New Mexico is home to two national labs, several research universities and an estimated 10,000 professional scientists.

Yet New Mexico students, including Santa Fe's, lag well behind the national average on science proficiency tests — in spite of some gains in the last five years.

In 2008, fewer than 40 percent of the state's students in sixth through ninth grade tested proficient in science on the New Mexico Standards Based Assessments.

New Mexico students are smart enough and capable enough to excel in science. And some do, earning scholarships to top-notch research universities. So why don't more of them?

Low science scores stem from some of the same factors as low math and reading scores — a high population of low-income students, English language learners and youngsters with special learning needs.

An additional challenge in science is that not all teachers are qualified or comfortable teaching it.

Experts say a few proven steps could boost science prowess among New Mexico students: Coax professional scientists into mentoring teachers and students. Make science hands-on, fun and relevant. Encourage the natural curiosity of youth. Tie science to literacy. Beef up student access to labs, high-tech equipment and materials for experiments.

Finally, use some innovative teaching methods and set high expectations.

"I love it when people tell me I can't do something because I'm going to go out and do it," said Bob Sorensen, who started an innovative health careers program at Capital High School in Santa Fe. "I saw these students with huge abilities (who were not) being challenged. No wonder they were dropping out."



Relevant science

"Lub dub, lub dub, lub dub."

Students in Sorensen's Introduction to Health Care Careers class at Capital High School huddled around latex heart-lung mannequins, listening through stethoscopes to the digitally controlled heartbeat sounds within. They were trying to figure out what health problem the beats signaled.

Alexandra Montoya, a junior, said she likes learning science this way. "I'm more of a hands-on learner," she said.

Sorensen, who retired from research and development at DuPont before becoming a teacher, constantly cracks jokes and finds examples to make the science relevant to his students' lives.

Next door, a group of 10th-graders in the Principles of Biomedical Research class are building pumps out of tubing, clamps and flasks, with no instruction. "They have to figure it out for themselves," said teacher Stephanie Leyba.

The two classes are part of Project Lead The Way, a program now in its fifth year at Capital. Sorensen developed the program with the help of colleagues, school officials, Santa Fe Community College and health professionals at Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center. Hospital officials told him they needed more home-grown, skilled health professionals. Sorensen wanted a way to attract students out of the hallway and back into the classroom.

He started with 18 hand-picked upperclassmen in a "health careers" class, an elective. Class started at 7 a.m. "Then kids wanted to come at 6:30 a.m. and stay at lunch," he said.

Of the original 18 students in the first health care careers class, 16 went on to medical careers including two now in medical school, one each in veterinary and pharmacy schools and the rest in nursing, radiology and respiratory therapy.

This year, 220 students in 10th through 12th grade are in the program, and enrollment is growing. "This program has gone berserk and I'm loving it," said Sorensen.

The program's four elective classes are intensely hands-on, challenging students to solve real-life problems. Each year, program teachers work with law enforcement and investigators to set up a crime scene that requires students to gather forensic evidence and find the perpetrator. "Students either make 100 or a zero," Sorensen said. "If you put the wrong guy in jail, you make a zero."

Students observe a veterinary clinic and go to the cadaver lab at The University of New Mexico Medical School. "Usually I'll have at least one student spit up or pass out," Sorensen said. "This year it was like 16 little vultures."

Leyba and Sorensen say their students rise to and exceed expectations. "If you push them, they'll achieve," Leyba said. "We give them more responsibility, not less."

Now students in the program can earn up to 32 college credits through the program and obtain any of four certificates in nursing, emergency medical technology, phlebotomy and in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. Those certificates gives students an added incentive to pay attention in their required biology, chemistry and physics classes because they're getting something practical out of their public school education.

The program wasn't cheap to establish. School officials and Sorensen have written grants and looked for partnerships with private entities to buy the equipment and establish the labs.

It is too early to say whether the program will improve Capital's standardized science test scores. The health careers pathways program was only for juniors and seniors until this year. On the 2008-2009 high school competency exam, 72 percent of Capital High 10th-graders passed the science portion on the first try, compared to 80 percent for Santa Fe High School and 75 percent for the district.

To Sorensen, there's another measure of success. "When kids are coming in at 7 a.m. and you can't get them out of class, that's saying something," he said. "When 70 to 80 percent of the kids go on into health-related fields, that means something is working."

Jim Brookover, the small learning community coordinator, said he's seen students in the program gain confidence. "Many of these kids never in their life thought they could do something like this," he said.

Literacy first, then science

Lisa Mayer admitted recently to her combined fourth- and fifth-grade class at Alvord Elementary School that she didn't know much about mummification. "But I'm going to go research it," Mayer said.

Her students sat cross-legged in a semi-circle around her in the classroom. They had just finished reading a recent New York Times article on ancient Egypt's King Tut and new evidence that the teen ruler died of malaria.

