[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 86 (Tuesday, June 25, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6015-S6018]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
By Mr. SARBANES (for himself, Mr. Warner, Ms. Mikulski, and Mr.
Allen):
S. 2675. A bill to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
of 1965 to establish a pilot program to make grants to eligible
institutions to develop, demonstrate or disseminate information on
practices, methods, or techniques relating to environmental education
and training in the Chesapeake Bay watershed; to the Committee on
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to
establish an environmental education program for elementary and
secondary school students and teachers within the Chesapeake Bay
watershed. This measure would provide grant assistance to elementary
and secondary schools, school districts and not-for-profit
environmental education organizations in the six-state watershed to
support teacher training, curriculum development, classroom education
and meaningful Bay or stream outdoor experiences. It would also enable
the U.S. Department of Education to become an active partner in the
Chesapeake Bay Program. Joining me as co-sponsors of this legislation
are my colleagues Senators Mikulski, Warner, and Allen.
There is a growing consensus that a major commitment to education, to
promoting an ethic of responsible stewardship and citizenship among the
nearly 16 million people who live in the watershed, is necessary if all
of the other efforts to ``Save the Bay'' are to succeed. The ultimate
responsibility for the protection and restoration of Chesapeake Bay is
dependent upon the individual and collective actions of this and future
generations. As population growth and development continue to place
enormous pressures on the Chesapeake Bay region's natural resource
base, we must learn how to minimize the impacts that we are having on
the Bay. Our future depends upon our ability to use the Bay's resources
in a sustainable manner. This is as much a civic responsibility as
voting. Developing an environmentally literate citizenry that has the
skills and knowledge to make well-informed choices and to exercise the
rights and responsibilities as members of a community is clearly one of
the best ways to raise generations who can be contributors to a healthy
and enduring watershed. In my judgment, this can best be accomplished
by expanding assistance for environmental education and training
programs in the K-12 levels.
In addition to stewardship, there are other dimensions to expanding
environmental education opportunities in the Chesapeake Bay region that
are equally compelling. A number of recent studies have found that
environmental education also enhances student achievement, critical
thinking and basic life skills. A 1998 report by the State Education
and Environment Roundtable, perhaps the most comprehensive study to
date, documents how 40 schools in 12 States, including three schools in
Maryland and four schools in Pennsylvania, achieved remarkable
academic, attitudinal and behavioral results by using the environment
as an integrating strategy for learning across all subject areas.
According to the study, students performed better in science, social
studies, math and reading. Classroom discipline problems declined and
students demonstrated increased engagement and enthusiasm in learning
in an environment-based context. Moreover, students' creative thinking,
decision-making and interpersonal skills were enhanced by environment-
based learning.
[[Page S6016]]
The report is replete with success stories, but I will just cite two
examples from schools in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. According to the
report, students in the 4th grade at Hollywood Elementary School in
Maryland scored 27 percent higher on the Maryland State Performance and
Assessment Program test than at other schools in their county and 43
percent higher than the State as a whole after the school implemented
the environmental based education program. The study also found
behavior improvements and reduced discipline problems for 6th graders
participating in the STREAMS program at Huntingdon Area Middle School
in Pennsylvania compared to students not involved in the program. I ask
unanimous consent that excerpts from this study regarding these two
schools be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the State Education and Environment Rountable]
Closing the Achievement Gap--Using the Environment as an Integrating
Context for Learning
(By Gerald A. Lieberman and Linda L. Hoody)
HOLLYWOOD ELEMENTARY: A LIVING LABORATORY
Adults in Saint Mary's County, Maryland, a wedge of
farmland bordering the Chesapeake Bay, had tried for 25 years
to start a community recycling program; for some reason the
idea just never caught on. But once the fifth graders at
Hollywood Elementary School decided to solve the problem it
did not take long for them to turn their campus into a
neighborhood recycling center.
It was the children's enthusiasm more than anything that
motivated parents and neighbors to join their efforts. Soon,
Hollywood's hallways bulged with giant boxes of old
newspapers and the school's parking lot became a regular
Saturday-morning stop for residents eager to dump their cans
and glass. Teachers helped, but students ran the show.
Parents offered their vans, trucks, and even horse trailers
to help haul the goods to the nearest recycling station in
the next county. Eventually Saint Mary's County itself caught
on, set up a few recycling transfer stations of its own and
hired a recycling coordinator. But it all started at
Hollywood.
``It was just as grass-roots as anything can get,''
remembers Betty Brady, the teacher who initiated the project.
