Parent Reflections

Professor Harry Shipman, Ph.D., of the University of Delaware, father of an NCCL graduate, on NCCL's science curriculum

"Dear Ray:

I regret that I can't come to this evening's homeroom meeting to discuss the curriculum. But I wanted to write to say one thing: Don't change things too much. I’ve been to several national meetings about the movement to change the science curriculum and find that I keep thinking of, and mentioning, NCCL as an innovator. A few years ago Ann Brown and I reviewed what NCCL alumni are doing now, and I was astounded that about 1/3 were in scientific or technical careers. This is a track record that the National Science Foundation would like to bottle up and sell nationally. And what’s remarkable is that NCCL is not explicitly a science-oriented school!

NCCL meets the spirit of the new state science standards more than just about any other school in the state that I know of. The standards focus on science as inquiry, not as rote memorization of facts.

Based both on my observations of my son and my conversations with others, I think that what makes it work is NCCL's strong emphasis on projects and on research. There is a public school district in Madison, Wisconsin in which some teachers are proposing a radical revamping of their whole curriculum in which everything other than reading and 'rithmetic would be focused on a whole series of projects. When I heard about this in a meeting, I realized that what some teachers in this school district want to do is not that far from what NCCL actually does.

Please feel free to share this letter with anyone.

Cheers,

Harry Shipman"