Study rips quality of high school science labs

updated 12:04 p.m. ET Aug. 8, 2005

WASHINGTON - While sleek crime-scene TV shows have turned students on to forensic science, an investigation of today's high school laboratories shows that reality isn't so flattering.

Most of the labs are of such poor quality that they don't follow basic principles of effective science teaching, said a report released Monday by the private National Research Council, a prominent adviser to government leaders on matters of science and engineering.

The typical lab is an isolated add-on that lacks clear goals, does not engage students in discussion and fails to illustrate how science methods lead to knowledge, the report said.

Also contributing to the problem: teachers who aren't prepared to run labs, state exams that don't measure lab skills, wide disparities in the quality of equipment and a simple lack of consensus over what "laboratory" means in the school environment.

Even the way class time and space are organized in high schools may be limiting progress, the study found.  "It's on target," said Gerry Wheeler, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association and a former high school physics teacher.  "There's a lack of clarity about why we're doing things. And we can't measure how useful labs are unless we have that clarity."

Successful lab time is critical because it bolsters students' science literacy and, more broadly, can help inspire the next wave of scientists, the report said.

The review amounts to the latest warning over the state of science in the United States. Business groups whose members have tens of millions of workers recently announced a campaign to prod the nation into improving math and science education, wary of slipping U.S. competitiveness in the world.

Criticisms of science labs are not new, but teachers say the report, coming with the imprimatur of the National Research Council, could give the matter a boost of urgency.

"For literally 150 years, laboratories have been the sacred cows of science education," said Susan Singer, chairwoman of the committee that wrote the report and professor of biology at Carleton College.  "Nobody has stopped to question what the value added is, or how we should go about using labs to improve learning. We haven't asked the right questions."

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