Slow Progress In Science Education

An oversized periodic table hangs by a window in Travis Hartberger’s second-floor chemistry laboratory. Class rules dot the walls of the fourth-year teacher’s room at McKinley Technology High School in Washington, D.C. His room looks like most other high school science labs in the country.

And like other science teachers, Hartberger struggles at times teaching his students. Last year, as McKinley’s science department head, the 25-year-old Hartberger didn’t have a physics teacher. A chemistry instructor taught the physics classes instead. Hartberger sometimes dips into his own pocket to offer more hands-on labs for his students. “At the end of the day, when a child’s learning is at stake, it’s hard not to find creative ways around or splurge a paycheck to give students equal access to science,” the Virginia native said after school one afternoon, sleeves rolled up and tie loosened.

Hartberger’s problems are all too common in U.S. public schools, short staffed and operating under tight budgets. Meanwhile, top educators and scientists continue to clamor for change in the country’s science education system. In September, two high-profile advisory bodies released reports on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education.

On Sept. 15, the National Science Board (NSB) issued the results of its two-year study, “Preparing the Next Generation of STEM Innovators,” aimed at better preparing and challenging top science students. The next day, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology (PCAST) released “Prepare and Inspire,” which it calls a guidebook for revamping K–12 science education.

Their theses are well understood and agreed upon: American public schools lack adequate science and math education, and the country will fall off the economic train if it can’t keep pace with other nations. They find that student interest in science and math is low and that science and math skills are inadequate. But the pair of reports offer no real signs of actual policy change, and they echo what some say has been preached for years now.

Steven B. Case, director of the Center for Science Education at the University of Kansas, points to almost a dozen reports aimed at better STEM education that have been released just in the past four years by various organizations.

“We know all this stuff. We know how to do it well,” Case says. “I think the more important question is ‘Why aren’t we?’ ”

Schools have shown only sporadic signs of successes with no comprehensive support to improve science education. Reports such as those released in September mean nothing if not followed by policy change, educators say. That change has been slow to come.

U.S.-born students aren’t entering STEM fields at the rates of students in other developed countries, leaving a possible void in the workforce in coming years. As of 2006, just 16% of U.S. undergraduate students chose natural sciences and engineering as their primary fields of study, according to the NSB report. That compares with 25% of Europeans, 38% of South Koreans, and 47% of Chinese students. But the problem goes beyond career interests in STEM fields and touches ability. According to recent assessments, fewer than one-third of U.S. eighth-graders show proficiency in mathematics and science, according to the PCAST report.

One of the two conclusions of the PCAST report was that the federal government lacked a coherent, focused strategy and necessary leadership to coordinate STEM education. For the past several years, the government has spent nearly $1 billion annually in STEM education, but the efforts are spread out among numerous federal agencies.

The National Science Foundation, a research-funding agency, is spending more than $450 million on science education initiatives and studies this year. Many of them are considered successful, but they are sparsely implemented.

The U.S. Department of Education holds the power to scale up successful NSF pilot programs into full-fledged, sustainable efforts. Too often, however, the two agencies disagree on what their true mission is, Case says. “I’ve been involved in situations where DOE said, ‘Well, you know NSF takes care of that.’ And NSF says, ‘Well, it’s not really our job on this one,’ ” he recalls.

One PCAST recommendation calls for the secretary of education to create an Office of STEM Education. However, S. James Gates Jr., a physics professor at the University of Maryland and cochair of the report’s working group, says the report does not call for some kind of super STEM-Ed Department. “In fact, I think this would be a terrible idea,” Gates says.

Instead, the PCAST report seeks the creation of a high-level partnership between NSF and DOE to coordinate expertise in the fields.

PCAST also says it is important to adopt a unified national standard of the concepts and facts that all science students should understand. Such common, shared standards, which are already in place in more than 30 states, would result in better materials and professional development for teachers.

“There needs to be a common vision of what it is that students should know, understand, and be able to do in science,” Kansas’ Case says.