``We were a very small school at the time, less than 300
students, and we became a little place where people
rallied.''
Hollywood Elementary is not such a little place anymore.
Enrollment is up to 600 now, housed in a spacious new
facility designed to accommodate the real-world teaching that
Brady and her colleagues practice. But the campus remains a
rallying point for parents, educators, and other area
residents dedicated to the task of maximizing individual
learning through integrated, environment-based education.
During the past 15 years, aided by community volunteers and
funded through a series of small grants from the Chesapeake
Bay Trust, Hollywood's students have turned their 72-acre
campus into a living lab--blazing a nature trail, creating a
butterfly garden, planting a forest habitat for migrating
birds, and transforming a drainage pond into a natural
wetland. Each project capitalized on the children's innate
attraction to the natural world while providing unique
opportunities to combine traditional subject areas in a
meaningful whole. The results? At Hollywood Elementary,
education works.
``As teachers, we always look at what works with and for
children, paying attention to what causes that learner
engagement that's so crucial to learning that lasts,''
explained principal, Kathleen Glaser. ``We're very
concerned about not just teaching something so that
students can pass a test and then forget it a month later,
but teaching something that will be part of their
knowledge base, something they can work from to solve
problems and enhance their lives.''
Glaser and her staff, as well as the parents and students
of Hollywood Elementary, clearly believe the school's real-
world emphasis produces that kind of learning. And recent
empirical evidence confirms it. Since 1992, the state of
Maryland has required a year-end performance assessment for
all students in grades three, five, and eight. It is a
demanding yardstick, build around a child's ability to
perform integrated tasks, such as life-science experiments
and writing research reports. But it is a perfect tool to
measure the effects of integrated education on real-world
problem-solving.
Following five years of steady progress, Hollywood's
students turned in a bellwether performance in 1997. In
contrast to a statewide average of 38 percent, 67 percent of
Hollywood's third grades achieved satisfactory assessment
scores. At the fifth-grade level, Hollywood hit Maryland's
ideal 70th percentile, with 70 percent of students performing
in the satisfactory zone, as contrasted to 46 percent
statewide.
Glaser attributes her school's stellar performance in large
part to her staff of hardworking and innovative teachers,
including Betty Brady and Julie Tracy.
Tracy found Glaser's supportive leadership style reason
enough to choose Hollywood over another job offer when she
finished her master's certification program in 1990. ``I
think it was probably the teachers and Mrs. Glaser's
encouragement and her openness to suggestions,'' she said.
``The other school was not as open to innovative ideas.''
For instance, while partnering with a class in Costa Rica
during a Smithsonian-sponsored study on migratory birds,
Tracy's students learned that loss of habitat was causing a
decrease in the birds' population. Their solution? Creating a
habitat on the school grounds. Teaming up with other classes,
they identified likely planting areas, including a stand of
recently planted trees that still lacked native underbrush,
and filled in the area with berry shrubs chosen from the
birds' regular menu.
Tracy believes allowing that sort of student initiative is
crucial to the learning. ``If you approach a project saying,
`we're going to go out and plant a tree,' then it's the
teacher's project,'' she said. ``But if the students are
engaged in real scientific inquiry, and they're the decision-
makers directing the project, then it's authentic, and
they're engaged in meaningful learning.''
With its integrated, environment-based curriculum now
expanding, and recognition of its effectiveness spreading.
Hollywood Elementary has become a living portrait of the
mature EIC school.
Looking back, Hollywood's recycling program, begun in the
late 1980s, constitutes an important benchmark in an
evolutionary process that started in 1982 when Glaser became
principal of the school. From her own experiences first as a
classroom teacher and later as a resource teacher, Glaser
brought a dual focus to her new position: to encourage
individual learning and support innovative teaching.
``I think we communicated pretty early, after I became
principal, that what was most important was the individual
learner,'' Glaser said. ``I think it's also important for
teachers to grow professionally, so when they found a program
or a resource or a good working idea we began to try some of
those out.''
As Brady and her fellow teachers continued to brainstorm
and experiment, they made two discoveries. First, they found
that students learned most effectively when previously
disjointed subjects came together in an integrated
curriculum. Second, they realized that the environment
provided a perfect integrating context for learning.
Brady has a simple explanation for that: ``All things are
connected.'' Tracy agrees. ``All the subject areas are right
there,'' she said. ``You don't have to try to plug anything
in; it all just fits in naturally when you use the
environment.''
