Regulation Writing is a Difficult Job

By Georgia Perry-Ray - Regulatory Analyst & Communications Specialist

Regulation writing is a difficult job. Not only does the writer need to think of what he or she is trying to convey but to whom. The audience in many cases will have diverse education levels with limited internal knowledge of the writer’s organization or its processes and procedures. Often is the case when the reader does not have the same expertise or background as the writer. Then add another layer with the burden of ensuring all of the legal aspects of the regulation are covered so as to not leave any “loop holes” and the problem is compounded.

Government regulation writers particularly struggle with this issue as the regulation often bounces back and forth for review with the legal department and the departments that are trying to disseminate the information. By the end of the process sometimes the regulation does not even resemble the original draft at all and may not even end up with the same meaning as was originally intended by law. This is true when writing regulations for internal or external use but can be particularly frustrating for the audience that is outside of that particular governmental system. For example, all of us who have ever filed a tax return and had to read through the Internal Revenue Service’s “simplified tax return filing instructions” has experienced first hand the result of regulation writing that has fallen short of our STEM motto “Write it so they can read it”. Just trying to find out if you qualify to have the Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) help you with the IRS red tape can be a chore as the Advocate’s office also has” rules” that must be met before you can use their service. They are –

“If you have tried to resolve a tax problem with the IRS and are still experiencing delays or are facing economic harm, you may request the assistance of TAS.

In situations where IRS actions prevent you from providing for necessities such as housing, transportation or food; or if you own a business and are unable to meet basic expenses such as payroll, you may request the assistance of TAS.

If you face a delay of more than 30 days to resolve a tax related problem, or are not receiving a response by the date promised, you may also request assistance from TAS.”[1]

Our learning level analysis of this “simple criteria” at STEM is as follows:

1. The concept "economic harm" is basic college level economics, which many people have not learned. Moreover, the concept of "economic" is not normally applied to personal situations, such as the IRS encounters. The concept of economic harm needs to be spelled out in plain language. Several examples from ordinary life will be required to communicate this concept to ordinary people.

2. The concept "Systemic" is taken from advanced college level biology. Moreover, the concept "Systemic problem" is here a technical word of art, referring to the system of IRS regulations and procedures. This concept will be difficult to convey to ordinary people, who do not know how the IRS operates. It will even be difficult for IRS personnel.

3. The concept "normal channels" requires technical knowledge of what normal IRS channels are. Ordinary people will not know this and in some cases the folks “helping the individual determine if they qualify may not know what “normal channels” are if they do not work in that particular department.

And you thought just getting IRS to fix your problem was the difficult part.

We are by no means singling out the Taxpayer Advocate’s office for criticism as they do perform a valuable and independent service when dealing with IRS and the tax law challenges individuals face every day, nor for that matter just IRS. This is just one example of the problems a regulatory writer faces when trying to convey information to a diverse audience. Knowing your audience plays a vital role inside and outside of your organization and can greatly impact how that regulation is put into practice.

---

[1] Excerpt from Toolkit-2010 TAS

STEM Education is a Regulatory Regime

By David Wojick Ph.D.
Co-Director of the STEM Education Center

Every state now has detailed standards that govern STEM education. We have listed them here . The names of these standards vary widely, which is in itself confusing, so I will refer to them all as “Standards of Learning” or simply SOLs.

With the rise of SOLs over the last few decades, STEM education has become in effect a regulatory regime. What concepts are taught in which grades is now mandated by rule, sometimes even by law. Compliance is determined by testing. Viewed as regulations, the SOLs we have seen are woefully inadequate. They are not being written as regulations should be, even though they are de facto regulations. Instead they are typically written as lofty and vague goal statements, which makes for a great deal of confusion at the compliance level, which is in the classroom.

Consider for example this typical SOL requirement: "The student will investigate and understand that magnets have an effect on some materials, make some things move without touching them, and have useful applications."

Note that there are two basic requirements, one for investigation and the other for understanding. These seem to have equal weight, but in reality it is probably only understanding that can be tested for. The investigation requirement is hopelessly vague.

Three concepts are required to be understood, but the third, "useful applications," is also completely vague. How will it be tested for? Moreover, this is a Kindergarten SOL and it is questionable whether children so young can even understand the abstract concept of "useful applications," which is quite sophisticated. If not then the requirement is impossible as stated.

In short, viewed as a regulation this simple looking SOL requirement is simply dreadful. And so it is with most STEM SOLs that we have examined. We are not experts on STEM education per se, and education is not the issue here. Rather we are experts on regulatory and scientific communication who have spent three years analyzing STEM SOLs from a regulatory point of view. In a regulation every word counts, so every word must be clear. Regulations are not goals, they are commands.

