Project aimed at reducing 'urgency gap' in science education

The three-year project was supported by a $739,000 grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

The project will produce a set of resources, based on extensive dialogue with local school board members, on how to close what researchers call the “urgency gap.” This refers to the difference between what policymakers see as the critical need to improve education in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) as part of a broad strategy to address the nation’s competitiveness and the public’s complacency about this issue.

About 80 school leaders from Kansas and Missouri took part in a seminar in Kansas City, Mo., convened by AAAS and NSBA, to discuss what high-quality education in the STEM fields is all about, how school boards can improve education in these areas, and how they can gain public support.

“We want to reach out to local school boards and offer our support,” said Peyton West, senior program associate at AAAS. “With No Child Left Behind forcing schools to put such an intense focus on math and reading and because the stakes are so high, science education is getting short shrift. It’s a major challenge for school board members to bridge the urgency gap.”

Initially, the project focused on the issue of evolution. The AAAS was concerned that the growing clout of anti-evolutionist forces on the cultural landscape would cause science teachers to water down their discussions of evolution in the classroom to avoid controversy.

AAAS proposed working with NSBA to help school boards find common ground among their constituents on both sides of the evolution issue and find ways to have good science instruction without conflicts about religion.

To lay the groundwork for the project, Public Agenda was commissioned to survey parents and students in the Kansas City region. When researchers found that religion was not as big a factor as originally thought, the project was broadened.

So, rather than just focus on the evolution battles, the objective now is to explore ways to implement high-quality science instruction and ensure community support for these efforts.

In fact, the anti-evolution advocates have lost some of their momentum. For example, all but one member of the Kansas state board of education who had led the fight to de-emphasize evolution on the state’s science standards lost their re-election bids last November.

The project was introduced to about 200 local board members at a three-hour session at the NSBA Annual Conference in April. Legal experts, science education experts, and community engagement strategists discussed the Public Agenda findings and how school boards can incorporate efforts to improve STEM education into NSBA’s Key Work of School Boards, a framework for raising student achievement through community engagement.

When local school board members in the Kansas City area were interviewed by Public Agenda, many expressed frustration with the news media’s attention on the evolution controversy. School boards were more concerned about what schools must do to prepare students for the 21st century economy.

According to the Public Agenda report, Bridging Gaps & Balancing Acts: The Role of Local School Boards in Math, Science & Technology Education, school board leaders and experts in Kansas City believe the STEM subjects are “more important than ever before for success in the new economy, and that too few students are graduating from high school with the math, science, and technology they need for success.”

But parents and students don’t share the same sense of urgency, the report states. “They tend to view the increased testing and more stringent requirements in these areas as signs that all is well and that students are receiving an adequate background in these subjects.”

And most students “virtually in chorus” found the STEM classes “useless.” Whether they were from urban, suburban, or exurban schools, an overwhelming majority of students named higher-level math, science, and technology as the “least relevant of the subjects they’re learning,” the report states.

Following last month’s seminar, the Missouri, Illinois, and Kansas school boards associations will join with NSBA and AAAS to develop resources for state associations, accessible on CD, including lesson plans for adults, educational materials based on AAAS’s Project 2061, and a guide for state association trainers to replicate workshops throughout the country. Project 2061 is a long-term initiative launched in 1985 to improve science, mathematics, and technology literacy.

The resources will be field-tested in Maryland this fall and, once finalized, will be unveiled at NSBA’s Leadership Conference for state school boards associations in January in Washington, D.C.

These materials, as well as regular updates on issues related to science, mathematics, and technology education, also will be accessible on a website hosted by NSBA’s Center for Public Education.