Add to that children's innate love of animals and curiosity
about nature, and Hollywood had found a sure-fire recipe for
effective education. ``We saw children really engaging with
the real world in a way they weren't engaging with the
textbooks,'' Glaser explained, ``and we saw the learning
really lasting.'' ``They see the big picture,'' Tracy added.
``They see the goal.''
Encouraged by their early successes and Glaser's never-
wavering support, Hollywood's teachers began to design more
and more environment-based projects and to tighten the
teamwork so crucial to integrated learning. In some
instances, teachers paired up based on their differing
preferences: a nature nut, unfazed by bugs and dirt, and a
bookworm, more comfortable juggling papers and pencils.
``We have such a spirit here of being a community of
learners and leaders that people welcome someone with a
different strength,'' Glaser commented. ``I'd like to think
that one of the things we do well is to blend the teaching
strengths we have available, then nuture not only the
students, but also support each other where we need it.''
Hollywood's distinctive approach to teaching caught the
national limelight in 1996, when Julie Tracy's idea that
second and third graders could turn a drainage pond into a
natural habitat earned her a 1996 presidential award for
excellence in teaching. In a project that combined biology,
botany, ecology, math, and language arts, Tracy's students
explored the types of aquatic plants and animals they could
expect to thrive in the little pond, then drafted a planting
plan, calculating depths and distances for optimal growth,
and recruited parents and local college students to help with
the work. Today, the former drainage basin is home to fish,
birds, amphibians, and even a raccoon or two.
Not surprisingly, with Hollywood's thriving EIC emphasis
drawing attention throughout Maryland and beyond, people are
beginning to take notice. Glaser has been fielding frequent
calls from other schools eager to duplicate Hollywood's
success. She is eager to respond. ``They want to know more
about the nature trail or the butterfly garden, how that sort
of thing gets organized,'' Glaser said. ``I'm getting more
interested in how to help other teachers integrate some of
these ideas. How can we help people benefit from our years of
experience?''
``I'm seeing lots of indicators that this kind of work is
growing,'' Glaser said. ``Hopefully, we can be a place people
can visit or know about, so they can learn more about how to
do it.'' If American education is indeed headed toward a new
paradigm of integrated, environment-based instruction,
[[Page S6017]]
Hollywood is already out front and eager to lead the way.
huntingdon area middle school: streams of knowledge
The students at Huntingdon Area Middle School are making
adults in their rural Pennsylvania community sit up and take
notice. Their active engagement in their community is an
outgrowth of an innovative, homegrown EIC program called
STREAMS--a regional grand-prize winner of the National Middle
School Association's Team-teaching Award.
STREAMS, which stands for Science Teams in Rural
Environments for Aquatic Management Studies, is an
interdisciplinary program that aims to increase students'
awareness of and concern for their immediate environment and
to engage them in the community at large. As its name
suggests, the program focuses on water and emphasizes active
learning and real-world issues.
Student enthusiasm for the program keeps building. Every
year, Huntingdon students clamor to begin projects earlier
and earlier. ``We used to start in January,'' said Fred
Wilson, social studies teacher. ``Then it was in November and
this year some kids were ready in September.'' The
accelerated schedule means more work for Wilson and his
colleagues. But there is a certain synergy created when
students are so eager, he said. And that is what gives him
the energy to keep up.
The genesis of the STREAMS program occurred eight years ago
when the sixth-grade teaching team, including Wilson, began
looking for a new theme to incorporate across their existing
interdisciplinary curriculum. They decided a program tied to
the water studies presented in Tim Julian's science class
would be ideal because they could tie it into all the
disciplines.
``We wanted to examine problems in our community--such as
water quality, storm-water runoff and erosion--to make the
subject more meaningful to our students,'' Wilson explained.
It was a perfect choice. With four separate watersheds
converging within two miles of the school, he pointed out,
Huntingdon already had a phenomenal outdoor lab at its
doorstep.
Wilson volunteered to develop the interdisciplinary program
and contacted a number of organizations in his search for
suitable learning projects. But, while he discovered lots of
suggestions for activities, there was no program that could
be ``plugged in'' to Huntingdon's existing curriculum. By
1991, the first year Wilson and his teammates taught the
STREAMS unit, he had developed his own instructional segments
dealing with storm-water runoff, erosion and sedimentation,
water quality monitoring, household pollutants, and community
involvement. At the same time, Julian expanded the portion of
his science curriculum that dealt with water to include
the study of local watersheds as well as water and
wastewater treatment facilities.
Students response was overwhelming, so overwhelming that
the following summer Wilson and his colleagues developed more
STREAMS topics--wetlands, groundwater, acidity, and nutrient
enrichment--and added more water quality studies plus two
additional watersheds to monitor.
