What Lies beneath the Science Achievement Gap: The Challenges of Aligning Science Instruction with Standards and Tests

Amongst all instructional issues facing science education, the one that exerts the most substantial impact on the lasting achievement gap is the "mile-wide, inch-deep" curriculum, which is created by superficial alignments among standards, tests, and instructional materials. "If science educators had a dime for every time the phrase 'standards-based' or 'aligned with standards' pops up in science textbooks, instructional product brochures, conference programs, or in-service workshop presentations ..." Diminishing "standards" and "alignment" to overused buzzwords or superficial checklists masks the dire need for truly systemic and operational standards-based alignment in science education. In this article, we report the findings of an ongoing collaborative effort between cognitive researchers and urban science teachers to align everyday teaching with standards, tests, and research-based pedagogy. We begin with an analysis of how the width vs. depth dilemma in science teaching manifested itself in yearly test scores and the achievement gap. We review the problematic issues of alignment among standards, instruction, and assessment. We argue that simply matching standards with so-called "standards-based" materials creates a false sense of comfort in a superficially aligned curriculum. We advocate for schools, districts, even states to undertake the difficult but necessary planning process to create a framework of performance objectives to serve as the critical hinge linking standards, instruction, and assessment. Such curriculum planning must set as its first priority the goals of effectively cutting down the girth of yearly science content while efficiently managing the handoff of students between grade levels. Research Context and Data Collection Our research takes place in three urban parochial schools (> 90% eligible for free and reduced lunch programs and > 95% African American). We use one affluent parochial school as a comparison group ( All schools use the same districtwide curriculum guidelines, though the instructional materials vary from school to school. All science teachers are certified in elementary education with approximately half also certified to teach science at elementary or secondary levels. This teacher profile is comparable to nationwide statistics for science teaching in public schools (National Center for Education Statistics, 2002). All schools are annually assessed using the Terra Nova Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills [CTBS] (CTB/McGraw-Hill, 2001), which includes a 40-item multiple choice assessment for science for each grade level. The parochial district evaluates schools based on the annual tests and exerts administrative pressure on principals and teachers to improve performance. There is no "high-stakes" accountability system (e.g., sanction, merit-pay). The achievement data reported here was collected by obtaining students ' answer sheets for CTBS tests from both the urban schools and the comparison school. We analyze test performance by test item rather than relying on the gross subject-level data reported by CTB/McGraw-Hill. In addition, we were able to collect, through interviews, surveys, and in-class observations, a detailed record of what each teacher taught in each school. We connected test data and everyday teaching through item analyses that categorized items by topic area and by cognitive demand (Bloom, 1956). Science Achievement Gap What follows is a tale of two gaps: 1) The learning gap in particular topic areas, which, through teacher and researcher collaboration and intense instructional investment, can be narrowed or even closed; 2) The test gap across the entire science curriculum, which, despite teacher and researcher collaboration and intense instructional investment and professional development, remain wide open. …