PCAST calls for recruiting and training 100,000 highly qualified STEM teachers in the next decade to effectively excite students about science. At a cost of $100 million to $150 million per year, PCAST says DOE should identify and fund programs to produce quality science teachers.

Pat Marsteller, director of the Center for Science Education at Emory University in Atlanta, says one problem the PCAST report doesn’t seem to address is the high turnover among science teachers. “What are the issues that make us have to reinvent 100,000 new teachers every few years because they’re all leaving?” she asks.

To recognize, reward, and retain top teachers, PCAST wants to establish a STEM Master Teachers Corps for the top 5% of the nation’s science and math teachers. Members of this group could receive salary supplements and additional funds for their schools and districts.

PCAST also recommends creating 1,000 new STEM-focused schools—at least 200 at the high school level and 800 elementary schools—that would cost about $360 million per year for the next decade. The opportunity to attend such a school is rare for students today. Science schools nationally enroll fewer than one student in 1,000.

Board members of Marietta City Schools in Georgia recognized the need for better STEM education some time ago. In 2005, the suburban Atlanta system created the only STEM-focused elementary school in the state. The school district spent $2.2 million to open the school, which serves grades 3 through 5. Roughly 300 students are enrolled today. Even in elementary school, each Marietta student receives 
a laptop computer and takes classes in ecology, astronomy, and engineering.

“We want to catch the students early while they’re enthusiastic and don’t know any boundaries, especially the minority and female students,” says Margaret Sims, director of elementary and secondary curricula for Marietta City Schools.

STEM schools around the country have had roaring successes. Since opening in 2000, all 1,400 graduates of High Tech High in San Diego have been accepted to college. PCAST says more than 30% of the school’s graduates—twice the national average of 17%—pursue STEM fields as undergraduates.

In its report “Preparing the Next Generation of STEM Innovators,” NSB took a different approach toward improving science education. The report states that part of the problem is that America’s best and brightest students aren’t identified and developed and thus fail to reach their full potential. Rather than focus on improving science education for all students, NSB offered recommendations to better challenge and foster top science students.

“Because so many other reports had focused on raising the average level of achievement in STEM, our report is different,” says Camilla P. Benbow, dean of the Peabody College of Education & Human Development at Vanderbilt University and chair of the NSB task force that developed the report.

Benbow believes that improvements in STEM education must be made to better the education of all students “and at the same time raise the ceiling of achievement for our top students,” she said during the release of the report on Sept. 15. “We can and we must do both.”

The report calls for improved access to college-level and accelerated coursework for all students. It encourages local school districts and states to adopt more differentiated instruction and to provide an accelerated curriculum when appropriate. “If a fifth-grader is ready for algebra, let them do algebra,” Benbow says. “Don’t make them wait until seventh or eighth grade.”

NSB contends that school assessment and identification tools must be recast in order for teachers to identify talent. Also of note, the NSB report calls for a federal policy that holds schools, local districts, and states accountable for the performance of the top students in each grade and not just the average or those at the lowest level.

The problem for the education system is that reports such as the ones from PCAST and NSB too often fade silently away without effecting the changes they call for. The authors of the PCAST report believe their study will survive better than past reports because they’ve crafted more of a guidebook for changing policy. They point to their examples of costs and of successful existing programs as evidence that such change is possible.

But perhaps more important, supporters of improved STEM education believe the timing for transformation is ripe.

Francis Eberle, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association, the world’s largest organization of science educators, believes there are more science festivals and science fairs today than in years past.

“I think that there’s a broader recognition that we need to be doing better,” Eberle says. “There’s been more talk of it in the last two years than there’s ever been. But we can’t let up.”

Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have rallied behind bettering science education. President Barack Obama has helped launch a couple of STEM initiatives in the last year.

“We’re at the point where we have a truly bipartisan consensus, which is something one can say about very few things,” says Eric S. Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and cochair of the PCAST report. “We have to take advantage of this moment.”