A decade ago, California schools introduced a new K-12 science curriculum that was hands-on, interactive and designed to prepare students for the challenges of the 21st century. 

But since the state started testing students on the new Next Generation Science Standards in 2019, the first time ever California assessed students in science, test scores have barely budged, with stark gaps among some groups of students.

“In large part, science has not been viewed as a priority. It’s been moved to the back burner,” said Jessica Sawko, education director at the research and advocacy organization Children Now, and former head of the state’s association of science teachers. “But science needs to be a priority. How will we prepare our kids to make sense of the world around them?”

In 2019, three years after most schools began teaching the new science curriculum, only 30% of students met the standard on the state exam. Last year, the number had inched up to only 30.7%.

Wide gaps exist among student groups. Among students whose parents graduated from college, 42% met the standard, compared to 17% of those whose parents never went beyond high school. Fewer than than 21% of low-income students met the standard. Only 15% of Black students met the standard, compared to 61% of Asian students.

Delays and obstacles

There’s a few reasons for the stagnant scores, experts said. Pandemic school closures set achievement back significantly for all subjects, but it especially affected science because so much of the new science curriculum centers on hands-on projects, which were nearly impossible to conduct over Zoom.

And after the pandemic, schools focused their recovery efforts on literacy, math and attendance, the most glaring challenges as students returned to in-person learning. Chronic absenteeism, for example, soared from 10% pre-pandemic to 30% in 2022. 

Another reason for the low science scores is accountability, Sawko and others said. For the first few years of the new science test, the scores were not posted on the state’s — the primary means of publicizing students’ academic performance. The rationale is that the test was new and the state was still working out the kinks.

Last year, the results were posted at the bottom of the Dashboard in an area marked “informational purposes.” Unlike the other features of the dashboard, such as math and English language arts scores, science was not color coded to indicate the performance level of individual schools or student groups. The science results were solid gray.

When the new scores are released this fall, science will be color-coded on the Dashboard, but science still falls short of full accountability, advocates said. Low-performing schools won’t be singled out by the state for extra assistance, although that might change next year.

Another obstacle has been teacher training. After California adopted the new standards, it didn’t invest any money in professional development until 2023. For many years, districts used their own funds or found private grants to pay for teacher training, but by fall 2020 at least 30%-40% of teachers had received no training in the new standards, according to a by the California Association of Science Educators. Teachers at low-income and rural schools received the least training.

In 2023 the state allotted $85 million to improve math, science and computer science education, but only about $1.5 million went to train teachers in science. The rest went to train teachers in math and computer science – which also recently got new standards – and to host family STEM nights and other activities. The money went to county offices of education to distribute locally. 

The grant expires in 2027, and it’s crucial that the state continue that investment, said Shari Staub, co-leader of the California Math, Science and Computer Science Partnership.

“We are daily faced with public health challenges, climate challenges, equity challenges — all the things a scientifically literate population should be able to address, not just for California but for the world,” Staub said. “If we’re not investing in science, we are not preparing students for the world they are entering.”

Three-dimensional learning

The Next Generation Science Standards were created in 2011 by an education nonprofit called Achieve, with help from 26 states and dozens of science education experts. The idea was to make science more engaging and “three-dimensional,” as the authors put it, by combining concepts from multiple scientific disciplines so students could discover patterns and systems. Students would gain critical thinking skills and a solid understanding of scientific concepts, largely by doing hands-on projects rather than listening to lectures.

Many school districts in California have embraced the new standards and seen scores improve. In fact, California public schools — particularly those in tech hubs — have some of the top science programs in the country. California students routinely win the National Science Bowl, Science Olympiad and other national competitions. 

For the most part, those districts invested their own funds early in the rollout to train their teachers. And they have strong support from parents, financial and otherwise. That amounts to PTA funds that teachers can use to pay for science field trips or extra help in the classroom, plenty of parent volunteers and an overall expectation that science education is a priority. 

None of the top-performing schools were Title I low-income schools, but they weren’t all homogenous affluent schools, either. Some had 25% or more low-income students, large percentages of English learners and diverse student populations. They might have PTA support, but they don’t receive much extra money from the state because they don’t have large numbers of high-needs students.

La Cañada Unified near Pasadena, for example, received only $13,700 per student last year from the state, about $5,000 less than the state average. But more than 77% of students met or exceeded the science standards last year, some of the highest scores in the state. 

Each elementary school in the district has a science lab and an aide to assist with science projects. A summer camp called “STEM-nauts” pairs older students with younger ones for science-themed games and experiments. The high school offers five Advanced Placement science classes and a host of science-related extracurricular activities, including an astronomy club, neuroscience club and chemistry club. Students can do internships at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is a quarter-mile from the high school.

“In our district, the science kids are the cool kids,” said James Cartnal, assistant superintendent. “Science is part of the culture here. We work intentionally and very hard to make it that way.”

‘Think like scientists’

At Lawson Middle School in Cupertino, science is nearly everyone’s favorite subject. The science classrooms are boisterous places with students conducting experiments and trying to figure out solutions. The shelves are well stocked with beakers, scales and microscopes. Colorful tapestries of the periodic table hang from the ceiling. Anime renditions of the elements — including xenon, helium, germanium, cadmium — adorn the walls.

One recent afternoon, students in Emily Adams’ eighth grade science class did a lesson on measurements. Adams started by asking them why accurate measurements are important. Their answers: so astronauts know how much fuel is left in their rocketship; so truck drivers know if their vehicle will fit under an overpass; and so doctors know how much medicine they’re giving a patient.

Then they worked in groups to measure various objects, using an infrared thermometer, an electronic scale and other tools.

“This class is fun. I like all the labs, figuring out how things work in the real world,” said student Neil Dhaman. “P.E. is my favorite class, but this is second.”

Adams said the class was typical, in that she spends about 10 minutes explaining a few main concepts and the students spend the rest of the class on projects related to the concepts. “I want them to focus on skills and critical thinking, not just regurgitate facts,” Adams said. “I want them to think like scientists.”

Cupertino is in the heart of Silicon Valley, home to the Apple computer headquarters and dozens of tech start-ups. Google and Facebook are a few miles away. Despite the lure of six-figure salaries in Silicon Valley, Cupertino Union School District has very little turnover among science teachers, a key reason the science scores are so high, said Marie Crawford, the district’s director of instructional leadership and intervention. 

“The teachers know each other, work together, help each other out,” Crawford said. “It makes a big difference.”

Like La Cañada, Cupertino Union School District does not receive a lot of money from the state. Last year, the state provided $16,400 per student, far below the state average.

In teacher Maryhien Pham’s class, eighth grader Aanya Dhar and her classmates demonstrated how to find the mass of a marble by dropping it into a cylinder of water, and weighing the cylinder before and after. The answer: 3 milliliters. 

“I might want to be a scientist when I grow up,” Dhar said. “I like learning about new things, experimenting, getting to know how things work.”

This article was and was republished under the license.

U.S. eighth graders are less prepared to be the scientists of tomorrow than they were before the pandemic. 

In the first nationwide test of students’ science knowledge since 2019, the percentage of students scoring at the proficient level fell to 29%, down from 33%, and the average score dropped back to levels last seen in 2009, when a new version of the test was introduced, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Students’ confidence in the subject area has also slipped, with 28% saying they “definitely can do various science-related activities,” down from 34%. 

Performance fell across all three categories — physical, life, and earth and space sciences. Less than half of students can identify the major component of living cells, compared to 55% in 2019, and the percentage of students who can identify a characteristic of mammals declined from 72% to 68%. 

It’s not just the decline in skills that concerns science experts, it’s the dramatic decrease in their interest. The share of students saying they enjoy science activities plummeted from 52% to 42%. 

“If you’re not interested, it’s hard to learn,” said Christine Cunningham, senior vice president of STEM learning at the Museum of Science in Boston and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for NAEP. Students were also less likely than in 2019 to say they engage in tasks like designing research questions, debating scientific ideas and conducting experiments to explain why something happens. “As someone who works a lot with students or with teachers who do that kind of inquiry, that’s why students get excited.” 

COVID-era school closures derailed student learning in all areas, but science was hit especially hard as teachers tried to keep kids on track in reading and math. A from the Public Policy Institute of California showed that only about a quarter of districts emphasized science in their recovery efforts. Teachers were more likely to assign free online lessons and let students work at their own pace, compared with a typical school year. Widespread declines in reading performance have also hampered students’ ability to keep up in science at a time when technology is rapidly evolving. 

“Science is such a hands-on experience, and trying to find ways to bring that to different homes was challenging,” said Autumn Rivera, a sixth grade science teacher in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, west of Denver. “Eleven- and 12-year-olds really need a lot of activity.”

She got families involved in “kitchen chemistry,” asked students to and recorded videos of lessons to discuss with students on Zoom. One of their favorite experiments was studying the water cycle by hanging a plastic bag full of water in a sunny window. 

In the spring of 2021, , students had missed out on at least two months of science learning. By 2024, science achievement in third to fifth grade had returned to 2019 levels, but seventh and eighth graders, across all racial groups, saw the most significant declines and were still more than three months behind pre-pandemic performance.

One former education secretary warned against using COVID “as an excuse.” Margaret Spellings, who led the department during George W. Bush’s administration, noted that as with students’ achievement in other subject areas, performance in science did not improve between 2015 and 2019. Average scores for eighth and 12th graders were flat and declined for fourth graders.

A positive trend, Cunningham said, is that more elementary schools have added STEM as part of an elective rotation with art and music. Those classes can be highly engaging, but aren’t always focused on grade-level standards, she said. In addition, regular classroom teachers might scale back science lessons and focus more on reading and math. 

High and low performers

The declines in achievement were not confined to a few student groups. They affected students whether or not they live in the suburbs, come from wealthier homes or have parents who graduated from college. Students without disabilities and who speak English as a first language also scored lower than in 2019. 

But Matt Soldner, acting NCES commissioner, pointed out what he considers the one encouraging sign from the results  — a 6-point increase in scores for English learners. 

“NAEP describes the what, not the why,” he said, “but that’s an interesting subgroup finding.”

As with other NAEP assessments, the science results show a widening gap between students scoring at the highest and lowest levels. Scores for students in the 90th percentile dropped from 196 to 194, but fell further, from 106 to 101, for students at the 10th percentile.  In fact, for students at both the 10th and 25th percentiles, scores are at “historic lows,” said Soldner. “These results should galvanize all of us to take concerted focused action to accelerate student learning.”

Julia Rafal-Baer, co-founder of ILO Group, an education consulting firm, and also a member of the governing board, said access to books likely contributes to the disparities in scores. If science wasn’t a high priority in some schools, “how is it that high-performing kids are still absorbing enough to be able to be high-performing?” she asked.

Many students, Rivera said, lack the reading skills to interpret science texts. 

“I’m having to take a step back and really focus on basic reading 
 which is not something  that I am technically trained in as a sixth grade teacher,” she said. Like many teachers, she also sees families place less emphasis on consistent attendance and good work habits. “We’re seeing students missing work. We’re not really seeing 
 emphasis placed on school or on achievement.”

Poor basic math skills are also hindering students’ progress in science, said Cunningham, who designs STEM curriculum materials for schools across the country.

“Teachers are spending more time making sure that the kids are prepared to do some of the things that in the past they may have assumed kids would come equipped to do,” she said. “Could they make a table? Could they make a graph?”

On NAEP, the percentage of students saying they frequently “used tables or graphs to identify relationships between variables” fell from 43% to 39%. Less than a third “used math equations to explain or support scientific conclusions.”

‘Starving ourselves of knowledge’

NAEP will assess students’ reading and math skills again in 2026, but the next won’t take place until 2028, again just for eighth grade. Students will take that includes a stronger emphasis on students applying their knowledge and will incorporate more technology and engineering topics. 

Because so many students — at least a third — score below basic, Cunningham added that the board felt it was important to expand the number of questions targeting students at that level.  

“We need to know more about what that population knows,” she said. The questions, for example, might be simpler and require less reading.