Effective regulation requires effective communication to the compliance community, in this case to the teachers, and then to the students. Our motto: "Write it so they can read it" begins with the standards themselves. The goal of regulation is not simply words on paper reflecting lofty goals, it is real world behavior based on realistic goals. We do not see this in today's SOLs.

The solution is to approach standards as regulations, as instruments of communication, not as vague goal statements. Everyone in the system needs to know what the rules are, including the students and their parents. Clarity, communication and realism must be the first priority.

For more on confusion in standards: http://www.stemed.info/standards_and_policy.html

For background information on my regulatory communication work, see:
“Engineer tackles Regulatory Confusion. Logician shears woolly regulations.”

Science Standards across the States

By: Criss Livingston MA
STEM Education Consultant
Teacher

In the United States, K-12 science teachers must adhere to rigid state standards that their students are tested and evaluated on as required by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. These standards are designed to teach the core science concepts at specific grade levels. While individual states design the standards, classroom teachers are responsible for implementing them. Many teachers have limited time frames (in the day and for the year) to teach the abundance of science concepts. Due to the limited amount of time, most teachers are rushed to complete the material and find they are unable to go in depth with a concept or explore it further. Also, many aspects of a concept can be often overlooked or left out completely. Experiments and lab time which are important to science because they teach the scientific methods and critical thinking skills are left out. Teaching without going in depth can produce students who are test savvy, but do not have complex problem solving skills.

Science standards are needed to keep pace in the global markets. Some time ago, the United States became concerned about lagging behind their international peers in the science field. In 1995, the National Science Education Standards (NSES) were produced and published in 1996; however these were not accepted by the state legislatures and boards as their state standards. As established by the National Research Council, the NSES are guidelines for the science education in primary and secondary schools in the United States. Currently, there are no National Standards.

The STEM Ed team has discovered that by not having National Science Standards, the United States lacks consistency of science standards from state to state. Currently, each state’s Department of Education develops, writes, and publishes standards of science education which they believe should be taught.

For example, in Virginia, a fourth grader may be studying photosynthesis while a student in Alaska will not learn about photosynthesis until the sixth grade. See: Photosynthesis Table. This is just one of the many problems the STEM Education Center discovered when we created our grade level stratification or GLS terms based on state standards

Another example: The concept of “battery” is not listed in the Alaska or Arizona standards, but becomes an implied term when teaching electricity. While students in California begin learning about the concept of battery in the third grade and continue building upon it in the fourth grade and again in the High School. See: Battery Table.

The STEM Ed team has spent the last few years looking at state standards and analyzing their science concepts to find similarities and differences. Because different states teach the same concept at different grades, it is difficult to compare state test results among the fifty states.
For more information on the Science behind the GLS, please see the STEM Ed’s website: www.stemed.info

The STEM Education Center: Who Are We Teaching?

By Heather Smelser, M.Ed., NBCT
Teacher Consultant for the STEM Education Center

When someone mentions the words mathematician or scientist, what image comes to mind? If you’re like most people you picture an older gentleman wearing a white lab coat and running his fingers though his Einstein-esque hair. The truth however is that today’s mathematicians and scientists are male and female and range in age from 1-100.

In order to meet the diverse educational needs of this wide range of mathematicians and scientists, educators need to be able to have immediate access to an array of material on a correct and specific learning level. As it stands at this time, teachers must wade through a mire of websites that purport to have scientific material on various topics. Those sites may have the topics covered but the readability and comprehension levels of this material may well be geared only to those Einsteins mentioned above. What is a teacher to do?

A typical search from any of a number of popular search engines will garner a multitude of responses to a broad science topic such as ‘plants’. In order to find the most pertinent information on a level that a young student can read, the teacher will need to spend an inordinate amount of time sifting through each hit and following links and wasting precious time. Unfortunately teachers don’t have that kind of time to spend on a wild goose chase without something productive to show for their endeavor.

The work of the STEM Education Center is making it possible for teachers to avoid this problem with the GLS, or Grade Level Stratification. This is where the team sorted the educational content in the science and math standards to bring about the determination of the Learning Level of a particular standard. This is exactly the piece of the puzzle that has been missing for educators across the country. This piece will allow teachers to go to one website, www.scienceeducation.gov and access the desired topics they must teach and in that topic they will also find information for that topic at the most appropriate Learning Level for their students.

This will go a long way to further science and math education by giving teachers the tools they need to tailor instruction directly to the students in their classes in a timely and efficient manor.

