Science Education Struggles

Pennsylvania students struggle with science.  A recent report from the Department of Education confirmed the bad news.  Like much of the rest of the state, Blair County's schools showed sub-par science performance.  All seven school districts scored below the 70 point level that was considered proficient.  Six of them scored in the fifties.

I became frustrated a decade ago when Earth Science, in particular, was deemphasized in many central Pennsylvania schools.  Hoping to raise awareness of the importance of Earth Science, I set out to show that our high school students were falling short on their understanding of the planet and their environment.  Ultimately, I hoped that schools might bring Earth Science back to their ninth grade class curricula.

Though time constraints did not allow me to survey a large number, I did manage to test about one hundred high school students.  My one hundred question test asked the sorts of questions that I typically asked in the Earth Science classes I taught during my teaching career two decades ago.  Some of the questions were admittedly challenging but many were the sorts of things that any citizen should understand.  The results should cause us to take pause.

• America's Rivers – A large percentage could identify the Mississippi on a map but only a smidge more than half knew it was the U.S.'s largest river system.
• Pennsylvania's Waterways – Six out of seven high school freshmen could not identify what river system Blair County's water ran into.  (It's the Susquehanna.)  Less than half of all students tested in grades nine through twelve could name the body of water at the Northwest corner of the state.  (Yes, were talking about Lake Erie.)
• The Earth in Space – Half the ninth graders (who took Earth Science as eighth graders) did not know why the seasons occur.  (The tilt of the Earth on its axis means the angle of the sun and how much heat it provides differs from winter to summer.)  Almost half were unable to tell the time difference between Altoona and Chicago. 
• Weather and Climate – A large percentage understood how to read a weather map but few seemed to understand why the weather did what it did.  Less than a third understood lake effect snow and less than a quarter knew what mechanism produced rain in Pennsylvania.  (Frontal lifting along air mass boundaries is the most common precipitation producer.)
• Geology – Less than a third of the high school freshmen understood how coal was made and less than half knew that the Great Lakes were scoured by glacial ice sheets.
• Soils and Agriculture – Less than half of the ninth graders tested knew that wheat was a seed from a grass.  Only a little more than half knew what the Dust Bowl was.
• Resources – Less than a quarter realized that modern industrial societies like ours consumed large amounts of energy and resources.

Though my survey was of a small sample, the state tests scores confirm what my limited local research hints at.  Our culture does not understand the planet nearly as well as it should.  And it is difficult to make informed decisions on those issues if you don't understand them.