Fourth graders were left out of the 2024 and 2028 science tests for budget reasons, Cunningham said. They’re scheduled to participate again in 2032. But one former governing board member said the absence of data from fourth graders is troubling.

“If there had to be a cut, I understand why we would, but it still raises the question of what we expect in science in early grades,” said Andrew Ho, a testing expert and education professor at Harvard University. “Why are we starving ourselves of knowledge about educational progress outside of [English language arts and math]?”

Staff cuts to NCES of the results, which were expected earlier this summer. 

During a background call with reporters last week, a member of the governing board said the results were “an opportunity for the field to see that these report cards are of the same quality that they have come to expect from the NAEP program.” But an NCES official on the same call said that in light of Education Secretary Linda McMahon firing most of the center’s employees, the department will need “sufficient staff and other resources in place” to conduct the tests next year and plan for 2028.

McMahon reiterated her support for the NAEP program during a .

“If we have an objective measure across all states, like NAEP, then I think that’s the best way to go,” she said. “We will not get away from having NAEP scores and the research that we can all rely on to make sure that we’re doing the right things.”  

‘AI-driven world’

Beverly DeVore-Wedding, president of the National Science Teaching Association, still worries that the “current political climate” will diminish the program. 

“I am concerned about them changing the assessment picture and that NAEP could get reduced to only reading and mathematics,” she said. 

The science results also have implications for other aspects of President Donald Trump’s agenda, such as incorporating artificial intelligence into learning. Last week, first lady Melania Trump hosted an event tied to the for students to use AI to address community challenges. 

“It’s not one of those things to be afraid of,” McMahon said at the event. “Let’s embrace it. Let’s develop AI-based solutions to real-world problems.”

Rafal-Baer said the rapid adoption of AI tools just reinforces the importance of science education.

“AI is here and it’s already reshaping how we work, learn and solve problems,” she said.  “The complexity is only going to accelerate, and we can’t afford to have a scientifically illiterate workforce trying to navigate an AI-driven world.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated whether the 8th grade NAEP science exam gathers supplemental data on students’ home environments or reading habits.

A by the testing company NWEA shows a gender gap in eighth grade STEM achievement has returned following the pandemic.

Historically, boys have tested better than girls in math and science in middle school, said Megan Kuhfield, one of the NWEA report’s authors. But the gender gap disappeared in 2019, according to results from (TIMSS), an assessment administered across dozens of countries every four years. For the first time since 1995, girls outperformed boys in eighth grade math and science that year.

But TIMSS scores released in December 2024 showed that girls’ performance substantially declined more than boys’ in eighth grade science and math. The study showed the same trend was found in two national tests: assessment and the (NAEP). 

Across all three tests, gender gaps in math and science went from almost nonexistent in 2019 to favoring boys starting in 2022. The MAP Growth assessment — which is administered annually — shows that the gaps widened mainly between 2021 and 2024, when students returned to classrooms.

Kuhfield said the research is concerning because decades of progress in for STEM achievement was wiped out in four years. 

“It’s really hard to say definitively what’s happening here,” she said. “It’s the million-dollar question — why did we see these gaps close by 2019 and then reopen during the last five years?”

Researchers discovered that girls suffered more during COVID-19, but Kuhfield said if that was the main cause, reading test scores would have followed a similar pattern. Girls still outperformed boys in literacy on the latest NWEA and NAEP assessments, according to the study.

“That kind of led me to two other theories that are going on kind of in my head,” she said. “One being: Maybe there’s something about how teachers are interacting with students in the classroom — reinforcing old stereotypes of pushing boys [more] towards advanced math. We don’t have evidence of this.”

Kuhfield said her other theory is that there’s been a shift in education to focus on boys’ academic achievement as researchers have found they are .

The NWEA study includes recommendations for schools to improve the equity in STEM education. Researchers suggest examining classroom dynamics and instructional practices to ensure boys aren’t receiving more teacher attention, and providing academic and emotional support — particularly to girls — to improve math and science skills.

But a new book argues that the current approach remains deeply flawed. Though phonics instruction has emerged as a key component of reading lessons, stagnant NAEP scores, among other measures, suggest that something is missing — a focus on substantive knowledge, including detail-rich lessons in science and history. 

Author Natalie Wexler, whose 2019 book advocated a greater emphasis on these topics paired with explicit instruction, has said these principles are supported by cognitive science. A content-rich curriculum, she maintains, allows students to go deeper, helping information stick and building an academic foundation that allows them to write more easily, creating a kind of virtuous circle of reinforcement: The more they know, the better they can write; the better they can write, the more they can learn.

Six years later, Wexler is back with a new warning. In her book, , out Feb. 3. (pre-orders open today, Jan. 21), she says the benefits of improved reading instruction will go to waste if we don’t offer students a more vibrant, content-rich set of lessons to go along with it. 

She spoke recently with ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s Greg Toppo. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ: Your book The Knowledge Gap came out in 2019. A lot has happened since then, including a pandemic and an explosion of interest in the science of reading, thanks in part, to the work of folks like . Would you say we’re in a better place in the knowledge discussion than we were in 2019?

Natalie Wexler: Yes, definitely. For one thing, there are now a number of knowledge-building curricula available that were not around when I was researching the book. There are more choices than there used to be. And although we don’t have really reliable data on what curricula are really being used, all indications are that more and more districts and schools are using those knowledge-building curricula. That’s been a very promising development. It’s still a minority, but certainly more than in 2019. Emily Hanford and other science of reading advocates have done a great service to the public and to the nation’s children by shining this spotlight on things that are problematic about typical phonics instruction. The risk is that it can lead, and has led in some places, to the assumption that if we just fix the phonics part of reading instruction, everything else is going to be fine. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. 

A lot of people see the science of reading as just “more phonics.” How do you describe this more comprehensive approach?

People outside the education world assume that schools are teaching social studies and science and all of those things. I have to do a lot of explaining when I talk about how we’re not building knowledge in school effectively. With The Knowledge Gap, the publishers expected that the audience would be primarily the general public and parents. But where it’s really taken off is among educators. And it’s because it’s a lot easier, certainly for elementary level and maybe some middle school level educators, to understand the argument, because they’re living what I’m describing: There isn’t much content in the elementary curriculum, and there is a lot of emphasis on teaching reading comprehension skills, making inferences as though they were abstract skills you can teach directly and apply generally. Many of them have seen that that doesn’t really work very well. 

As I was reading your book, it reminded me of some of the conversations I’ve had with Joy Hakim, who wrote the great series, A History of US and . Her books are favorites among people who are enlightened about this topic. One of the things she says is that we’re underestimating how much our kids can understand if they’re exposed to difficult material. Is that the right word, underestimating? 

“Underestimating” is the right word, and I use that a lot myself. But you have to be careful about what we’re underestimating. It is often assumed among educators that young children won’t be interested in history or can’t handle history because it’s just too abstract, too remote from their own experience. There’s no evidence to support that. And in fact, there’s anecdotal evidence that kids can get very interested in history.

I’ve seen this myself: second graders getting fascinated by the War of 1812. But at the same time, we’ve overestimated kids’ abilities sometimes to handle certain abstractions. I open The Knowledge Gap with a teacher who’s trying to teach kids the difference between a subtitle and a caption, which is abstract but not particularly interesting to them. They don’t get it. They want to know what’s going on in the picture. What is that shark eating? But the teacher feels that it’s more important. This is what her training in the curriculum has led her to do, to focus on the abstract difference between a caption and a subtitle.

You and I have both interviewed teacher in Baltimore, and I love what he tells you: He was initially skeptical that his students would like a Dust Bowl novel, , but as the drama unfolds, they’re hooked. I wonder what that tells you, not only about the topic, but about how he was able to approach it and make it come alive.

said that you can teach almost anything to a child of any age if you do it in a way that makes sense. Those weren’t his exact words, but if you engage kids, they will get interested in all sorts of things that have nothing to do with their own experience. If you basically tell them a good story, that’s the way you can teach history, science. This is what Joy Hakim does so beautifully in her work, both in history and science: telling stories that really hook kids, and then they learn a lot, almost effortlessly, along the way. 

There’s a lot of emphasis on having kids “see themselves” in what they’re reading, which is important. But it is at least as important to expand their horizons to other realms of experience. Fiction, novels especially, are a great way to do that. As Kyair said, when they learn that the main character’s little brothers died, they care. They care about this story and these characters. There’s also some evidence to show that this is the way empathy develops, through reading fiction about lives that are very different from our own.

In Chapter 3 of the new book, you talk about teachers colleges, and note that today’s teacher educators — that is, the people working in the colleges — have been shaped by “a system that devalues knowledge and prioritizes engagement.” In a way, you can’t blame teachers for this crisis.

Absolutely. It is no individual’s fault that we are where we are. It’s a systemic problem, so it’s not going to change overnight. It’s difficult, not just for teacher educators to step out of this system, but also the teachers themselves. If you’ve been teaching in a certain way for years in the sincere belief that you are doing a great job, and someone casts doubt on that, it’s a very difficult message to take in.

What really amazes me is how many teachers, despite the painfulness of the message, are nevertheless embracing it because they really care about the success of their kids. With teacher training, it’s going to be hard to change that overnight. We’re really trying to fix a broken system with the products of that system, which is very difficult. I don’t think we can rely on teacher training to change the system. Once teachers are on the job, we also need to continue communicating this message, doing training to undo some of the training they’ve gotten pre-service. 

Historically, teachers also haven’t learned much about cognitive science. Do you get a sense that’s improving?

As I say in the book, there are efforts. is an organization that is doing great work with some institutions of teacher training, but it’s going to be very slow. There are hundreds of programs that train teachers, and just a handful are signing up to bring their curricula in line with principles of cognitive science. Even within those programs, not every teacher is on the bandwagon. You can’t really, at the university level, control what goes on in the classroom. Professors are used to having a lot of autonomy. 

Let’s talk about writing. You’re the co-author of as well. Reading your new book, it seems that writing brings together a lot of your ideas. Can you talk a bit about the importance of writing?

Since I finished writing both of those books years ago, I have continued to think more about the relationship between reading and writing and learning in general. I’ve become more and more convinced that the combination of a content-rich curriculum and explicit, manageable writing instruction embedded in that curriculum can provide all the benefits of cognitive science-informed instruction, and possibly more. Without going into a lot of detail, we have evidence that when you write about what you’re reading or what you’re learning about, it enhances your learning. It enables you to retain the information better, it enables you to understand it better, and it enables you to think about it analytically.

The problem is that writing is really difficult. We have studies, like write-to-learn studies, where they have kids write about the content that they’re learning. Overall there’s a positive effect from that. But in one meta analysis, in 18% of these studies there was . In other words, kids writing about what they were learning actually retained less of it. It’s impossible to know why. But the reason is we sometimes ask kids to just write without giving them enough support, and that is cognitively overwhelming, so they don’t get the potential learning benefits. 

So what’s the key?

The key is to make writing manageable, not cognitively overwhelming, but still requiring some effort. The best way to do that is to start at the sentence level — because if writing is hard, then writing at length is only making it harder — and explicitly teach students how to construct sentences and eventually clear linear outlines for paragraphs and essays that are embedded in the content they’re learning about. If you do that, you’re having them engage in , which we know is a very powerful boost to retention of information. You’re also having them engage in elaboration, explaining what they’re learning about, giving examples, all of that. That has been shown to really help with comprehension. You’re familiarizing them in a powerful way with the complex syntax of written language, which can be a real barrier to reading comprehension.  

You say that content-rich curricula are under fire from both sides, the left and right. I love the anecdote where you visit a small town in Ohio where this group of parents objected to the use of the words “God” and “Goddess” in a second-grade unit on Greek mythology. You note, “It’s hard to imagine how children could truly understand Greek myths or ancient Greek culture without hearing those words.” I have two questions. Number one, how do we get out from underneath this? And number two, is there a way in which this is kind of a red herring? 

