Earth Science Education Gets a Boost in Texas

September 2007

To most readers of Texas newspapers, November 17, 2006 may have looked like just another day with nothing of importance reported from the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) meeting, but for a cadre of earth scientists and educators, the day marked the culmination of years of effort and a major step forward for Earth science education.

In the late 1990s, the SBOE removed earth science as an option for science credit for high school graduation. Earth science education was also considerably reduced at the middle school level.

“It was very disappointing that when we at the university weren’t looking, the curriculum was revised and we lost the opportunity to engage students in geosciences,” said Sue Hovorka, a research scientist in the University of Texas at Austin’s Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG).

Marcus Milling (then Director of the American Geological Institute; formerly of the BEG) took it as a call to arms; he arranged to have leaders of geoscience societies and organizations, professors, industry leaders, teachers, students, administrators and even an astronaut testify and write letters to the SBOE extolling the importance of earth science.

Over the years they successfully lobbied the SBOE and the Texas State Legislature for a new high school course called Earth and Space Science. It would be a rigorous, lab-based, upper level “capstone program.” Most importantly, it would count the same as other science courses such as biology, chemistry or physics. The volunteers won approval in the fall of 2006 after several years of hard work.

Tenth-grader Joseph Arrevalos identifies fossils at the Grand Canyon during the June 2006 GeoFORCE Summer Academy. Image courtesy of Jessica Gordon.

Along the way, they also won approval for a new requirement that high school students take four years of science instead of three.

There are a couple of shortcomings, say supporters. Students have a choice between the new earth science course and several other options to fulfill their fourth year of science, and students and parents can petition to be allowed to follow a minimum graduation plan that doesn't require four years of math and science.

Still, supporters say, despite the limitations, Texas now has an opportunity to rebound from its rejection of earth science just a few years ago and set the pace for the future of earth science education in the nation’s high schools.

Earth Science Champion

The person who had perhaps the biggest impact in this whole process was Sharon Mosher, the William Stamps Farish Chair in Geological Sciences at the Jackson School of Geosciences and then-president of the Geological Society of America.

She served, along with Hovorka, Charles Kreitler, David Dunn and several public school educators on a State Board of Education Earth Science Task Force (ESTF) chaired by Ed Roy, a geology professor at Trinity University in San Antonio.

Roy worked tirelessly to promote earth science in Texas and to keep what was happening in Texas on the national agenda. Inspired by Roy's leadership, Mosher embraced the challenge and emerged as the community's champion in interacting with the State Board of Education.

After traveling the state for a year collecting input from the public, the Earth Science Task Force submitted a set of eight recommendations to the board in 2003, including a new earth science course at the high school level.

But this was just the beginning of the battle - three years of advocacy, letters, testimony, phone calls and long SBOE meetings followed. The Byzantine process eventually took Mosher and Kenn Heydrick, President of the Science Teachers Association of Texas and fellow ESTF member, to the state capital. Although that summer legislative session on education failed, the very next year the legislature mandated four years of science and math for high school graduation, a key step towards adding Earth science.

According to Peter Flawn, president emeritus of the University of Texas at Austin and professor emeritus in the Jackson School’s Department of Geological Sciences, “Sharon drove the effort here at the university and I think she deserves the credit for success.”

State Board of Education Task Force on Earth Science (from left to right): Kenn Heydrick, Xandra Williams-Earlie, David Dunn, Susan Hovorka, Charles Kreitler, Janis Mergele, Ed Roy, Virginia Woods, Stan Pittman, and Sharon Mosher.

Mosher’s testimony and advocacy before the State Board of Education was crucial for the change, but she played an even more vital role coordinating the measure’s supporters and creating a powerful lineup of figures to make the case to the state.

“I got people to testify, including Scott Tinker, William Fisher and Peter Flawn,” said Mosher. “I made sure we always had a balance of academia and industry with different people for each SBOE meeting and tried to get people from different parts of the state to testify and write letters. I basically was a liaison between the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and the academic world and teachers.”

In February 2004, Flawn testified before the State Board of Education that the benefits of the proposed course would extend beyond students planning to enter science.

“Soon-to-be voting citizens must have basic knowledge about the Earth—what it is made of and how its natural systems function—if we as a society are to make good decisions about the relationship between the human species and the sustaining planet,” said Flawn.

Tinker couched his advocacy in terms of state history, pointing out that “Texas depends more than any other state economically on earth science.”

