight over whether parents who home-school their children must have teaching credentials. The same appeals court earlier this year sent shock waves through the nation’s home-schooling movement, finding that parents who lack teaching credentials are violating California’s compulsory-education laws if they home-school their children.

No other state has that requirement.

The ruling triggered protests from top state education officials, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and others, prompting the appeals court to reopen the case in March. Since that time, both sides in the home-schooling debate have filed stacks of briefs to weigh in on an issue that arose by happenstance out of a Los Angeles child welfare case.

The appeals court has 90 days to rule, which would result in a decision sometime around the start of the next school year. The California Supreme Court may still have the last word in the case.

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When a California court ruled that two children could not be taught at home, it became a cause celebre for those claiming that home-schooling was being outlawed.

In fact, the ruling has less to do with the right to educate children at home and more to protect children from neglect and abuse — a reminder that complex issues often defy easy categorization.

Lost amid the ensuing culture-war debates over parental control versus public schools is the specific child-welfare case heard by the California Court of Appeal for the Second Division.

NEWS ANALYSIS

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Seventy years ago, persecuted homeschoolers would flee from the East Coast to California, the state that left you alone.

Back in 1988, when I co-led the battle that legalized homeschooling in Pennsylvania, we had the same two options under our compulsory education law that California still has today: (1) instruction by a qualified private tutor or (2) instruction by a private school. The difference was that Pennsylvania wouldn’t let homeschoolers come under the private school option, while California would.

We had to get a statute passed in Pennsylvania to specifically legalize homeschooling to end the persecution of homeschoolers. But in California homeschoolers would either homeschool under the supervision of an existing private school, or they would start their own private umbrella school simply to oversee homeschooling, or the individual family would start a private school.

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On Monday, California Assemblyman Joel Anderson introduced a resolution calling upon the State Supreme Court to overturn the anti-homeschool ruling of the lower court. This follows Friday’s statement by Governor Schwarzenegger supporting homeschooling.

This measure would acknowledge the long and rich history of private home schooling in California and call upon the California Supreme Court to reverse the opinion of the California Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District in Los Angeles in the case of In re Rachel L. that home schooling without a teaching credential is not legal.

The submitted resolution