This is coming not just from the right and not just from the left. The same curriculum has been attacked, sometimes, from both sides for different reasons. What we need to fundamentally do is realize that compromise is essential, and it’s got to be compromise that doesn’t interfere with kids’ ability to learn. There’s been a lot of opposition from the right to teaching about Greek myths in a curriculum called . Sometimes it’s perceived as trying to proselytize about Greek myths or other religions, Buddhism, Hinduism. When school leaders have explained to the community, “No, this isn’t an attempt to convert kids to these other religions. It’s a part of teaching them about history and other cultures,” sometimes those controversies have been defused — not in every instance.

Another thing to bear in mind, though, is that sometimes the people who are protesting are not representative. They’re maybe a small but very vocal group of parents. You have to ask: Does it really make sense to deprive all students of exposure to some valuable information because a small group is protesting? Maybe there’s another way to handle it, some alternative texts or something for those kids. But fundamentally, everybody needs to realize that the curriculum is not going to align with your individual preferences about what you would like your kids to learn. And we have to find consensus. There’s more consensus than there appears to be, which kind of gets to your second question: The media have kind of elevated these conflicts. In many instances, there isn’t that much conflict.

Is there anything you see in the landscape that gives you hope that we are moving in the right direction?

For one thing, I have gotten many invitations to speak recently. The interest in this, at least from my limited personal perspective, is not dying down. It’s only growing. And that’s encouraging. There are other people taking up this message. I’m seeing the beginnings of a recognition that phonics instruction is important, but we may be overdoing it with all of the focus on it in some places — the one generalization you can make about American education is you can’t generalize, because who knows what’s really going on?

But in some places, schools are spending an hour a day on phonics and giving short shrift to some of these other important components of reading, like building knowledge. That really relates to reading comprehension. Even some of the people who have been in the forefront of the science of reading movement, like , have been saying this: Let’s not overdo it, because there’s an opportunity cost, and one of those opportunities that’s being lost is the chance to build a kind of knowledge that kids will need to read and understand the texts they’ll be expected to read in years to come.

A science class for middle school students at Panorama Middle School commonly involves a trek out to the prairie behind the school, a sketch of native seeds under the microscope or a homework assignment to track the progress of a backyard bluebird from its birdhouse.

Teacher Mark Dorhout created an outdoor education program at the middle school in Panora to “connect (students) to the natural world,” foster environmental stewardship, and give students a real-world application to the science they learn in the classroom.

Dorhout, who has a degree in wildlife and fisheries sciences, spent the majority of his career teaching or administering at middle schools and has been teaching sixth through eighth grade science at Panorama Middle School for four years.

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He started the outdoor education program by taking students out to a recently restored prairie behind the school, and using the school’s backyard in his lessons as much as possible.

“This has been a long-standing passion of mine that has become more and more apparent as we move along in this society,” Dorhout said. “And really the main thrust to that is that kids are out less and less into this environment.”

Now the class and its non-traditional classroom has a reputation among the middle schoolers — all of whom will go through the project, make a birdhouse, and get to meet Dorhout’s Labrador retriever, which never misses a field day.

Dorhout said he’s thankful the school district has been very supportive of the program and works with him to supply materials and promote the course in newsletters to parents.

“They get it,” Dorhout said of his district. “They understand the value of a program like this.”

Dorhout said the 11-acre prairie behind the school has been there for over 20 years but really fell out of use until seven or so years ago when the local members of the Izaak Walton League worked to “grub out” some of the trees that had overtaken the area, and replant it to prairie.

Each grade has a different project. Seventh graders build either a bluebird or a wren box that they take home, hang on a tree, and monitor through the rest of their time in middle school.

“They never knew that there was the whole other thing going on 
 and then all of a sudden they’ve started paying attention to the birds in the neighborhood,” Dorhout said.

Eighth grade students get to work in the greenhouse as part of their curriculum on genetics and climate change. Last year he added sixth graders to his docket and uses the prairie for their lessons in water quality and chemistry.

Dorhout said going out and conducting water quality tests gives the students a real life application of the chemistry they learn in the classroom.

And all of the students get about 50 field days over the course of their time in middle school. Throughout the program, Dorhout has his students gather seeds, add plants into the prairie and analyze what makes one section of the prairie better than another. All of it leads to pretty “rich conversations” around soil quality and biodiversity.

“Kids that you wouldn’t think would like doing prairie work, just totally get into it,” Dorhout said.

Brody Steenblock, a ninth grade student at Panorama High School who went through Dorhout’s program, grew up hunting and farming and said he considered himself outdoorsy, but that Dorohout’s class was “a next level of outdoors.”

Steenblock said he persuaded his parents to plant multiple acres of the prairie grasses he learned about in the class, as part of the Conservation Reserve Program on their farm.

“I don’t think we probably would have planted it, if it wasn’t for the outdoor ed,” Steenblock said.

Steenblock said the class “sparked” a lot of interest in him and he recalls that it was the favorite class for many of his peers as well.

“There was just a whole bunch of kids that either just were not doing the best in school, and couldn’t pay attention in school, and then, you get to Mr. Dorhout’s class, and 
 kids were just like a whole different person,” Steenblock said.

Cross curricular

Dorhout spoke about his class during a Watershed Talk with the Dec. 17.

Mike Delaney, a member of the league and a prairie advocate who lives near Dorhout, called the outdoor education program “phenomenal.”

“I’ve been thinking about prairie as a teaching tool, and I’m not sure there’s any limits to what you can get into,” Delaney said. “Anything you want to do you can use prairie as an example, and that’s what you’re doing.”

Dorhout doesn’t teach just science in his classroom, but engages students across disciplines.

The middle schoolers each keep a journal where they take down field observations and are encouraged to draw diagrams and doodles of what they study.

Dorhout has also posted the cardinal directions on each of the four walls of his classroom with a corresponding theme. The north wall, for example, faces the prairie and is labeled with “environment”, the east wall faces town and says “community,” South is recreation and West is legacy. He has students write notes about each of these elements and post them up on the wall.

“I always try to get them to understand where we’re at in this world,” Dorhout said.

Students also get about 25 minutes of moderate exercise every time they walk to the prairie, and on days where the school has an unusual schedule, he’ll take his classes to do longer hikes at Lake Panorama, which is walking distance from the school.

Dorhout has also been known to turn a blind eye to some of the fun – like perhaps a friendly snowball fight – that inevitably takes place between 20-30 middle schoolers in the open air.

“Just enough organization so we can have a meaningful lesson, and just enough goof around time that the kids think that it’s awesome,” he said.

Lasting impact

Dorhout said one of the coolest things about the prairie is its visibility from the school and to the community. This means as the students get older, they can still see it and remember the work they did to improve that land.

“I just see that as a really powerful thing, when you look at the life of a prairie and what it looks like now compared to what it did six years ago when you guys first started this reconstruction,” Dorhout said.

This was also Steenblock’s favorite part of the class.

He started seeds in sixth grade and throughout his time in middle school he got to watch them develop through the prairie.

“We can still go back to this day and then see what we had done because we were part of that,” Steenblock said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com.

One thing is clear from the stories that populate this year’s list: Many of America’s schools are still grappling with the academic struggles that followed the pandemic – as well as the end of federal relief funds, which expired this fall. Student enrollments have yet to recover and many districts are facing – or will soon face – tough decisions about closures.

Meanwhile, some educators are testing innovative ways of teaching math, reading and science, hoping to gain back some of the academic ground lost since the COVID shutdowns. Technology is also playing a pivotal role in this post-pandemic world, with communities weighing the impact of cellphones and artificial intelligence on student learning and mental health.

November’s election – which featured debates over school choice, Christianity in public schools and the fate of the Department of Education – also made headlines here at ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. And, as calls for cracking down on immigration grew even louder, we dug deep into the hurdles facing immigrant students and schools. 

Here’s a roundup of our most memorable and impactful stories of the year:

Exclusive: Thousands of Schools at Risk of Closing Due to Enrollment Loss

By Linda Jacobson

Long before districts close schools, enrollment loss takes a toll on staff and families, from combined classes to the loss of afterschool programs. This exclusive analysis by Linda Jacobson, based on Brookings Institution research, found that more than 4,400 schools lost at least one-fifth of their students during the pandemic — more than double the number during the pre-COVID period. The detailed look shows how the crisis is playing out at the school level and which districts face tough decisions about closures and cuts. 

Unwelcome to America’: Hundreds of U.S. High Schools Wrongfully Refused Entry to Older, Immigrant Student

By Jo Napolitano

ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s 16-month-long undercover investigation of school enrollment practices for older immigrant students revealed rampant refusals of teens who had a legal right to attend, shutting a door critical to success in America. Senior reporter Jo Napolitano called 630 high schools in every state and D.C. to test whether they would enroll a 19-year-old Venezuelan newcomer who had limited English language skills and whose education was interrupted after ninth grade. “Hector Guerrero” was turned down more than 300 times, including 204 denials in the 35 states and D.C., where high school attendance goes up to at least age 20. ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s investigation revealed pervasive hostility and suspicion toward these students in a particularly xenophobic era and a deeply arbitrary process determining their access to K-12 education.

Interactive: Which School Districts Do the Best Job of Teaching Kids to Read?

By Chad Aldeman

It’s not news that low-income fourth graders are years behind their higher-income peers in reading. But poverty is not destiny, and some schools and districts hugely outperform expectations. Working with Eamonn Fitzmaurice, ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s art and technology director, contributor Chad Aldeman set out to find districts that are beating the odds and successfully teaching kids to read. From Steubenville City, Ohio, to Worcester County, Maryland, and across the country, click on their interactive map to find the highfliers in your state. 

Whistleblower: L.A. Schools’ Chatbot Misused Student Data as Tech Company Crumbled

by Mark Keierleber

In early June, a former top software engineer at ed tech startup, AllHere, warned Los Angeles district officials and others about student data privacy risks associated with the company’s AI chatbot “Ed.” The LA Unified School District had agreed to pay AllHere $6 million for the chatbot and the spring rollout of Ed was highly publicized, with L.A. schools chief Alberto Carvalho calling the chatbot’s student knowledge powers “unprecedented in American public education.” But, as Mark Keierleber reported, red flags soon began to emerge. The company financially imploded and its founder Joanna Smith-Griffin left the company. In November, federal prosecutors indicted her, accusing of defrauding investors of $10 million.

America’s Most Popular Autism Therapy May Not Work — and May Cause Serious Harms

by Beth Hawkins

Today, a child’s new autism diagnosis is frequently followed by a referral to a variation of an intervention called applied behavior analysis, or ABA, and four decades of pressure from parents and advocates has created a sprawling treatment industry. Yet, even as providers and lobbyists jockey to strengthen ABA’s dominance, autistic adults and researchers increasingly say there’s alarmingly little proof it’s effective — and mounting evidence it’s traumatizing. In an exclusive investigation, Beth Hawkins spoke with families, teachers and scholars about the growing controversy surrounding autism’s “gold standard” treatment. 

A Cautionary AI Tale: Why IBM’s Dazzling Watson Supercomputer Made a Lousy Tutor

by Greg Toppo

In 2011, IBM’s Watson supercomputer crushed Jeopardy! champions, raising hopes that it could help create a powerful tutoring system that would rival human teachers. But the visionary at the head of the effort watched as the project fizzled, the victim of AI’s inability to hold students’ attention. As new educational AI contenders like Khanmigo emerge, what lessons can they learn from the past? ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s Greg Toppo took a look at how IBM’s failed effort tempers today’s shiny AI promises.

State-by-State, How Segregation Legally Continues 7 Decades Post Brown v. Board

by Marianna McMurdock

Seventy years after the Supreme Court outlawed separating public school children by race, Marianna McMurdock sought to answer a pivotal question: How are some of the most coveted public schools in the U.S. able to legally exclude all but the most privileged families? Last spring, she spoke with researchers at the nonprofits Available to All and Bellwether, which published a report that examined the troubling laws, loopholes and trends that are undermining the legacy of Brown v. Board in each state. The researchers called for urgent legal reform to offset the impact that one’s home address has on enrollment, particularly as many districts have started considering closures.

