Are We Teaching Science Effectively? Not Everyone Agrees.

EXPERIMENT. Students in science teacher Christopher Stone's class. Stone's class uses OpenSciEd. Photo by Cassius Requa.

2026 will be the end of Vashon Island School District's science curriculum adoption cycle. The curriculum that the School District chooses will be what the children of Vashon, ranging from first grade to twelfth grade, are taught for the next 8 years. As we begin the final year of pilot programs, test units, experimental teaching methods, and decisions that will affect the prosperity of the next generation, you might be curious, who's making these decisions, and are they doing it right? Not everyone thinks so.

Every 8 years, each education department (English, Math, Science, and Social Studies) goes through a curriculum adoption cycle. Each cycle involves selecting, testing, reviewing, and finally fully adopting a new curriculum – or at least it should. This cycle our school district selected OpenSciEd as the science curriculum.

"We as teachers did not request a new curriculum. We were informed that there is a curriculum adoption cycle and that it was our time to choose a new curriculum. We interpreted that as we could go find different curriculums to test," said a science teacher within the district.

Teachers, since they are the people who actually use the curriculum, have historically had much say in what they teach.

"In the past that's been one of the things I've really loved about Vashon. That we trust the professionalism of teachers to make curriculum choices… That's how it has been," shared the teacher.

So to many people, the administration's approach this cycle has come as a surprise.

"Unfortunately, the administration had decided that there was only one…" They paused for a moment. "We had to choose something that was completely approved by [EdReports]. There was only one curriculum that was approved by them. So that's what the administration said we were choosing."

Many teachers shared this perspective. We asked an anonymous teacher why they chose OpenSciEd.

They responded "I did not."

Another teacher put it this way.

"We thought it would be a planning process where our voices would be heard… We were blindsided."

Despite their frustration, the teachers have been giving their best effort to make the curriculum work. Unfortunately, just four weeks into the school year, the science department is already facing some problems.

The first anonymous source had many thoughts about OpenSciEd, specifically pertaining to how effective it is for students.

"I think that OSE [OpenSciEd] is not the best fit for our student population. The curriculum moves at an incredibly slow pace and given the lack of content, many students get bored. OSE is also missing a lot of pieces that should be expected in any curriculum,” said the first source.

Three different teachers each independently brought up the abundance of auditory learning. OpenSciEd grades students on their ability to discuss as a class. The teachers all explained how the curriculum isn't fair to students who don't learn well verbally. This includes students who are multilingual.

"I think that students who do not learn through auditory processes fall behind very quickly. At least in the units that I have led so far, there has been no opportunity to learn aside from listening to whole class discussions. This makes it really hard to meet the needs of our MLL(Multi Language Learners) students," explained the first source.

"That's kind of all we do. We'll write a little bit, we'll talk, we'll talk, we'll talk, we'll talk in small groups, we'll talk in big groups, we'll talk, and we'll talk. That's kind of it… It's very unimodal," expressed the second teacher.

Learning in a different language is a challenge even when the curriculum is designed with that in mind, but the lack of visual and hands-on learning opportunities in OpenSciEd makes it extremely difficult for MLL students to be successful in class.

Not all teachers are having the same experience. High School Biology teacher Chris Stone had a different perspective on the curriculum.

"I think the curriculum does a really good job of fulfilling the requirements of Next Generation Science Standards… It's probably the only curriculum that does that," explained Stone.

High School Science teacher Ciara Dwyer spoke about how its differences might actually be beneficial to students in the long run.

"A lot of traditional science is memorization… I don't think that it hits on all of those three aspects of NGSS… I don't think that students need that memorization process. I think that they need science skills," said Dwyer.

"I do think that proponents of OSE argue that students should be learning scientific skills alongside content and that more traditional teaching simply prioritizes content. I think that OSE tries to teach students to ask thoughtful questions and come up with ways to find solutions; which definitely sounds good on paper!" remarked the first source.

But some of our teachers are finding that just because it works on paper, that doesn't necessarily mean it works in the classroom.

"The problem is that this question and answer process takes too long and a lot of students lose interest early in the process," said the first source

An idealistic curriculum does not necessarily work in practice. Classrooms are full of friction, and that means teachers need to be given the ability to adapt. So far though, some teachers feel like they haven't been given much chance to do so.

"We've kind of been shut down whenever we've tried to open the door to discussing [changing curriculum]," explained our second source.

The end of this curriculum cycle brings many things, both positive and negative, to VISD. The adoption cycle is a once every seven years opportunity to improve our education system, but it requires change, and change isn't always easy.

"It can be a stressful moment, right?” said Stone. “As teachers, we get comfortable and familiar with the curriculum, and then we're often asked to change it, and that's a big ask, right? It's everything that we're teaching students. All the experience that we have building the previous curriculum is, in some ways, gone. You have to relearn it, and you have to realize that you're learning with the students, and you're building it together.”