The team effort regularly crosses disciplinary lines, with
each teacher contributing his or her expertise toward common
projects. In science class, for instance, Julian teaches the
students about the properties of water, purification
processes, and wastewater treatment. Before they go out on a
field trip to conduct tests, they also learn how to use the
proper monitoring equipment. ``Our kids don't go out unless
they are prepped,'' Wilson said. ``That's so they can
succeed.''
Rose Taylor, Huntingdon's sixth-grade language arts
teacher, reinforces the vocabulary students need to know in
their studies and works with students on STREAMS-related
writing assignments. Math teacher Mike Simpson helps the
students learn to interpret statistics, construct charts and
graphs, and use computer database programs to report their
findings. He also incorporates the data they collect into
problems he uses to teach important math concepts such as
fractions and percentages. ``Rather than use cookbook
problems,'' he said, ``we use real field data.''
Wilson's part of the curriculum emphasizes the consequences
of land use--residential, agricultural, and mining--on the
water supply, as well as various types of pollution and the
function of wetlands. Wilson's students also learn about the
effects of storm-water runoff, a significant problem in the
Huntingdon vicinity because of over-development in what was
once a wetland.
Everything comes together out in the field, where all the
team members get their hands dirty. Their eagerness to dig
right in can be traced in large measure to their lengthy
history as a team. ``We've teamed together so long--15
years--that we can be frank and open,'' Wilson explained.
Another secret of the STREAMS staff is a willingness to step
outside the bounds of their own disciplines. ``You have to be
willing,'' he said, ``to wear different hats.''
Indeed, STREAMS teachers seem entirely comfortable sharing
their teaching responsibilities all around. All the team
members, for example, teach reading. Tim Julian and Mike
Simpson capitalize on the interrelationships between science
and math; both, for instance, teach students to interpret
charts and graphs. ``Science uses a lot of math--
averaging, graphing, measuring speed,'' Julian pointed
out. ``Sometimes we work together; sometimes we handle it
separately.'' Julian also supports Rose Taylor's efforts
in language arts by having students write reports on their
field activities. ``I do correct their grammar,'' he said,
``but I don't lower their science grade for mistakes.''
The teachers are equally flexible about class time. ``I
could go into school tomorrow and say that I need a block of
time,'' Wilson said, ``and we'd revamp the schedule in a
minute.'' STREAMS team members synchronize and evaluate their
lesson plans and schedules in regular weekly meetings, but
they can also meet daily during a common planning period.
Wilson conducts an annual formal assessment of what
students learned in the program. In the 1994/95 school year,
97 percent of STREAMS students failed a pre-test with an
average score of 38 percent. Two months after the program
concluded, the students' average score, on an unannounced
post-test, was 81 percent, with only a 2 percent failure
rate. In the 1996/97 school year, Wilson conducted the post-
test five months after they completed the initial STREAMS
unit. Even after that lengthy interval, the students'
averaged 71 percent on the test. Those results, Wilson point
out, indicate that most students not only mastered the
content, but also retained that knowledge months after
completing the program.
When Wilson and his colleagues started the STREAMS program,
no one dreamed how successful and far-reaching it would
become. Beyond the creativity and effort of the Huntingdon
team, Wilson said, another key reason for their success is
partnering with various organizations in the community.
Parents are another valuable resource. Without them, Wilson
said, he could not accommodate all the students who want to
do independent work, often after school and on weekends. They
help transport and chaperone students giving presentations to
public groups, civic organizations, teacher conferences, and
workshops, as well as those taking special field trips or
traveling to the biotechnology lab at Penn State. Parents
also help with tree-planting projects and water-quality
monitoring.
The students, too, have tapped into the partnering concept.
When they proposed creating a wetland near the school, for
example, they raised $1,000 and then found partners to
contribute the $3,000 needed to complete the project--proof
that they have learned to leverage their dollars and attract
broad-based support.
The community that spawned these savvy students and
teachers is by some standards an unlikely one. Huntingdon, a
town of 7,000, is located in south central Pennsylvania, an
area that historically has reported the highest unemployment
figures in the state. The average family income here is
$20,000 annually. Only 9.4 percent of adults in the county
have earned a post-secondary degree, compared to 18 percent
statewide.
Wilson also noted a dichotomy in the region's attitudes
toward education, with some residents very supportive and
others indifferent. Consequently, it has been exciting for
Huntingdon's teachers to watch a gradual shift in the
public's attitude toward the students' endeavors. ``At first,
they were taken rather lightly,'' Julian noted, ``but now the
community is coming and asking them for help.''