Being ‘Bad at Math’ Is a Pervasive Concept. Can it Be Banished From Schools?

by Jo Napolitano

Are you bad at math? If you are, it’s likely that self-fulfilling seed got planted early. Many math education leaders are trying to uproot that thinking, arguing that any student can master the subject with the right accommodations and tutoring. Changing the bad-at-math mindset in U.S. schools, however, will not be easy, others warn. “We use math as a means to sort kids by who gets to be at the top and who gets to be at the bottom,” one math equity advocate told Jo Napolitano. 

Hope Rises in Pine Bluff: Saving Schools in America’s Fastest-Shrinking City

by ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ Staff

Pine Bluff, Arkansas, earned the unwelcome distinction in the 2020 census of being America’s fastest-shrinking city, losing over 12% of its population in one decade. Amid this exodus of families, students and taxpayers, its school district had to navigate school closures, budget pressures and a state takeover. Throughout last winter, members of ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s newsroom embedded in Pine Bluff to report on the region’s trajectory. Here are some of the powerful stories they came back with: 

Kids, Screen Time & Despair: An Expert in the Economics of Happiness Echoes Psychologists’ Warnings About Tech

By Kevin Mahnken

A prominent economist has joined the growing chorus of experts warning against the dangers posed to youth mental health by screens and social media, reported Kevin Mahnken. New papers released by Dartmouth College professor Danny Blanchflower, a leading expert in the burgeoning field of happiness economics, suggest that the huge increase in screen time over the last decade has made the young more likely to despair than the middle-aged. 

Why Is a Grading System Touted as More Accurate, Equitable So Hard to Implement?

By Amanda Geduld

As educators push for more transparency in grading policies post-pandemic, some are turning to standards-based grading. When done correctly, it separates academic mastery from behavior and more accurately reflects what students know. But misunderstandings of the model, a lack of proper training, and a rush to adopt it often leads to messy implementation. Associate professor Laura Link told Amanda Geduld that as schools look to fix learning gaps, “standards-based grading is one that seems like it can be a quickly adopted effort. But it could backfire — and does backfire — very easily.”

Texas Seeks to Inject Bible Stories into Elementary School Reading Program

by Linda Jacobson

Last May, a sweeping redesign of Texas’ elementary school curriculum that used Bible stories to teach reading was unveiled. At the time, state education Commissioner Mike Morath described the changes as a shift toward a “classical model of education.” But the revisions raised questions about potential religious indoctrination and bias. Nevertheless, in November, the Texas Board of Education approved the new curriculum in a close vote. Linda Jacobson followed the story closely.

The Political War Over the Department of Education Is Only Beginning

By Kevin Mahnken 

Fresh from their November victories, Republicans are already working to help President-elect Donald Trump achieve his promise of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education. But research suggests that, while perceptions of the agency are mixed, the public is unlikely to back a sweeping course of elimination. “Saying you’ll get rid of it reads generically as being anti-education,” one political scientist told Kevin Mahnken. “That strikes me as a very heavy albatross to hang around your neck come the midterms.” 

18 Years, $2 Billion: Inside New Orleans’ Biggest School Recovery Effort in History

By Beth Hawkins

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed 110 New Orleans schools. Displaced families could not return until there were classrooms to welcome their kids, but no one had ever tried to rebuild an entire school system. While many of the buildings were moldering even before the storm, federal funds couldn’t be used to build something better. Some of the schools had landmark status and were of great historical significance. Eighteen years and $2 billion later, Beth Hawkins took a look at seven schools that illustrate how the district accomplished the task.

As Ryan Walters’ Right-Wing Star Rose, Critics Say Oklahoma Ed Dept. Fell Apart

By Linda Jacobson

Oklahoma state education chief Republican Ryan Walters has acted as a one-man publicity machine, a performance that’s earned him venomous foes and ardent fans who follow him with a near-religious fervor. But one casualty of his approach might be a functioning state education bureaucracy. Even Republican lawmakers have grown impatient, calling for a probe into how Walters handles state and federal funds. As Rep. Tammy West, a GOP incumbent running for re-election, told reporter Linda Jacobson, “Regardless of party, citizens want transparency, accountability and communication.”

AI ‘Companions’ Are Patient, Funny, Upbeat — and Probably Rewiring Kids Brains

By Greg Toppo

A college student relies on ChatGPT to help him make life decisions, including whether to break up with his girlfriend. Is this a future we feel good about? While AI bots and companions like ChatGPT, Replika and Snapchat’s MyAI, can offer support, comfort and advice, experts are beginning to warn of potential risks. ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s Greg Toppo talks to researchers and policy experts about what we should be doing to help make them safer.

Indiana Looks to Swiss Experts to Create Thousands of Student Apprenticeships

By Patrick O’Donnell

Indiana officials have turned to experts at the Swiss version of MIT for help in becoming a national career training leader by making apprenticeships available to thousands of high school students across the state. Indiana is the latest state to work with ETH Zurich — where Albert Einstein once studied — to develop ways to break down barriers between educators and businesses so that career training can be a large part of a reinvented high school experience, reported Patrick O’Donnell. 

Investigation: Nearly 1,000 Native Children Died in Federal Boarding Schools

By Marianna McMurdock 

Nearly 1,000 Native American children died while forced to attend government-affiliated boarding schools, according to a report published last summer by the Interior Department. The children are buried in 74 unmarked and marked graves, reported Marianna McMurdock, as tribes assess repatriation of remains. Nearly 19,000 children were estimated to be kidnapped, often at gunpoint, and enrolled in the schools with the aim of assimilation. “We [were] never called by our name, we were all called by our numbers,” said one survivor. 

The Nation’s Biggest Charter School System Is Under Fire in Los Angeles

By Ben Chapman 

The nation’s largest experiment with charter schools is no longer growing. These days, Los Angeles charter operators say they are just trying to survive. With tough new policies governing co-locations, falling enrollment, and a hostile district school board, charter leaders say they’ve never faced stronger headwinds, reported Ben Chapman. With enrollment plummeting across the district, some charter networks have recently announced closures while others have stopped submitting proposals for new campuses. “Now, particularly in L.A., our focus is not on growing,” said Joanna Belcher, chief impact officer for KIPP SoCal. 

Florida Students Seize on Parental Rights to Stop Educators from Hitting Kids

By Mark Keierleber 

Late last year, Florida senior Brooklynn Daniels was called to the principal’s office and spanked with a wooden paddle “that was thick like a chapter book.” Like in many enclaves that dot the Florida panhandle, Liberty County permits corporal punishment as a form of student discipline. But her flogging, the honors student said, went much further: She alleged sexual assault and filed a police report, reported Mark Keierleber. Daniels joined a student-led movement to change Florida law that has latched onto the GOP-led parental rights movement. 

Interactive: See How Student Achievement Gaps Are Growing in Your State

By Chad Aldeman

In 2012, then-President Barack Obama freed states from the accountability provisions of No Child Left Behind in exchange for reforms related to standards, assessments and teacher evaluations. That relaxing of school and district accountability pressures corresponded with a decline in student performance across the country that is still being felt — achievement gaps are growing across subjects and all across the country. To illustrate these alarming discrepancies, contributor Chad Aldeman and Eamonn Fitzmaurice, ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s art and technology director, created an interactive tool that enables you to see what’s happening with student performance in your state.

Left Powerless: Non-English–Speaking Parents Denied Vital Translation Services

by Amanda Geduld

Flouting federal laws, K-12 public schools routinely fail to provide qualified interpreters to non-English-speaking families. Parents must instead rely on Google translate, their own kid or a bilingual staff member who isn’t a trained interpreter for issues as simple as their child’s absence for a day or as complex and intimidating as a special education meeting or a school disciplinary hearing. The problem is pervasive and vastly underreported, experts told Amanda Geduld. School leaders say they are trying their best, but lack the money and staffing to meet the need. 

Failed West Virginia Microschool Fuels State Probe and Some Soul-Searching

By Linda Jacobson

The West Virginia treasurer’s investigation into a microschool, funded with education savings accounts, offers a glimpse into an emerging market that has mushroomed since the pandemic. When the program shut down after a few months, parents were left demanding their money back and scrambling to find other arrangements for their children. The example, experts say, shows that it takes more than good intentions to provide a quality education program. As one parent told Linda Jacobson, “I should have seen the red flags.”

In the Rush to Covid Recovery, Did We Forget About Our Youngest Learners?

by Lauren Camera

The country’s youngest elementary school students suffered steep academic setbacks in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic – just like students in older grades. But new research shows that they aren’t catching back up to pre-pandemic levels in reading and math the way older students are. And when it comes to math, many are falling even further behind. “We were shocked when we first saw the data,” Kristen Huff, vice president of assessment and research at Curriculum Associates, told Lauren Camera.

, released Tuesday by the nonprofit testing group NWEA, serve as more evidence of a trend that has stood out in earlier data: Students who were still in elementary school when the pandemic began are experiencing particularly worrisome setbacks as schools try to chart a path to academic recovery. Meanwhile, today’s elementary schoolers have nearly returned to the levels of learning last seen in 2019.

This summer, NWEA circulated scores from their widely used of math and reading. The results, which included the performance of nearly eight million American students from grades 3–8, revealed that today’s eighth graders were a full year behind 2019 learning in both subjects. By contrast, learning delays for third graders were only about one-quarter that size. 

In general, learning loss in science has been less significant than for core disciplines like math and reading because STEM instruction is comparatively limited in the early grades. In a 2018 survey, elementary teachers said they spent only 18 minutes each day focusing on science, compared with about an hour on math and 1.5 hours on reading. 

Susan Kowalski, an NWEA senior researcher who worked on the report, said the scores showed that students who experienced their foundational years of STEM instruction in 2020 and 2021 were now struggling to cope.

“If science is taught at all in elementary school, it’s in the fourth and fifth grades,” Kowalski reflected. “So in 2021, those were the kids who were hardest hit in science, and they are now seventh and eighth graders who have never really rebounded.”

The latest data is drawn from 621 public schools that consistently administered the MAP Growth Science test to the same grade levels between 2017 and 2024. This ongoing sample allowed the research team to measure students this spring against not only those in the pre-COVID period, but also during the initial phases of the pandemic, when tens of millions of students were receiving virtual instruction. 

Those results show that, by the spring of 2021, students across all tested grades had fallen significantly behind in science, with especially sizable learning losses mounting in grades 4 and 5. But elementary schoolers have since recovered the most ground compared with their same-age predecessors of three years ago, with learning gaps reduced by 50% for third graders, 82% for fifth graders, and 33% for sixth graders. Fourth graders, whose performance dropped the furthest during the early stages of the pandemic, have now fully returned to their 2019-era achievement levels in science.

But the gaps for older students — essentially, those who saw the biggest dips three years ago — have grown with time. In 2021, NWEA estimated that seventh and eighth graders would require 0.9 and 1.7 months of additional science instruction, respectively, to catch up to where similar students had been in 2019; by 2024, the projection for students in that grade had grown to 1.7 and 3.2 months of supplemental learning, respectively. 

In other words, kids’ whose initial encounters with science were thwarted by the COVID shock appear to be falling further behind, even as state and federal leaders have provided school districts with billions of dollars to lead recovery efforts. 

Heidi Schweingruber, the director of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s , said that students’ halting progress in science could constrain their life chances in the future. Adolescents begin to develop aspirations for college and career only a few years after they receive their first lessons in science.

“If they’re missing that foundation and can’t follow a strong pathway into high school science, are we closing doors for them in terms of what they might consider after graduation?” Schweingruber asked. “Middle school is the time when kids are starting to develop an identity of who they want to be.”

As other testing data have indicated previously, the pandemic also significantly widened achievement gaps separating students along racial lines. While middle schoolers of all racial and ethnic backgrounds had fallen behind in science by the spring of 2021, Hispanic students lost more ground than their white classmates. Among eighth graders, Hispanics required a projected 3.4 months of academic recovery in 2021 and 6.3 months in 2024; whites in the same age cohort needed 0.5 months of recovery in 2021 and 1.6 months now.

Black students, who have mostly bounced back from the science losses sustained in 2020 and 2021, are still, on average, between 10 and 15 months behind the average achievement levels for children in their grades. Hispanic students, whose progress has only stalled further since 2021, are almost as badly off. 

