Science is gaining momentum in American schools

It has taken prodding by industry, business, and government leaders - alarms going off, even - but science education is getting an upgrade in many classrooms across the region.

First graders are watching insect eggs hatch, feeding the larvae and learning words like metamorphosis.

High school students are signing up for course work in marine biology, pharmacology, engineering, and how the brain works.

And officials in many schools are adding class time and squeezing dollars out of tight budgets to improve science instruction and laboratories.

The question, not yet answered, is whether the newfound respect for science will boost student achievement to match math and science powerhouses in Asia and Europe.

Many corporate, industry, and government observers view American students - the next generation of workers - as lacking in the math, science, and technical skills that are key to U.S. economic prowess.

American students have placed in the middle of the pack on recent international assessments. And new state science tests, now in their third year in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, show performance lagging well behind reading and math.

The push is to gain public support, among parents in particular, for better math and science instruction to expand student interest in careers in fields such as energy technology, health care, and engineering.

In addition, "there's an advanced manufacturing sector [with] very sophisticated operations that require a new level of skill and proficiency in workers," said Anthony J. Girifalco, executive vice president of the Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center, an economic-development agency in Northeast Philadelphia. "They need education institutions to step up their game."

"The number-one issue for small manufacturers is their inability to find workers with the right stuff," he said.

Gov. Rendell made the same pitch at a national conference of science educators in Philadelphia in March.

"It's a global, high-tech economy," Rendell told the group. Job growth in the state, he said, is in biotechnology, the life sciences, and "green" frontiers, adding, "All those jobs require firsthand knowledge of technology and science. The question is: How do you get students interested?"

The Inquirer's annual survey of 166 school districts in the eight-county area and more than 300 public, private, charter, and technical high schools found many keen to nourish that interest. (See the Report Card on the Schools inside this edition of The Inquirer.)

For instance, more than 40 percent of the school districts give three or more hours of science instruction a week to fourth graders, and many make sure they get at least four hours - far more than the 60 to 80 minutes a week that once was the norm, and still is in some schools.

The impact of an early start can be seen at the Springside School in Chestnut Hill.

The private all-girls school revamped its curriculum more than a decade ago to give students a grounding in the sciences and hone their analytical and critical-thinking skills to serve them well whether they pursue science or, say, history, said Scott Stein, head of the science department.

The result? In recent years, about half of Springside graduates have expressed plans to pursue science or engineering in college.

Stein and others said this "hands-on, minds-on" approach taught students to ask questions, look for evidence, and learn to distinguish between valid and invalid information.

Support for science is not limited to private schools. The large, low-income Philadelphia School District has transformed a number of high schools to focus on science, especially disciplines that prepare students for regional jobs in health care and technology.

Some examples: Science Leadership Academy, with close ties to the Franklin Institute; Lankenau Environmental Science; Robeson Human Services; and the new Communications Technology.

Tapping into that sense of exploration is key. "To best learn science, you have to do science," said Robert Shappell, director of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) studies at Camden County Technical Schools.

Across the region, robotics courses, clubs, and competitions are the rage, as is forensic science - just one of a couple dozen new high school science offerings that also include meteorology and organic chemistry.

Nonetheless, results of 2009 state assessments in science raise questions about the rigor of science programming.

The tests, mandated by No Child Left Behind, don't count toward whether a school is making Adequate Yearly Progress, a requirement under the federal law. As a result, administrators in struggling districts continue to focus on math and reading scores, with less attention to science.

Still, at fourth grade, there is good news: About two-thirds of districts in the Pennsylvania suburbs and half the South Jersey districts have 90 percent or more of their students at proficiency or better. Although scores are typically lower in high-poverty schools, many of these students scored better in science than in reading.

But by high school, science performance falls off dramatically. More than 70 percent of 11th graders scored below proficient in the latest state science test in 18 out of 82 suburban Pennsylvania public and charter high schools and in 69 out of 79 city high schools and charters.

Even among the highest performers - schools in the top 20 percent of all Pennsylvania schools - at least a fourth of the students failed to meet basic science proficiency.

(New Jersey does not administer a statewide science assessment for 11th grade, relying on end-of-course biology tests.)

The results may startle, but assessment experts say there may be no need for alarm, yet, for these reasons:

The test is new, and curriculums may not have been aligned with state standards.

Few 11th graders received the same intensity of science instruction in their elementary years as their younger brothers and sisters do.

How New Jersey and Pennsylvania students rank internationally is not entirely clear, since students here and abroad don't take global tests. But one research group has linked state performance on an American test (the 2007 National Assessment of Education Progress) with an international one (the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study test).

The news for the two states is encouraging. In the eighth grade, students in New Jersey and Pennsylvania scored in what could be described as the second tier of nations - just behind the top-ranking powerhouses of Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan - according to the research report.

In science, New Jersey ranked behind the Asian five, Estonia, England, and Hungary and just ahead of the United States mean overall.

Although Pennsylvania eighth graders did not take the science test, in math they scored behind the Asian leaders and just two European nations, Belgium and the Netherlands. New Jersey in math scored just behind Belgium.

(Massachusetts, the nation's top performer, outdid Belgium but not Japan.)

Educators are optimistic that the momentum is there to move ahead.

"Our children are naturally explorers. They don't want to be restrained," said Francis Eberle, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association.

Schools' efforts to promote science education should include working with universities and industry, said Stein, as Springside does with Princeton University and the Monell Center for the Chemical Senses in Philadelphia.

"Teachers who take these workshops get the most up-to-date information, learn new lab techniques, and get to borrow thousands of dollars worth of equipment," Stein said.

"Students won't feel like they can be scientists if they only see it on TV. They will become scientists and engineers if they get to use cool equipment and get access to the most current information as part of their regular curriculum."