Kathy Ellins, the program manager overseeing educational outreach and public information at the Jackson School’s Institute for Geophysics, provided public comments to the task force and other support. Ellins acknowledged that it was a group effort involving many people, including Ed Geary and Dan Barstow, leaders of a national movement called the Revolution in Earth and Space Science Education. However, Ellins said Mosher’s contributions stood out.

“Sharon was our champion in respect to dealing with the state legislature,” she said. “We could have done all sorts of other things, but if the legislature hadn’t heard us, there would be no capstone course. Her contribution was critical. She was just so determined and she had the political skills to do it. She also had the gravitas as she was the president of the GSA at the time.”

“She was a voice of reason throughout,” said Hovorka. “She had a strong impact on the process. There were somewhat tempestuous debates that went off in wild directions. She was good about dragging them back to central issues that were important to earth science.”

Mosher gives much of the credit for success to her public school educator colleagues. "Without the strong support and advocacy by earth science teachers and science administrators, we wouldn't have carried the day. When Kenn Heydrick and I went to the legislature and to the State Board together, it demonstrated a powerful alliance between academia and public school educators."

Capstone

Today, the Earth and Space Science course only exists on paper. It is meant to be a “capstone” course, one that integrates what students have already learned in biology, chemistry and physics to better understand the world around them.

Steve Ruppel from the Bureau of Economic Geology talks to students about the important role that rock core plays in finding oil and gas.

“We think it is going to be a popular course and a national model,” said Irene Pickhardt, assistant director for science at TEA. “It’s very exciting.” Pickhardt and Chris Comer, director for science at TEA, assisted in the process of changing the curriculum.

“Texas has an amazing opportunity to lead the nation in redefining earth science education for the 21st century,” said Ellins. “It’s going to be a rigorous, integrative course that shows how rich the field is and how essential it is to have the computational skills that the 21st century demands to acquire, analyze and display data.”

While huge strides have been made, the work is far from over. Supporters are now working behind the scenes to turn a great idea into reality.

A first order of business is writing a new set of guidelines for what will be taught in the Earth and Space Science course. This effort will be just one part of an overhaul of the entire TEKS or Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, the guidebook that Texas teachers use to determine what they are required to teach.

“People think changing the TEKS is a simple process,” said Pickhardt. ”It’s not.”

Several of the Jackson School’s researchers, educators and alumni are ready to assist in rewriting the TEKS if asked to do so by the SBOE. They hope the changes will inspire more students to go into geosciences at the university level and in their careers. Even those students who don’t go into geosciences should gain more exposure to the discipline, understanding how it relates to their everyday lives and perhaps becoming more receptive to public funding of research.

“Geologists have long suffered from the label ‘Rocks for Jocks,’” said Hovorka. “That is, that geology is just studying pretty minerals and dinosaurs, that it’s an easy science that anyone can get through.”

She said it is easy in that it is exciting, relevant and accessible, but it is also quantitative, inquiry-based and rigorous. As pointed out in Mosher and Heydrick's request to the SBOE, "Earth and Space Science, because its subject matters, is intrinsically fascinating and inspiring, thus perhaps giving students the emotional motivation to study science and engineering and master these rigorous disciplines."

“One thing the Jackson School needs to do is bring our clout forward and say when we study dinosaurs, they aren’t the ones you get in your cereal box,” said Hovorka. “We’re using a CT scanner to look inside dinosaur eggs. Or when we work on minerals, we aren’t categorizing them like they did in the eighteenth century.” Instead, she said, they study how the minerals interact with subducting plates or with water inside Earth.

“We need to bring in that exciting and high tech quantitative perspective,” she said.

Supporters have time to work on that. Although the standards are already being written, schools won’t be required to offer it until the fall of 2011.

So when will kids in Texas actually start taking the new course?

“In state government, I have learned not to put a hard and fast time on anything,” said Pickhardt. “We expect the whole process to take some time.”

Despite the sometimes glacial process, Sharon Mosher isn’t deterred.

“I think it’s extremely important for all people to understand how geological processes affect them and how they affect geological processes,” said Mosher. “They have a profound affect on the Earth and they’re going to have to make decisions. So it’s important for all students to have earth science. It’s the right thing to do.”

by Marc Airhart

For more information about the Jackson School contact J.B. Bird at jbird@jsg.utexas.edu, 512-232-9623.