Erika Shugart, CEO of the , said in a statement that she wasn’t surprised to see negative impacts concentrated among middle schoolers, though she added that persistent gaps in STEM instruction could prove economically and socially destructive in the long run.

“The U.S. is already facing significant challenges producing a STEM-ready workforce,” Shugart wrote. “Science literacy is crucial for making informed decisions about health, the environment, and technology. Falling behind in science education can impair individuals’ ability to engage with and understand complex issues, affecting personal and societal well-being.”

To combat lost science learning, NWEA’s authors recommended different strategies to curb chronic absenteeism, entice students to participate in summer learning opportunities, and weave science instruction into middle school reading instruction, which could improve performance in both subjects.

Kowalski said that, more than any particular approach, educators needed to embrace a “mentality shift” away from remediation and toward learning acceleration. A former high school physics instructor, she argued that schools can’t get their pupils back on track simply by offering them what they missed four years ago.

“They can’t succumb to low expectations and say, ‘These students are behind, so I need to slow down.’ It’s more like, ‘These students are behind, so I need to accelerate.’”

Turns out the perception is more true of math than science.

Senior Pew researcher Brian Kennedy put those STEM performance beliefs into context by looking at the most recent results from PISA, an international assessment that measures 15-year-old students’ reading, mathematics and science literacy in the U.S. and other industrialized nations. The U.S. is indeed lagging behind in math, his research shows, but is performing — if not the best in the world — better than average in science.

In math, U.S. students ranked 28th out of 37 countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a ranking similar to the last time the test was administered in 2018, despite an alarming 13-point drop on the exam post-pandemic. In science, however, the U.S. ranked 12th out of 37 OECD countries, following a 3-point drop in scores. In both subjects, the average U.S. score was within 15 points of international averages. 

“Broadly, we’re interested in where science interacts with society — where those touchpoints are,” Kennedy told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ, “and one place is through STEM education. People experience STEM education in their own lives or they experience it through their children’s lives. So we think it’s important to get an understanding of how the public rates STEM education in this country.”

Pew Research Center surveyed 10,133 U.S. adults from Feb. 7 to Feb. 11 this year using the Center’s American Trends Panel, an online survey panel. Kennedy noted that the findings are largely consistent with societal perceptions going back about a decade, based on by the research center. 

This year’s numbers remain mostly consistent across the political spectrum, but diverge when broken down by race, with white respondents showing the most pessimism. They were the least likely (24%) to think K-12 STEM education in the U.S. is the best or above average, behind Black respondents (31%), Hispanic respondents (37%) and Asian respondents (43%).

And fewer women (25%) than men (32%) say K-12 STEM education is at least above average, a difference Tom Jenkins, a middle school science teacher in Ohio, attributed to the historic lack of representation of women in science and math curriculum.

Jenkins, a 25-year veteran teacher in low-income urban and rural settings, also spoke to why American students may be scoring better in science than math. 

“Based on my experience with this [as an educator] — and also being a product of an inner-city school that was first-generation college and lower-socioeconomic myself — I really think a lot of it has to do with the way that we teach math and the way we teach science and how there’s different expectations for both subjects,” he said.

Historically, there’s an expectation in science classes that students will be highly engaged with hands-on, experiential learning that’s connected to real-world issues, he said, adding that those same expectations don’t necessarily exist in math classes. This is “unfortunate because there are so many teachable things [in math] that we could use in a hands-on, practical way that’s culturally relevant, that’s project-based.”

Amid precipitously declining math scores post-pandemic, Jenkins is not alone in his urgent call for a shift in the way math is taught. 

It’s important when students walk into his — and all — classrooms, he said, that they know they’ll be learning skills that are going to help them not only better understand the academic content but also prepare them for a wide variety of careers. 

“If we really want to have an impact in math and science and STEM subjects,” he said, “and we want to get it to stick with our lower-socioeconomic or traditionally under-represented groups in STEM, then we really need to make it have some relevance.” 

In reflecting on American students’ PISA performances he added, “I do think that while [the] middle is not the worst — I do think it’s very important that we understand that while this acknowledges that we’re doing well — we still have a long way to go and we have a lot of disenfranchised groups or historically underrepresented groups that we’re not
 impacting well enough in STEM subjects.” 

Education advocate Talia Milgrom-Elcott echoed this point, noting there’s no reason American students should be in the middle of the pack. Milgrom-Elcott is the founder and executive director of Beyond 100K, a national network focused on ending the STEM teacher shortage with a particular focus on Black, Latino and Indigenous communities.

She also noted that average scores often mask disparities, which is especially true in STEM.

“A lot of us have an outdated — what should be an outdated — idea about STEM that only some people are good at it, that only some people will ever excel in it, and often that they look a certain way — are a certain gender, race, income level, etc. And so there’s something in our gut that’s not activated when we see a lot of kids at the bottom.” 

She said that if the U.S. hopes to move up in the ratings, there must be a commitment to eradicating these disparities.

“And ‘up in the rating,’ by the way, is not in itself a goal,” she added. “It’s only a goal because being competitive in math and science — having more kids having those classes and that knowledge and those opportunities — is going to drive social mobility, economic mobility. It’s going to drive global competitiveness. It’s going to help the United States continue to be an innovation factory to solve the most pressing challenges.”

When the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth on April 8, 2024, it will represent a rare astronomical event that won’t take place for – a . For parents and educators, at least those who live along an arc of land from Texas up through Indiana and Maine, it offers a unique and memorable learning opportunity.

As STEM researchers at , we suggest three ways to make the total solar eclipse a fun experience for young children and along the way.

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1. Discuss historical versus modern understandings of eclipses

It is important that children learn to when developing explanations for why something happens. One way to do this is to compare historical and modern explanations for why solar eclipses occur.

Share with the kids that, historically, many people across cultures feared eclipses. Some thought they . Others believed they predicted bad tidings to come, including .

Contrast those explanations with easy-to-understand scientific explanations of today. Britannica Kids offers a great . Scientific American has a webpage that .

When contrasting scientific evidence with historical beliefs, it is important not to be critical of other cultures. Use the eclipse to talk about how scientific knowledge is built over time through observation. There are many things we do not know now that we will learn 10, 20 or even 100 years from now.

2. Have conversations using scientific language

Teaching children about the solar eclipse isn’t just about explaining the what and the why. It’s also about engaging in rich dialogue. Our prior research shows that young children’s science knowledge is . Both and play a role in shaping this language.

Use science-related vocabulary to enrich children’s understanding of the eclipse. Examples include: orbit, rotate, spin, reemerge, Sun, Moon, Earth, far, distance, total and partial.

and when adults use inquiry-based strategies. For example, adults can ask children what they see happening while watching the eclipse and why they think that is. Then the adults can ask the children to make predictions about what else could happen and provide evidence for their explanations.

Children can document their observations throughout the eclipse in their own using both science-related vocabulary and drawings of what they see. The journals are a great opportunity to discuss their ideas and have rich conversations.

3. Use household items to help children understand the eclipse

Three-dimensional models allow children to visualize things that are otherwise difficult to see, such as the orbit of the Earth and the Moon. Comparisons between the model and their observations of real life, especially when guided by a teacher or parent, about complex topics in science.

During the solar eclipse, the Moon moves directly between the Earth and the Sun. In small groups at school or at home, one child can represent the Earth, while another holds a basketball to represent the Sun and another a tennis ball to represent the Moon.

The child representing the Earth can orbit the Sun and rotate in place, experimenting with changing their distance from the Sun and Moon. Closing one eye, the child may eventually see the basketball completely blocked by the tennis ball when it aligns just right. This is what happens in a total solar eclipse.

In this exercise, children are not only modeling the eclipse but also building scientific vocabulary. Throughout the activity, parents and teachers can ask children to compare and contrast the model to their own observations. They can ask questions, such as why do the Sun and Moon look like they are similar sizes in the sky, even though we know that the Sun is many times larger than the Moon? If the Moon is smaller, how does it block the Sun completely? The key is to help children generate hypotheses, test their ideas and then develop new conclusions.

We hope these ideas will encourage everyone to take advantage of this wonderful scientific learning experience. We also warn you not to look directly into the Sun during the eclipse and to get the right . Looking directly at the Sun, even through sunglasses or cameras, .

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

On April 8, more than 750 college students across the United States will launch hundreds of weather balloons into the atmosphere to research, observe and engage with the total solar eclipse as a part of a student initiative spearheaded by the Montana Space Grant Consortium.

Drawing from the highly successful NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored (NEBP) implemented during the 2017, 2019, 2020 and 2023 total solar eclipses, this current NEBP initiative aims to broaden STEM student participation during the upcoming total solar eclipse — .

Students from 75 higher education institutions, including Minority Serving Institutions and community colleges will have the opportunity to garner atmospheric measurements that can only be conducted during an eclipse. 

The balloons, carrying long, hanging strings of scientific instruments, will enter the path of totality, the area on Earth’s surface where the moon completely covers the sun. 

People along the path of totality, which stretches from Texas to Maine, will have the chance to see the eclipse. For those outside this path, a partial solar eclipse will be visible.

NEBP hopes to “enable inclusive STEM education for participating students, advance learners’ understanding of the process of science as well as create, enhance and sustain networks and partnerships.” 

As anticipation builds for the upcoming spectacle, we wanted to share incredible archives from NEBP’s previous balloon launches. The breathtaking snapshots from the sky offer a unique perspective on past solar eclipses to gear up for the big day.

All photos courtesy of National Eclipse of Ballooning Project (NEBP) Education

Naya, a freshman at John F. Kennedy High School in New Orleans, was inspired to create the watch through a program called , where K-12 students learn and participate in hands-on science, technology, engineering and math projects. The organization offers an eight-month-long STEM fellowship to low-income high school students of color who show an interest in solving real-world problems and gives them training, career and networking opportunities.

She signed up for the fellowship because she wanted to keep herself busy. Little did she know the opportunities the program would allow her.

The organization also hosts STEM Saturday, a free weekend program where K-12 students can create inventions. When Naya attended her first STEM Saturday in October, she thought designing a watch that detects seizures would be a great idea. But the following weekend — the last weekend to complete her project — she changed her plan entirely and instead created a watch for stroke detection, since her grandmother had suffered a stroke. She named her invention WingItt, a fitting title for an idea that sprouted at the last second.

The watch works by detecting nerve impulses and heartbeats. Naya says that many stroke victims may develop noticeable signs such as a droopy face or strange taste in their mouth, but she wanted to create something that can detect internal symptoms. As she researched, she found that strokes were more common in people 55 and older than in younger people, so she wanted to cater to this demographic. As she works out the kinks in her prototype, she wants to ensure that it is detecting only strokes and not picking up on other issues, such as those involving the heart.

A huge priority for Naya is making sure her watch is affordable for older adults who may not have the money for expensive technology, like iPhones and Apple Watches, that have health-monitoring features.

“I want to do something I’m interested in, that will also change the world,” she says.

Naya’s invention could well be on its way to doing just that, as she is one of 126 students out of over 2,500 nationwide to be selected as champions in the . The competition for grades 6 to 12, presented by the U.S. Department of Education and , will host its inaugural festival next month in Washington, D.C., where the champions will showcase their creations. The students are also receiving two months of and four months of master classes with STEM experts like astronauts and sports statisticians. 

“I never thought that I would win,” Naya says. She says she looks forward to presenting her watch and seeing the other inventions at the festival. 

Naya thinks younger students who may have an interest in science should give STEM a try because it has given her experiences she never thought she would have. She says students in her area specifically should give STEM NOLA a chance because it has allowed her to go to new places and learn new things.

As a freshman, Naya still has plenty of time to do more in the world of STEM. Her other plans include playing softball and getting a college scholarship, and longer-term, becoming an obstetrician-gynecologist.

“I love the fact that you’re bringing new life into the world, that’s the coolest thing ever to me. I’m a woman helping women. It can’t get any better than that!”
Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation and Overdeck Family Foundation provide financial support to the and ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ.

But do you remember what pi actually stands for? What the number represents? 

And have you ever heard of #DressforSTEM Day, which is also March 14? 

