taking the pulse of science education in America: a state by state analysis

What "Taking the Pulse" says....
The report says that states across America are failing to prepare students for pursuing biosciences in higher education – a key pipeline for developing the bioscience workforce of the future. This report is the first ever comprehensive study of middle and high school bioscience education in the 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. The findings of this document demonstrate a wide disparity across measures of student achievement in overall science and biosciences, and an uneven record across states in incorporating the biosciences in state science standards, supporting focused bioscience education programs and higher level bioscience courses and ensuring well-qualified science and bioscience teachers.

This review of state activities in bioscience education suggests a number of actions that should be taken, including the following:

• States should incorporate biotechnology as they revise their science standards and should involve research scientists with expertise in the biosciences in their development.

• States must commit to improving student achievement in biology and the life sciences and ensuring that their high school graduates are ready to pursue college-level bioscience courses.

• States should do a better job of collecting and disseminating data to track student participation and performance in the biosciences and the broader sciences.

• States should take a more systematic approach to teacher professional development, experiential learning, and career awareness.

The report provides the following evidence that states are not measuring up:

• On average, only 28% of the high school students taking the ACT , which is a national standardized test for college admission , reached a score indicating college readiness for biology and no state reached even 50%.

• Only 52% of 12th graders are at or above a basic level of achievement in the sciences, and for 8th graders only 57% are at a basic level of achievement.

• Average scores for 12th graders in the sciences have actually declined from 1996 to 2005 and shown no improvement for 8th graders both on overall and the life science component.

• A significant gap exists in science achievement for low-income middle-school students, although the gap is slowly narrowing.

Some states fared much better than others with respect to student achievement in the biosciences.

While it is difficult to give a single grade across states because of the limited quality and comparability of the student achievement data, the patterns of student performance suggest the states fall into several broad categories.

• Leaders of the Pack: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Vermont, Wisconsin

• Second Tier: Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington

• Middling Performance: Alabama, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine,

Michigan, Montana, South Carolina, Wyoming

• Lagging Performance: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia

• Not Rated: States that do not participate in the NAEP science assessment were not rated.

The report also finds an uneven record across states in incorporating the biosciences in state science standards, supporting focused bioscience education programs and advanced bioscience courses, and ensuring well-qualified science and bioscience teachers.

Only 31 states reported that their science standards explicitly mention or define standards or applied laboratory or other instruction tools specifically for biotechnology or the biosciences.

At least half the states have at least one school with a bioscience focus, and all of the states have schools with a focus on broader STEM education. But states do not seem to be succeeding in encouraging high school students to take upper-level science courses. Although data on this subject are very limited, the share of students taking the AP biology exam averages 4.6% of high school graduates.

The report also notes that nearly one in eight U.S. high-school biology teachers was not certified to teach biology. The average share of biology teachers who are certified in a given state ranged from 50% to 100% in data collected by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), although 88% of biology teachers are certified nationally on average.