Without a doubt, Wilson observed, the Huntingdon teachers'
decision to use the environment as an umbrella for
interdisciplinary study and hands-on instructional strategies
has produced tremendous results. ``I think that our students
are engaged in a meaningful learning experience that will
help to empower them to be critical thinkers and become more
independent learners,'' he said.
As principal Jill Adams sees it, programs like STREAMS and
teachers like Wilson and his colleagues hold the key to
reshaping the entire educational process. ``The future of
education really depends on people like this,'' she said.
``We cannot continue to teach the way that we were taught.''
Mr. SARBANES. In the Chesapeake Bay region, the Governors of
Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and the Mayor of the District of
Columbia have recognized the importance of engaging students in the
protection of the Chesapeake Bay. The States have each enacted
legislation to integrate environmental standards into the curriculum
for particular grade levels. As signatories to the Chesapeake 2000
Agreement, they have also committed to ``provide a meaningful Bay or
stream outdoor experience for every school student in the watershed
before graduation from high school'' beginning with the class of 2005.
Likewise, several not-for-profit organizations including the
Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and the Living Classrooms Foundation have
spearheaded efforts to create long-term, cohesive education programs
focused on the local environment. They have developed terrific
partnerships with schools and are helping teachers develop and
implement quality instruction, investigations and Bay or stream-side
projects.
Unfortunately, all these efforts and programs are only reaching a
very small percentage of the more than 3.3 million K-12 students in the
watershed.
[[Page S6018]]
Classroom environmental instruction across grade levels is sporadic and
inconsistent, at best, and relatively few students have had the
opportunity to engage in meaningful outdoor experiences. Many of the
school systems in the Bay watershed are only at the beginning stages in
developing and implementing environmental education into their
curriculum, let alone exposing them to outdoor watershed experiences.
What's lacking is not the desire or will, but the resources and
training to undertake more comprehensive environmental education
programs.
In 1970, the Congress enacted the first Environmental Education act
to authorize the then-U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
to establish programs to support environmental education at the
elementary and secondary levels and in communities. In its statement of
findings and purposes, the Congress found ``that the deterioration of
the quality of the Nation's environment and of its ecological balance
is in part due to poor understanding by citizens of the Nation's
environment and of the need for ecological balance; that presently
there do not exist adequate resources for educating citizens in these
areas, and that concerted efforts on educating citizens about
environmental quality and ecological balance are therefore necessary.''
Grants for curriculum development, teacher training, and community
demonstration projects were made available for several years under this
Act, but the program expired and was not reauthorized.
In 1990, the Congress enacted the National Environmental Education
Act to renew the federal role in environmental education. The Congress,
once again found that ``current Federal efforts to inform and educate
the public concerning the natural and built environment and
environmental problems are not adequate.'' Today, 32 years after the
first Environmental Education Act was first authorized, those findings
are still true. Last year, nationwide funding for the National
Environmental Education Act administered by EPA was only $7.3 million.
That averages to a little more than $140,000 for each of the 50 States,
a sum that is totally inadequate for schools to incorporate
environmental education as part of the K-12 curriculum.
The legislation which I am introducing would authorize $6 million a
year over the next three years in federal grant assistance to help
close the resource and training gap for students in the elementary and
secondary levels in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. It would require a 50
percent non-federal match, thus leveraging $12 million in assistance.
The funding could be used to help design, demonstrate or disseminate
environmental curricula and field practices, train teachers or other
educational personnel, and support on-the-ground activities or
Chesapeake Bay or stream outdoor educational experiences involving
students and teachers, among other things. The program would complement
a similar initiative that I sponsored last year within the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which is providing $1.2 million
to support environmental education in the Chesapeake watershed.
The Chesapeake Bay Program has pioneered many of the Nation's most
innovative environmental protection and restoration initiatives. It has
been a leader in establishing a large volunteer monitoring program;
implementing pollution control programs such as the ban on phosphate
detergents and voluntary nutrient reduction goals; and conducting an
extensive habitat restoration program including the opening of hundreds
of miles of prime spawning habitat to migratory fish. It is an ideal
proving ground for demonstrating that strong and consistent support for
enviornmetnal education, using the Chesapeake Bay and local environment
as the primary instructional focus, will lead not only to a healthier,
enduring watershed, but a more educated and informed citizenry, with a
deeper understanding and appreciation for the environment, their
community and their role in society as responsible citizens.
______