No? Here’s fourth-grader Ada with everything you need to know: 

Ada knows what Pi is, but how many adults do? ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s Jim Fields asked the people of Philadelphia — and the results are hilarious:

STEM Superstars: In honor of Pi Day, here are five inspiring teens creating STEM breakthroughs: 

And in celebration of Women’s History Month, ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s Trinity Alicia explores women’s ongoing impact in STEM and how a hashtag is driving the Pi Day conversation to representation of women in the field:

Natasha Kulviwat, having been interested in neuroscience and mental health from an early age, noticed that neuroscience wasn’t making as much progress in mental health diagnoses and interventions as she thought it should.

So, the 17-year-old from Jericho High School in Jericho, New York embarked on a search for a biomarker related to suicide, wondering if there was a way to use neuroscience to identify those at risk.

Kulviwat looked at brain tissue for those who died by suicide and found there was an increase in a protein biomarker in suicide decedents. The biomarkers could also identify genetic vulnerabilities that could lead to suicidal ideation. 

So, for instance, pathologists could find spikes in the protein biomarkers and, along with a self-report questionnaire, could catalyze suicide prevention in the future.

“My research serves as a small puzzle piece that will hopefully advance the way we view diagnostics for suicide in the future,” Kulviwat said.

But there’s another annual observance this month dedicated specifically to celebrating women working in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers — while also acknowledging there’s still a long way to go. 

began as a grassroots movement in 2016, started by a group of female meteorologists to celebrate female STEM pioneers, those active in the field and the next generation of female scientists on March 14.

March 14 marks Pi Day, a celebration of the mathematical symbol pi. by physicist Larry Shaw, March 14 was selected because the numerical date represents the first three digits of pi (3.14) — and also happens to be Albert Einstein’s birthday.  

It wasn’t until 2009 that Pi Day became an official holiday when the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation. But almost 40 years after Pi Day was born, women in STEM and their allies are asking for more diversity in the field.

All it took was a who planned to wear the same purple dress on Pi Day in 2016 and 2017, garnering viral attention as well as the opportunity to drive the Pi Day conversation to the underrepresentation of women in STEM.

This Pi Day (3.14) the ladies at AccuWeather are wearing the same dress to promote more women in STEM: Science Technology Engineering & Math

— Cam Tran WESH (@CamTranTV)

While MIT that the gender gap in STEM careers remains significant, with women accounting for only 28% of the field in 2023, Edutopia that female visibility in the field is increasing, with nearly 58% of young girls drawing a picture of a scientist who looks like them in 2016 — when #DressForSTEM was launched — compared to 1% when the study was first conducted in the 1960s. 

Today, in 2024, #DressForSTEM still stands: Those who participate in the initiative wear purple and create social media posts with the hashtag #DressForSTEM on March 14.

We’ve chosen to go a step further and celebrate by presenting photographic proof of the ongoing contributions women have made to STEM.

For William Gao, his research is personal. Three of his grandparents, who lived in rural China with sparse access to health care, were diagnosed with cancer. 

“Poor health care meant late diagnoses,” Gao said. “And late diagnoses meant grim prognoses.”

During his research, 18-year-old Gao noticed that shortages in pathologists around the world cause long diagnosis times, especially in developing countries. He said this elevates mortality rates in breast cancer patients, for example.

To tackle these health care disparities, the teen from Centennial High School in Ellicott City, Maryland, developed an AI diagnostic tool to support doctors and hospitals in the diagnosis process. Rather than sending tissue samples to a separate lab, with long wait times for results, Gao’s app creates a heat map, then and there, of a biopsied tissue revealing exactly what part of the tissue sample could be malignant.

Knowing where to look in a tissue sample could vastly speed up the diagnostic process, Gao said. And, not only that — the app ameliorates the risks associated with patient privacy, since it eliminates the process of transferring patient data between institutions.

Gao said that this is a noteworthy step towards offering more equitable health care outcomes, and he sees room to collaborate with the venture and entrepreneur space to scale the app. 

“I hope it can be applied in rural areas which can create a real impact and really have an ability to support patients around the world,” he said.

Gavriela Beatrice Kalish-Schur knew from an early age that STEM was for her. But it was in high school that she knew she wanted to specialize in neuroscience, “I think because we know so little about the brain,” she said.

She also knew that anxiety impacts many young people, and that current therapies aren’t as effective as they could be, or they’re very expensive — or both.

The 18-year-old senior at Julia R. Masterman High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, said she was interested in understanding what’s happening on a cellular level with anxiety to help inform the development of more effective treatments.

Her experiment: Make fruit flies anxious. She targeted a certain brain pathway called IRE1, knocking it down in the flies. “Knocking down is like turning down the volume when you’re listening to music,” she explained. 

Then she observed their behavior. And like the proverbial wallflower at a school dance, the fruit flies clung to the wall of the petri dish, rather than spread over the surface as they normally would. In other words, the flies exhibited anxious behavior.

Kalish-Schur discovered that these flies had different protein levels than the control group. Understanding the relationship between the IRE1 pathway and anxiety, she said, can lead to more targeted treatments for anxiety in humans. 

”We can use what we already know and new techniques to develop cures for diseases that harm a lot of people,” Kalish-Schur said.

As a small illustration of her long, idiosyncratic writing career, Joy Hakim likes to tell the story of a chance encounter in an Oakland elevator.

On the way down after a speaking engagement, a woman handed her a slip of paper — it contained the phone number of her son’s private school. He and his classmates, she said, could really benefit from their school swapping out its traditional history textbooks for a set of Hakim’s.

Asked who she was, the woman admitted that she was a representative of one of the big publishing houses.

“I was appalled,” Hakim remembered. “But this is an industry where almost no one believes the books educate well — and scores prove that.” 

Hakim doesn’t know if the school ever switched over. But the episode underscores her uncomfortable place in an industry that has never quite embraced her. By turns raw, thrilling and eye-opening, her writing offers young people a look at history that they rarely get between the covers of mass-produced textbooks.

Her most well-known work, a 10-volume history of the United States that began appearing in the early 1990s, remains in print. And at age 93, she’s still in the fight: Her newest series on biology debuted in September, continuing her tradition of wrestling with complicated ideas and difficult historical and scientific questions. 

But even after three decades, she remains unsure that she’s made much of an impact as textbooks with bigger promotional budgets enjoy much wider readerships. 

That view is belied by her legions of admirers. Praised by leading historians like David McCullough and James McPherson, she also may be the only textbook author to reliably receive fan mail. At one of her kids’ houses sit cases of letters, testament to the gratitude of two generations of readers. 

, podcaster and author of , who has championed deep subject matter knowledge in all areas of study, called Hakim “a force of nature.”

“Most textbooks are either extremely dry or so encyclopedic in their attempts to cover the universe of topics that they’re highly superficial and therefore boring,” Wexler said. “Joy Hakim understands how to use the power of narrative to bring topics in history and science to life.”

Wexler predicted that if more schools adopted Hakim’s titles, reading scores would jump because her work offers both the knowledge and vocabulary kids need to succeed on tests. 

And as the nation grows increasingly polarized about history, Hakim’s work eschews easy categorization. It is championed by liberals for not glossing over our dark past — and by conservatives for offering rigorous, challenging texts and sophisticated arguments.

, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute and a former New York City teacher, said Hakim’s history series “had a place of honor in my fifth-grade classroom and deserves a place of privilege in every school. It’s beyond her power to reverse the long-running and in American education, but she’s done her part to make real history accessible and interesting to those who seek it out, or who are engaged by it.”

Hakim’s books, he said, offer an important antidote to those that aim to trick kids into learning a little history via historical fiction or lightweight, fantasy-driven fare. “Hakim is winningly anachronistic by comparison: She takes history — and more pertinently her young readers — seriously.”

But she has often had to fight simply to be heard by school districts under adoption systems she sees as backwards. Teachers and students are hungering for good books, Hakim said, yet the adopted titles often stem from publishers’ long-standing relationships with state education bureaucrats, whom they lobby furiously. 

“I don’t think that they sell whether they’re good or crappy,” she said. “They sell because of this massive promotional effort that goes into them.”

‘I sat down and I started writing’ 

Hakim’s career as a writer for young people began simply, on a long car drive.

A one-time teacher and journalist — she taught in Baltimore for a spell and was both a business and editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk’s daily newspaper — by the 1980s, she was freelancing in Virginia Beach and raising three kids with her husband, a grain importer. She happened upon a notice for a hearing in Richmond, the capital, by a board looking for ways to improve school textbooks. At that pre-Internet time, it was a topic that aroused national attention. Hakim (pronounced HAKE-im) decided to check it out.

She expected to hear testimony from writers and editors. Instead, the publishers sent salespeople, who in her view stonewalled the proceedings by rhapsodizing about how beautifully designed and illustrated the books were.

“The whole thing was just a hoax,” she recalled. “The publishing industry was not serious about doing anything.”

Steaming, Hakim climbed back into her car and began the two-hour drive home. At some point, she thought to herself: Why not write her own history book?

“I sat down and I started writing,” she said.

Hakim didn’t stop for seven years, telling vivid personal stories of America’s founders, pioneers and others.

As she conceived it, the book aimed for a fifth-grade audience. To get direct feedback, she tapped a small group of 10-year-olds in her neighborhood, offering five dollars apiece to critique her manuscript. Hakim instructed the readers — mostly boys — to scrawl one of three reactions in the margins: G for Good, B for Boring and NC for Not Clear. 

Next, she invited classroom teachers to use the manuscripts in exchange for feedback. 

That one book ultimately became a 10-volume manuscript called . 

The books covered much of what she’d decided was important in American history — as she told one interviewer, from “people coming over the Bering Strait” to Bill Clinton’s inauguration.

And they offered children a thrilling narrative. In a chapter on Columbus’ voyages, she wrote that after surviving the treacherous waters of the Sargasso Sea, the explorer’s men wanted to turn back: “The sea seems endless. On October 9 they say they will go no farther. Columbus pleads for three more days of sailing. Then, he says, if they don’t see land they may cut off his head and sail home in peace.”

But for all the books’ originality, Hakim lacked a publisher. Eventually she met a literary agent who successfully garnered the attention of Oxford University Press.

, in a review titled, “Showing Children the Dark Side,” said Hakim “frees children from the grasp of hoary American myth nurtured by novelists and historians; without sermonizing, she allows them to glimpse the horrific underside of the once magical word ‘frontier.'” 

Hakim, for instance, was among the first writers for young people to address the 1839 Amistad rebellion, devoting an entire chapter to the slave uprising four years before the incident rose to prominence with the .

Historian David McCullough called the series “a big breath of fresh air and the best possible news for the youngsters who get to read these books.” 

Princeton University historian James McPherson said he was “impressed by the accuracy and the depth of her research,” telling one reviewer that Hakim’s books represented women and minorities in ways others hadn’t.

‘I have done something that’s quite different’

Like many authors, Hakim felt Oxford did little to publicize the series, leaving her to do much of the promotion herself. But in 1993, a family friend opened a key door: The composer BJ Leiderman, a long-ago classmate of one of her children, was by then writing for National Public Radio. He suggested to colleagues that they feature her, and soon Hakim found herself in front of a microphone at the network’s Norfolk affiliate. The result was a lengthy “Morning Edition” segment that helped introduce her to the world.

In the interview, she told host Bob Edwards, “The history books that are out there, most of them are committee-written, and committees can’t write. Committees have to be bland. So, I am doing something 
 that’s quite different.”

Looking back on the reception she got in 1993, Leiderman said Hakim was “progressive in the best sense of the word, searching out all different areas” to study.

All the same, he recalled, selling the books — sometimes on her own — struck him as a long, tough slog reminiscent of veteran rock stars playing small clubs to keep their music alive.

Despite the struggle — or perhaps because of it — “A History of US” soon became one of Oxford’s rock-solid titles, selling hundreds of thousands of copies, said Damon Zucca, the publisher’s director of content development and reference. The series has also received “the most fan mail from kids, parents, and teachers, who have been sending ardent missives about these books to Joy and to us for nearly thirty years now.”

