Board endorses educational standard recommendations

      In kindergarten, students should know that living things grow and change.
      By the fifth grade, they should understand how plants and animals differ.
      Three years later, they should learn that nutrition aids life and disease kills it.
      And, by the time a child receives a Nevada high school diploma, the student should grasp the concept that DNA provides the blueprint for life.
      Such specific guidelines aren't official yet, but they received a boost Saturday when members of the state Board of Education endorsed the 18-month effort of its working group and pledged to see it enacted.
      Up until six months ago, the state board could have approved and implemented the 87-member team's recommendations for new, tougher statewide science standards. But an impatient 1997 Legislature, lacking confidence in the state board's efforts, voted to establish a new Council on Academic Standards to develop such guidelines instead. The move snatched the power from the elected board.
      Thus, the board on Saturday thanked its working group for its effort and vowed to lobby the new council to adopt the 38-page document as law.
      The board will do the same with similar documents completed by working groups in recent months in areas of math, language arts and social studies.
      The council is expected to write standards for math, science and language arts in 1998 and for three other subject areas in 1999.
      It will name this month teams of 20 to work on the math, science and language arts efforts and will invite seven members of each of the state board's working groups to be included on those teams.
      At a meeting Saturday in Las Vegas, board members praised state science consultant Eric Anderson and his volunteer staff. Their lengthy document details what students would be required to know in kindergarten and the third, fifth, eighth and 12th grades about physical science, life science, earth systems and space sciences, ecology, natural resources, conservation, the history of science and science processes.
      The overall effort was to create a curriculum outline that doesn't just address children who want to be scientists, but also meets the needs of those who don't, said Anderson, a former science teacher at Las Vegas Academy and Bonanza High School.
      What to teach about evolution emerged as controversial as the group debated what should be learned. Stan Pesis, a Carson City minister and parent in the working group, reminded his co-workers of the need to be sensitive to how religious convictions interact with some parts of scientific thought.
      "You don't stomp on a child's beliefs," Anderson said. "You do explain that religion and science are sometimes different ways of looking at the world."
      Anderson also insisted that the environmental science portions are based on facts and avoid areas that are hotly debated.
      Board members generally lauded the effort, though member Gary Waters said more needs to be done to encourage girls to take an interest in science.
      And member Bill Hanlon expressed concern that too much science is expected of children before the third grade and that teachers should spend most of those years enforcing reading and writing fundamentals.
      Anderson said the public can read the proposed standards in their entirety on the Internet starting this afternoon by visiting http://www.nsn.k12.unr.edu/ nvdoe/scied.