College, Business Team Up to Boost Science in Reading Schools

By David Mekeel, Reading Eagle, Pa.

Apr. 14–With state testing on science just around the corner, the Reading School District is getting a bit of help preparing its students.

Penn State Berks and Wyomissing-based Carpenter Technology Corp. have teamed up to start a three-year initiative aimed at training district elementary school teachers how to prepare students for the new science portion of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests, or PSSAs.

Carpenter has committed $100,000 to the initiative.

Starting this year, the annual PSSAs will have a section on science as well as reading, writing and math.

Schools’ performances on the tests are used in a formula for grading how well schools and districts are educating students. The tests are part of the federal No Child Left Behind act.

The $100,000 will be used mainly for professional development, said Eric B. Turman, the district’s director of elementary education.

"We are now getting ready to prepare students for this test and higher level classes in high school," he said. "We want our kids thinking like scientists at a young age."

The initiative will have two parts, said David S. Bender, program coordinator of the elementary and kindergarten education degree program at Penn State Berks.

A science instructor from the college already is working with teachers and administrators in Reading schools to revise the elementary science curriculum.

The new curriculum will include more hands-on experiences for students and focus on topics that will appear on the PSSA science test, he said.

"We’re trying to encourage students to do more experiments," he explained. "The goal really is to have the child get a better understanding of science and motivate them to do science. We feel that getting the children more involved physically will help achieve that."

Part two will be training elementary teachers how to teach the new curriculum.

Bender said that instructors will visit teachers for one-onone instruction and provide training workshops and inservice professional development.

Teachers also will have an opportunity to take related graduate classes during the summer, he added.

Carpenter got involved because the company saw the district could use a hand, said Kathleen Hanley, senior vice president of organizational effectiveness, strategy and corporate staff.

"We really believe that as a company you really need to give back to the communities you do business in," she said. "We took a look around our community and saw an obvious need in education."

She said improving students’ math and science abilities will help them get jobs someday, perhaps even at Carpenter.

"What we do here, a lot of it is very technical," she said. "We sort of look at this like preparing our work force of the future."

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