But keeping them in classrooms has been a battle. Hakim recalled visiting Oakland schools a year after the district adopted her books, curious how they were being used. She couldn’t find them anywhere. “They’d all been replaced,” she said. A few teachers told her they’d saved their copies and were literally hiding them in closets to keep administrators in the dark. 

At one point, Hakim even sued after textbook giant Houghton Mifflin purchased the books’ distributor, D.C. Heath. Fearing it was a bid to bury the titles, she pursued an antitrust violation. Civics-geek alert: The case eventually landed before the federal bench of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who 14 years later would rise to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Hakim eventually got the books out from under the big publisher’s purview. Now Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, it didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

Eventually, “A History of US” gave rise to a companion with all-star voice talent including Morgan Freeman, Julia Roberts and Robert Redford. But by then Hakim was on to something new: a three-book series about the history of science, from Aristotle to Einstein.

Then as now, Hakim’s most fervent buyers are often private school teachers and homeschooling parents who are free to use materials that appeal to them. She also holds a kind of magnetic appeal to cultural conservatives like Lynne Cheney who have derided public school readings they view as mushy and politically correct.

Yet conservatives have also protested Hakim’s books. In one case, Texas parents organized a letter-writing campaign, telling state officials that the books were unpatriotic.

They’ve been banned at least twice, as far as Hakim knows — once quite recently after a parent complained that they were too liberal. She jokes that the honor puts her in good company. 

Asked how she’d categorize herself, Hakim doesn’t hesitate. “I’m just a teacher,“ she said. “My books talk. I’m in a conversation with these kids and I respect their intelligence — and they understand that.”

‘This is a tough chapter’

Ask about her workflow and Hakim will tell you that she is blessed with — or cursed by — a journalist’s penchant for accuracy, which often prolongs her creative process. In the case of the science books, she finished the last one — on Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and the origins of quantum mechanics — and her new publisher had submitted it for peer review, when she received an unsolicited email from an unfamiliar name with an mit.edu address.

It was from renowned physics professor , also editor of the American Journal of Physics. He’d read a piece in TIME magazine about her plan to write about Einstein and offered to read the manuscript.

Hakim sent him the first four chapters. A few days later, Taylor wrote back asking if someone had actually reviewed them.

He and Hakim met a few times and, in Taylor’s words, “got to know — and respect — each other.” In all, they spent the next year-and-a-half revising the book, to the chagrin of Smithsonian Books. “They were not happy with me,” Hakim recalled. “But I’m so happy that I did it.”

In the book’s introduction, Hakim wrote of the “private tutorial with one of the greatest physics teachers this country has produced,” adding, “Sometimes my head hurt with all the stretching.”

The book won several best-of-the-year awards, which she credits largely to Taylor’s influence. For his part, Taylor told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ that Hakim “made great contributions to high school science teaching” and deserves wider recognition. 

As with the history series, the science books found a devoted audience as Hakim challenged young readers to grasp hard topics and complex ideas. In a chapter explaining Galileo’s writings on relativity, Hakim urged them to “catch your breath, relax and be prepared to stretch your mind.” 

In the chapter, she described how an observer on shore, watching a ball fall from the mast of a moving ship, sees it move in an arc, while an observer on deck sees it travel in a straight line. Acknowledging that the idea seemed outlandish, she warned: “This is a tough chapter; stick with it; the ideas here are important.”

Indeed, when journalist and scholar Alexander Stille set out to capture the essence of Hakim’s history books in 1998, he concluded, “Instead of talking down to children in simplified language, her books invite children to make an effort.” He that “a grandmother from Virginia” could produce books superior to those of most publishing houses.

‘The world has changed’

Now, nearly 20 years after the science texts first appeared, Hakim is out with a new series for teens about the history of biology.

gave the first volume a coveted starred review, calling it “thoroughly engrossing and highly recommended.” 

The second book is due out in April, part of a planned four-volume series. Published by MITeen Press, the last two books won’t appear until 2025 and 2026 respectively, but Hakim jokes that at her age she may not live to see it in readers’ hands.

She has asked her publisher to pick up the pace.

At the same time, she remains unsatisfied about her previous work: Three decades after “A History of US” began appearing on shelves, Hakim says the series could use a refresh. 

“I wrote it 30 years ago, so some of it is really dated,” she said with a self-conscious laugh. For one thing, she wants to recast the role of women, a topic she didn’t adequately address in the 1990s, mostly due to her own blind spot. An avowed feminist, she now sees she didn’t step back enough and appreciate the importance of the women’s movement. 

“Thirty years ago, we were different people than we are today,” she said. “The world has changed.” 

Yet, oddly, little has changed in Hakim’s career. Her husband is gone and the “grandmother from Virginia” is now a great-grandmother, but she still feels like a disruptor and an outsider, angry that we don’t have “better books” in schools. After millions of words on the page and cases of fan mail, she admits that she has barely struck a blow in the nation’s larger battle with historical illiteracy.

The textbook industry that she set out to disrupt in the 1980s is still dominated by a handful of publishers — actually, consolidation has , not more, choices. Together, they still produce what she considers bland, formulaic books that are making the nation’s reading crisis worse, not better.

“I’ve worked all these years and I’m not sure what I’ve achieved,” she concluded. “I’ve sold some books, but I haven’t changed the field.”

While in orbit, he conducted single-cell genome sequencing demonstrations. 

“We were able to do so many great things, and have lots of fun — including making space habitat videos,” he said.

The video series, , is a collection of short videos focusing on STEM for K-12 students, while also showing what it’s like to live and work in space. 

The videos can be used as an element in a classroom, and teachers can build lessons around them. 

“Children and students, they all have a curiosity,” Shoffner said. “So through the richness of these videos, we want them to run across something that is of a key interest to them and start to explore that.”

But he says there’s also a lesson about how to make STEM fun. He says STEM “teaches us some great skills of communication, of creative thinking and problem solving.”

He hopes the videos will inspire both students and teachers to uncover their natural curiosity. “That will be really exciting to know that’s possible,” Shoffner said.

Imagine observing a 3rd-grade classroom where students are working together to plan and carry out investigations to explain why two magnets stick together or push away from one another. If the investigations are derived from a phenomenon-driven curriculum, you’d likely also see groups of students enthusiastically moving around the room, placing magnets on different surfaces and objects to see what happens, exuding excitement with each result and using an array of literacy skills to make sense of and explain what they’re observing. 

This was exactly what I encountered in Rhondi Kennedy’s third-grade classroom at Central Intermediate School near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as part of my first visit with the Knowledge Matters School Tour and my first chance to see an elementary school implementing phenomenon-driven curriculum across all elementary grades.

Phenomena are observable events that occur in the universe that we use science knowledge to explain or predict. Students experience phenomena in their everyday lives when they see puddles disappear overnight or feel a wall vibrate when music is played loudly. 

Phenomena are also the context for the work of both scientists and engineers and can be used to drive learning experiences for students unlocking their natural curiosities, motivating them to want to make sense of why a phenomena occurs or how it works.

Phenomenon-driven instruction represents a shift in science education that began with The National Research Council and National Academy of Sciences’ 2012 release of Framework for K-12 Science Education which recommended science education be built around three major dimensions: science and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts, and core science ideas. Engaging students in making sense of phenomena supports the nexus of the three dimensions. It is how students construct meaning of science ideas and engage in scientific practices and ways of thinking. 

When we sat down with elementary teachers at Central Intermediate and asked them to share what surprised them the most since implementing a curriculum centered on phenomena, they talked about the confidence students exhibited when sharing science ideas and ways of thinking about science through talk and writing. One teacher noted that “the kids are just getting better at learning how to communicate with each other” and that “they’re getting the confidence to discuss and turn and talk”. 

We witnessed this confidence firsthand during our visit to various classrooms at Central Intermediate and could see how the curriculum provided ample opportunity for students to talk and share what they were thinking with their peers. One teacher noted that the students “are having to do so much more reasoning” and thinking about “Do I agree with this person? Why do I disagree?” Students like learning how the world works and enjoy talking about phenomena. 

Often, the phenomena students investigate in the classroom represent phenomena they have encountered outside the classroom, giving students a wealth of background experiences to bring to their discussions. Many of the students in Mrs. Kennedy’s classroom talked about experiences they had with magnets at home and used those experiences to make sense of what they were seeing in the classroom. 

The ability for students to pull from a wealth of experiences outside the classroom to explain phenomena in the classroom also helps students write with more confidence and ability. Brittany Lavergne, a fourth-grade teacher noted that “before [using the curriculum] we were just trying to get them [students] to have a complete answer, complete idea, a complete sentence. Now we’re getting claims with supporting evidence, with multiple pieces of evidence and student responses that are so much more in depth.”

Dramatic improvement in writing is one of the most oft-mentioned early benefits to implementing phenomenon-driven science curriculum because students write about what they are observing through direct experiences. In fact, they are often eager to write about something they’re curious about or have had experiences with in the past. 

Teachers at Central Intermediate have also seen student writing improve as students transition across grades. Mrs. Lavergne shared that “It just seems like every group we get, they’re better writers. They’re able to express what they’re learning and what they’re thinking. And it’s just an increase from what we had seen the years before.”

The students at Central Intermediate showcased remarkable motivation and confidence in discussing scientific ideas, demonstrating the effectiveness of phenomenon-driven instruction. This approach not only ensures access to quality science education but also acts as a dynamic catalyst for enhancing oral language, vocabulary, and writing skills. The visit to Central Intermediate vividly illustrated the transformative power of phenomenon-driven curriculum, shaping students into well-rounded individuals ready to excel in the scientific community and beyond.

The world is dependent on innovations, systems and equipment that are designed and sustained using science, engineering, technology and mathematics. This means the nurturing of STEM talent cannot be reserved for a slice of our student population but, instead, an essential component of every student’s educational journey.

It turns out, industry agrees.

Our colleagues in the community report the need for curious and creative professionals who can work in teams to solve the toughest problems encountered in the fabs and labs of our most advanced workplaces.

Because innovation is happening at a quickening pace, readying students through the curriculum for every workplace scenario will be impossible. The ability to design solutions from scratch, in real time, is necessary to the innovation enterprise.

Whether this is perceived as an issue of equity or economics, the goal is the same: To value STEM knowledge in the same way we value reading.

K-12 needs to be rethought and redesigned or it will not only fail to meet the needs of a STEM-dependent world, it will fail to meet the needs of a unique generation of students who learns, thinks and engages with the world around them differently than any before.

Millennial and Gen Z parents are tech-integrated and experience-driven. Their children are hard-wired to be the same. Practically, this means they innately use technology to learn anytime, anywhere. But it also means they want to learn by doing. They consider technology their guide but want in-person engagement for connection, collaboration and support.

These were the trends and challenges we had to consider when designing . ASU Prep is a P-20 system of schools and educational services embedded in a larger learning enterprise at Arizona State University. The needs and preferences of our student body is what drives our iterative design. Students become masters in various learning domains from home, at a K-12 campus, on a university campus, at their parent’s workplace or even with peers at a coffee shop.

Thanks to the innovative K-12 policy environment in Arizona, students who can do a day’s worth of school work in less time can fill the remaining hours getting ahead in courses, catching up on concepts where they struggle, working, pursuing an interest in music, theater, Olympic sport or even launching their own small business.

Online learning should not be remote from people. We pair students with Learning Success Coaches to help students build personalized educational pathways into their desired future career. From kindergarten on, ASU Prep students build their own learning plans in concert with a guide and present it to their parents.

Our students are exposed to ASU courses as soon as they are ready and can take any of the 4,000-plus courses on the ASU catalog: in person, online or through our . High school students at ASU Prep are applying their learning via paid internships and hybrid high school/university schedules.

It’s working. With graduation and college-going rates that exceed the averages and large numbers of students matriculating to STEM careers, we believe that we are the school system of the future. As part of , ASU Prep is wired like no other K12 system in the country and is poised to design and open access to a K12 model fit for the future of work. 

We do all these things not to simply grow enrollment but to develop a knowledge base of what works to share with the broader community and the ASU teams that are increasing university enrollment in underrepresented communities.

