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By Mary Carmichael
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If it's true that intelligent people never get bored, 14-year-old Shannon McClintock ought to be thrilled every minute she's awake. In October her science skills won the top prize at the Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge. At an age when many girls still harbor hopes of becoming ballerinas and pop stars, McClintock wants to "look for infinite mathematical patterns that haven't been found in nature yet." She's the kind of smart student that educators pin their hopes on. So why did she, of all people, start to find her science classes a little boring when she got to middle school? There was one problem, she says: "Things were too simplified."
If only one could say the same for the larger issue of fixing science education in America. For years middle-grade science teachers have struggled to spark the imaginations of their students, and they've found the task to be anything but simple. In the elementary grades, most kids are curious about the natural world. But by the time they hit middle school--a crucial period, the first time they're truly capable of abstract thinking--they're often more interested in the opposite sex than in science. "That period's a gateway," says Freeman Hrabowski, who has studied the issue extensively. "And if they get turned off, they're forever shut out from science."
Teachers are trying nearly everything to bring students back to the lab, and clever kids like McClintock are unquestionably reaping the benefits of their efforts. But students with lower abilities just don't seem to be able to keep pace. The 2000 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) showed that American elementary students weren't that far behind their peers in science. But after fifth grade, they fared horribly. In another survey released last week, U.S. 15-year-olds placed 22nd in science skills and 28th in math compared with students in 39 other countries.
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That's not to say all American students are suffering. Teaching science well can be an expensive enterprise, and in the country's more affluent schools, this is a golden age for science education. Belmont Ridge Middle School in Maryland invited 34 teachers this summer for a science "boot camp" led by local college professors. The courses were paid for by the nearby Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Hundreds of schools have hooked up with GLOBE, a program that teaches kids to gather environmental data from their school grounds using high-tech (and expensive) tools like GPS. The brightest kids at underfunded schools have new opportunities, too, albeit outside the classroom. Many magnet high schools in urban areas, such as the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, run after-school outreach programs in underprivileged communities. And competitions like the Discovery contest are open to all kids; they offer not only an intellectual challenge but the chance to earn scholarship money as well as TV fame (the participants take to the airwaves on Dec. 19 at 10 a.m.). But these programs tend to attract brainy kids like McClintock, who aren't the ones placing 28th out of 40 in math skills.
Why are the rest of America's students doing so poorly? One answer is simple: there aren't enough good teachers. Trying to explain science to kids who are predisposed to boredom--rather than the bright kids who have plenty of curiosity--can be an exasperating job. "The good teachers migrate to the gifted classes," says Shirley Malcolm of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "The students who need the most skilled teachers are the ones least likely to get them." In rural and inner-city areas, teachers with science expertise are scarce, and more are "teaching out-of-subject," says Malcolm. Most seventh-grade teachers have elementary certification, says Hrabowski, the president of the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, so "they really have not had strong math and science backgrounds." In some cases, teachers may not have taken a science class since middle or high school themselves.
There are other problems. New textbooks are expensive, and many currently in use are little more than "a few lines of copy and a couple of dumb questions," says Joy Hakim, the author of a popular new science-book series aimed at middle schoolers. Science, of course, is a field that requires hands-on experiments in addition to book learning. But lab equipment is costly, too, and it often gets left out of the budget altogether; a recent survey of 200 New York City middle schools found that only 80 had science labs. Teachers in all subjects occasionally have to dip into their personal funds for classroom supplies. How many can afford to buy microscopes?
Next year No Child Left Behind will start requiring standardized science tests. The idea is to lift up the kids at the bottom of the class who've thus far been unreachable. Science teachers, annoyed by the Bush administration's previous focus on math and reading, are grateful for the attention. But some of them wonder why students will have to pass science tests only in fourth, eighth and 12th grades, when math and literacy tests are required every year. The well-intentioned legislation may end up shoving science even farther from the center of the curriculum, says Anne Tweed, president of the National Science Teachers Association. The A-students will learn it one way or another. But the rest of them won't. "Some teachers are suggesting that we don't even teach science except in those test years," says Tweed. No matter what the scores show, that would be a failure.
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