The STEM Education Center: The Teacher Team

By Bernadette Monahan MA
Co-Director of the STEM Education Center
Teacher

The STEM Education Center is now in its fourth year of operation under the direction of Dr. David Wojick. As part of the Center, the teacher team is the window into the educational system in our country. Our team consists of a National Board Certified Teacher (Heather Smelser), an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher (Jennifer Arey Paschke), and individuals who have attended content review boards for the state of Virginia’s standards in math and history (Bernadette Monahan and Cristin Livingston). Each member has a masters in Education and Instructional Technology. We are fully accredited, contracted teachers. Combined we have over 40 years of experience in education.

It is not often that classroom teachers have an opportunity to influence changes in the educational system of their state let alone their country. At the STEM Education Center this is our mission, to be a part of some very important changes which are occurring in education today, namely in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education.

For the past four years, we have become experts in reviewing and disseminating various state educational standards. We are experts because it is part of our daily existence as teachers to be able to understand, implement, and assess our own Virginia state standards.

Much of our early work dealt with creating Grade level stratification or GLS, which is our term for sorting educational content, mainly in science, by grade level. See our work titled “Grade Level Stratification”. Using the state standards of three states, we were able to “average” the terms according to the grade levels in which they are taught. The core science concepts should not and cannot be taught without first understanding terms or vocabularies, which are a part of the body of core knowledge. This works extends from Kindergarten through college and is currently used in the science education portal www.scienceeducation.gov . Also see Dr. Wojick’s blog in OSTI (Office of Science and Technology Innovation) which explains this work. http://www.osti.gov/ostiblog/home/entry/cataloging_concepts_by_learning_level

Another important part of our research has been in the confusions found within state standards. See our paper titled “Confusions in State Science Standards: An Introduction.”Standards are what drive education today. Schools and more importantly teachers are held accountable based on the education standards each state must create. In our research, we have found not all standards are created equally. What a student learns in science in California is quite different from what a student in the same grade level will learn in Virginia or Texas. We have created a detailed site with links to every states’ standards. More importantly this research into state standards has helped us become experts in reviewing and comparing state standards; a luxury that many teachers to do not have.

Finally, in this forum we would like to be the window, in which others may view the daily process a teacher, student, and even parents experience in an average classroom. We are excited about sharing our research as well as what we are working on in the future. Please visit us often, share your opinions, and provide us with opportunities to be your experts.

Welcome to STEM SOLUTIONS

Welcome to the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Solutions Blog. The STEM Solutions weblog is operated by the STEM Education Center, our motto being “Write it so They Can Read It.” Dr. David Wojick, with his Associates began this weblog as an extension of their efforts at the STEM Education Center, which focus on the identification, writing, and ability to search for STEM material by grade level.

At this weblog you will find ongoing discussions of STEM challenges, Grade Level Stratification (GLS) information, state educational standard issues and current topics. You are invited to participate in the discussions, and we encourage you to also suggest topics for discussion. Your ideas are most certainly welcome.

The STEM Education Center is located in the Northwestern part of the Shenandoah Valley. It is here, that David and his team of experts on the grade level aspects of STEM educational content operate. Dr. Wojick and his Associates found early on in their research that web-based educational content is being developed in vast numbers throughout both the scientific community and the educational world. The problem with that is there is no search engine that finds educational content by grade level or degree of difficulty. This is the problem the team at the STEM Education Center is solving through the development of their new grade level stratification (GLS) system for finding, collecting and stratifying STEM educational content on the Web, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. The STEM Education Center efforts are ever expanding. Find out more about our efforts and discoveries at our STEM Education Center site.

Now just a little about our team:

Dr. Wojick, the Principal Investigator, is an expert on the Web-based diffusion of scientific knowledge and the concept structure of science and technology.

Diane Adams is a Web designer and research expert. Dr. Wojick and Diane Adams have conducted or participated in a number of large-scale projects that required developing new methods of search and analysis, in the context of real world applications. Much of this work has been done for the Federal government.

Bernadette Monahan is a science teacher who specializes in educational technology and collecting science education Web content. She is presently the Co-director and Lead Research Consultant for the Stem Education Center.

Georgia Perry-Ray is the Center’s Regulatory Analyst and Communications Specialist. Georgia has extensive regulatory experience as a retired Program Analyst of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) where she had responsibility for the development and implementation of nationwide policy and procedures.

Kenneth Ray, our IT Specialist, performs the tedious IT support tasks for which we are all thankful.

Additional Associates include the teacher consultant team for the Center, Cristin Livingston, Jennifer Arey Paschke and Heather Bachschmid Smelser whose expertise has been invaluable determining the Grade Level Stratification of state science standards and the analysis of those differences.