Stakes are high for both our country and the families striving within. We embrace the efforts laid out in the New Essential Education Discoveries (NEED) Act to evaluate what is happening right now in the most innovative systems in the United States and apply those lessons rapidly for the benefit of all students.

There is brilliance in every household. We believe it’s our job to design new educational models that value curiosity and show every student that they do, in fact, have a path to a successful future.

The University of Texas at El Paso announced Wednesday that it will take a lead role in a new National Science Foundation-funded resource center that will support and strengthen Hispanic-Serving Institutions with their STEM-related grant applications.

The six-year, $7 million grant will establish the Hispanic-Serving Institution Center for Evaluation and Research Synthesis, or HSI-CERS, the nation’s only center of its kind. The center will work to help institutions better study and evaluate ways to verify and improve the effectiveness of NSF HSI-funded projects.

The center will be part of UTEP’s Diana Natalicio Institute for Hispanic Student Success. Anne-Marie Nuñez, executive director of the Natalicio Institute, is the grant’s principal investigator. She called the grant a landmark investment that emphasizes the university’s position as a leading HSI.

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“This particular grant signals UTEP’s leadership in research on effective practices to serve Hispanic students,” said Nuñez, a leading scholar of HSIs and diversity in science. “UTEP gets positioned and recognized as a leader in creating knowledge in that area rather than having outsiders create that knowledge. As for the community, it’s really important that those of us who are on the ground here are creating that knowledge.”

Nuñez said the new center will assist other institutions that may lack the human or financial resources, as well as the capacity, to understand what they can do to create more equity in STEM, and more effectively reach students from diverse backgrounds. She added that through this work, UTEP will provide the first portrait of the collective effectiveness of these programs.

According to the NSF, the center will use interdisciplinary efforts to generate a model that tackles complex data through quantitative and qualitative methods. Researchers will develop standardized and comparable techniques to analyze NSF HSI-grant projects. It will create a database that future grantees can use for evaluations and a consistent evaluation framework, as well as offer training on how to use both.

Nuñez’s two HSI-CERS co-principal investigators are Azuri Gonzalez, director of partnerships and operations at the Natalicio Institute, and Amy Wagler, professor of mathematical sciences.

The assessments will help NSF HSI-funded programs that serve Hispanics and other minority students in fields of STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

The announcement was made on the patio of the Peter and Margaret de Wetter Center before a crowd of about 40 people made up mostly of university administrators, faculty and staff.

The HSI-CERS grant puts UTEP on the national stage alongside the NSF, said Jacob Fraire, president of the ECMC Foundation. Fraire, who has more than 35 years of professional higher education experience, previously served as director of policy and strategy for the Natalicio Institute. He was part of the team that submitted the grant proposal.

He called Nuñez an HSI expert who deserves a lot of the credit for the successful application that will make UTEP and the Natalicio Institute a focal point for prospective NSF grantees in regard to proposal evaluations for the next six years.

“You don’t have to submit your proposals to UTEP, and you don’t have to go to UTEP committees,” Fraire said. “But you certainly will be encouraged to do so because UTEP will have built the kinds of resources that would add value to your project.”

In addition to HSI-CERS, the NSF also named UTEP as one of five institutions that will lead a second related $7 million project focused on building community and collaborations among current and potential HSI awardees. It is the UNIDOS Network Resource Center for Community Coordination, or HSI-CCC. Florida International University is the lead institution. Meagan Kendall, associate professor in UTEP’s Department of Engineering, Education and Leadership, is one of the co-principal investigators.

Gonzalez said that she looked forward to future collaborations among the institutions through Kendall to expand knowledge of what works and what can be done better.

“Telling the story of Hispanic student impact right is no small feat, but we welcome that challenge because it is a story worth telling and learning from,” Gonzalez said.

Both new centers are part of the NSF HSI Program Network Resource Centers and Hubs.

“Building on past investments, these new centers will help NSF achieve its broadening participation goals in STEM by growing and strengthening the education and research support that facilitates student and faculty success at HSIs,” James L. Moore III, NSF assistant director for STEM education, said in a press release.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

That is because the country is at the start of a massive effort intended to bring semiconductor manufacturing to the Southwest, battery research and development to rural upstate New York and more. It’s an effort that promises to spread good-paying jobs to parts of the country that haven’t benefited from them in recent decades.

More semiconductor manufacturing, more engineering jobs, more tech jobs — over the next 10 years, these and other jobs in STEM fields are faster than all others combined, with twice the median salary. More STEM jobs means the country needs more STEM-ready students, and that means helping elementary schools engage children with a rich and energetic brand of science before sixth grade, when children often start forming career aspirations.

This is particularly critical in rural areas, because if children in these communities don’t have a science-rich education, they will be less likely to be interested in or qualified for the STEM jobs coming to their regions. And if that’s the case, the purpose of locating these jobs there will be undermined, as employers will have to recruit qualified workers from other parts of the nation or world.

Getting young Americans involved in science now in a way that captivates them early in their education will prepare them to fill the STEM jobs of the near future and build the foundation for a strong and prosperous economy.

When children from all backgrounds see themselves as scientists, society reaps the benefits. But researchers estimate this country has missed out on generations of “” because many lack a relevant and relatable science education starting in elementary school, and kids cannot be what they cannot see. 

The found that students in kindergarten to third grade learned science for an average of just 18 minutes a day – less time than many of them spend on the school bus. The results of that are clear: Only 36% of fourth graders tested as proficient on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress science exam. 

If the new approach to industrial policy and STEM jobs is going to succeed, that has to change. Science education must start early, because children develop their interests and passions early. And it must attract all kids, no matter their backgrounds, resources or experiences.

The way to do that is to move students from learning about science from behind a classroom desk to exploring the world outside and around them — whether that’s studying drainage and flooding in an urban area or finding the angle of the sun to determine the best placement of solar panels in a rural community. Children’s minds come alive to science when they see it in every part of their world. They respond to active learning environments that offer the opportunity to collect data, test and solve problems in real time. The organization I lead, , transforms school grounds into real-world labs. Last year, we brought science to life for 53,000 students and 188 schools in 77 communities, starting in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and now extended to historically underserved areas of Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and Washington, D.C.

These take teachers and students out of the classroom and into the outdoors, where they can study the growth of plants or crops, build landforms to gauge erosion by pouring water on it or use plastic bags to find hidden water through leaf transpiration.

Children make the connection between the science they see in their schoolyards and the relevance of it to their own communities. 

As a Mississippi native who now lives, works and parents in Washington, D.C., I know that kids in rural areas grow up, get educated, work and live differently than those in cities or suburbs. High-speed internet, for example, is not a given. Technology and office work are not the norm. Some schools don’t have the that are taken for granted in many parts of the country. Almost 1 in 5 public school students attend a rural school, yet policymakers rarely address rural needs. Nonprofits and social service agencies often fill gaps in urban and suburban areas, but less so for rural schools. Indeed, the most robust voice for rural schools, the Rural School and Community Trust, no longer has an — a metaphor for the isolating lack of broadband internet or reliable cell service that confronts many rural schools.

For generations, those differences did not affect the nation economically. But now, they matter a lot. Modern society and the modern economy rely more on strong scientific readiness in places like the Southwest and rural upstate New York than ever.

The $80 billion in investments that Congress and President Joe Biden have made are designed to share the wealth of economic growth in every part of the country, not just Silicon Valley, Wall Street and the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Mining that wealth can’t happen, however, unless every school — rural, suburban and urban — has the facilities and a plan to get young children involved in science.

If this new industrial policy is to succeed in making this country economically sound and secure in the wake of the pandemic, engaging all citizens is critical. Making science real and relevant is, in that sense, a national economic security initiative. This opportunity is too crucial to miss.

My first career was not in teaching. I worked in an HIV Lab in New York City for five years before returning to my home in New Mexico in 2012. While away, I had developed a passion for science, and became convinced that one way I could make a contribution to the community I loved might be to help spark that passion in young people. I wanted to show students that science is more than the boring, read-and-take-notes course that I was subjected to in my youth.

And now, as more people express skepticism for data, I also want to help young people learn how you go about validating it; to understand that data is real and that understanding how to document and interpret it can give one real power.

When I began teaching, New Mexico was just preparing to transition to the . Our district didn’t have an aligned curriculum but, determined as I was to engage my students by sharing with them my lab experience, I embarked on designing lessons based on experimentation and data analysis. My results weren’t steller; the students were still bored. But my proof of concept came when I asked them to analyze video game data. It was here, in what they considered a relevant context, that they started to engage.  

As I became more familiar with the performance expectations of the NGSS, my instinct about the importance of students really understanding data, and how to conduct analyses, was confirmed. Because unlike traditional science assessments that required little math knowledge, the new standards challenged students to analyze charts, graphs, maps and data sets — and to recognize patterns. 

Video games notwithstanding, I struggled to find relevant data for students to use. I even attempted an assignment asking students to find local data and graphs, but that turned out to be far too complicated for middle schoolers. I spent long hours searching for information to fit the new standards, but my lesson plans often failed to engage the students. I found some good project-based lessons, but putting them in any kind of successive order felt disjointed and disconnected. Despite having good standards, understanding what they asked students to know and to be able to do, and with all the best of intentions, instruction in my classroom was still a bit of a mess.   

Things changed in 2018, when a neighboring school in our district that was field-testing OpenSciEd middle school units offered to demonstrate lessons. Because I’d become a bit discouraged by my own less-than-successful efforts, I was excited to give it a try. Our New Mexico Public Education Department offered OpenSciEd workshops, for which I was very grateful. 

What excited me the most about the OpenSciEd curriculum was that it’s modeled after real life scientific research. Standards that required students to memorize content knowledge were replaced by the new “Performance Expectations,” which, in addition to content knowledge, require the steps of scientific inquiry. Instead of teaching students to memorize the order —Observe, Question, Research, Hypothesis, Peer Review — OpenSciEd models the experience I had in the laboratory of solving problems.  

When I was working in a lab, I would become consumed with figuring out a solution to the myriad problems I encountered along the way — and, as we began using the curriculum, I was delighted to see that this was the experience my students were having as well. They really took to their role as scientific investigators! 

“It’s like a puzzle, it’s all out there, just sitting there, pieces broken off, it’s up to you to get that viewpoint,” eighth grade student Shawn Baker told our visitors from the Knowledge Matters Campaign. “Start with one piece and slowly add, add, add — until you have one big understanding.”

And, COVID couldn’t have been a more real-world example to demonstrate to our students the importance of solving problems by utilizing the scientific process. By the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, we collectively became consumed with the importance of scientific literacy and data sense-making.

Each lesson in the OpenSciEd curriculum asks students to look at information, analyze it, and ask themselves what makes sense and what doesn’t. We’re using science literacy skills to look at information and make evidence-based judgments. These are skills and attitudes I didn’t pick up until college. I am proud that I am helping my students learn this at such a young age. They know how to look at a problem and start solving it. If I were an employer, particularly if I were running a lab, I would absolutely be looking for people who have the skills my students are learning from this curriculum.  

These are some of my lessons learned from adopting and implementing OpenSciEd over the years:

1. Don’t be afraid to make the curriculum your own. 
2. There’s a lot of content in OpenSciEd and it can get overwhelming. We’ve all heard the expression, “Go slow to go fast.” That applies here. 
3. Students are doing the heavy lifting with this curriculum, and some of them might not be used to that much thinking. It may be tempting for teachers to revert to their traditional practice of giving students the answers and expecting them to retain it versus discovering it on their own. But investigating it on their own creates more engagement, which helps with information retention. 
4. Be careful what you omit (for pacing or other reasons). When I have omitted things in the past, I have often found that we’ve missed a crucial step in building student comprehension. Every year I teach this curriculum I appreciate more and more how thoughtfully it was constructed.  
5. Grading student work will take longer than in previous years, but it’s worth it. Because of the nature of what they’re doing, the work you’re reviewing provides a real opportunity to recognize where the students are in their understanding and use it to offer useful feedback.   

My best advice is to go for it. Having every student in every class engaged and learning is the payoff. Our kids need and deserve to have science made meaningful to them in the way we’ve been able to with this curriculum.