Mayer uses articles like the one on King Tut to teach science through literacy. She focuses less on science projects and more on their reading, writing and critical-thinking skills. "Students can't do well in other subjects if they can't read or write," she said.

She did the same with her fourth-grade Alvord class last year. At least with that group, the approach worked.

Mayer and her students were honored by the New Mexico Public Education Department in early February for making the largest gains in science scores on the state's standardized test among all fourth-grade classrooms last year.

When Mayer acknowledged she didn't know much about how people are mummified, she was practicing three effective science teaching methods — validating the students' questions as good ones, admitting she didn't know the answers and expressing a desire to find out more.

Middle- and high-school science teachers are supposed to be highly trained in the subjects. Elementary school teachers are generalists. Few receive specific training in how to teach science, so they often lack the confidence and skills to teach the subject, said Mollie Toll, who works half-time coordinating a science resource room and lab at Salazar Elementary School. "It is so hard for some teachers to admit they don't know," she said. "Their sense of being in control of a classroom is knowing the answers."

Toll's salary is paid by the Santa Fe Science Initiative, a 9-year-old nonprofit based at Gonzales Community School. The initiative runs a resource room, finds scientists to work with teachers and is developing an elementary school science curriculum. They help teachers recognize that asking questions and looking for the answers through experiments are half the fun of science. "We want kids to be risk-takers in science," said Susan McIntosh, executive director of the Santa Fe Science Initiative. "Teachers have to model that. It's a real shift for some people."

Mayer, a graduate of the Santa Fe Public Schools, said science isn't her favorite subject. "But I don't have a fear of it," she said. Like other good teachers, she uses multiple approaches to help students remember science-related materials. She employs lots of pictures and other visuals and has them use their bodies in simple ways. When they learned about the heart, they used their hands to form the organ. Their right and left hands became the ventricles pumping blood to the circulatory systems. "I try to have them move to remember, especially when it is a sequence of things," Mayer said.

After her students took turns reading the King Tut article aloud, Mayer posed a question asked by the article's author: "Do you think it is ethical to dig up a body even to study it for science? Turn to the person next to you and discuss it," she said.

After a minute, she had them turn back and share their opinions. Jessica Sandoval, 10, said she could understand digging up a body if studying it would benefit others with a disease, "but I wouldn't want my body exhumed."

Mentoring success

Maya Griswold raised her arms in victory and let out a satisfied "Yes!"

The 11-year-old Salazar Elementary School student had just figured out the sine of an angle on a right triangle. "I'm having fun today," she exclaimed as she waited for the next problem.

She and four fellow sixth-graders are learning math and physics most students don't start until eighth or ninth grade.

The guy straining their brains twice a week is Vic Cook, a retired physics professor from the University of Washington in Seattle. He volunteers at the school two days a week. Cook is among the mentors working through the Santa Fe Science Initiative to tutor students and train elementary school teachers in teaching science.

The sixth-graders in Cook's groups said their classmates are studying pre-algebra, something they already know. They said they would be bored and probably causing trouble if they had to stay in class. "If we didn't do this," said Lucia Sandoval, 12, waiting for Cook's next problem in the school's science lab, "we'd be doing review every day."

Cook doesn't just work with students who are naturally good at math or science. Last year, he worked with a Salazar Elementary School student who was a leader on the playground but a troublemaker in the science class. The boy, a native Spanish speaker, was still struggling to learn English. Cook and the boy's teacher quickly figured out he didn't understand the material and, rather than lose face, caused problems. Cook began meeting with the boy the day before the class and going over the assignment, making sure he understood the terminology and the activity. Soon the boy was leading again, this time helping other students do the experiments.

Toll, who manages the science lab, said it is time-consuming for elementary school teachers to prepare, conduct and clean up science projects for a class. "It is very hard to fit science in. Their attention, because of (adequate yearly progress) testing, is intensely on math and literacy," said Toll, a paleoethnobotanist who also works part time for the state Office of Archaeological Studies.

She thinks that's unfortunate. "Kids are hungry for science," Toll said. "They're interested in it. They want to try things and they're still curious."

As she spoke in the hallway, two students stopped to ask her if she had any more science fair project ideas for the upcoming March 4 science fair.

Still struggling with science

New Mexico students have made steady gains in math, reading and science on the state's standardized tests in the last five years, according to a September report from the state Public Education Department.

Yet in 2009, less than half tested proficient in science. Like math and reading, science scores decline during the middle-school years and rise again in high school. In 2008, 81 percent of New Mexico third-graders were proficient in science. That plunged to 31 percent for sixth-graders. By ninth grade, 38 percent of students tested proficient.

New Mexico isn't ignoring science education. In 2006, the state Legislature funded a Math and Science Bureau in the New Mexico Public Education Department. An advisory council made up of teachers, business leaders and scientists created a strategic plan for improving math and science education. They report progress to the governor and the Legislature every November.

Groups like the Santa Fe Science Initiative and the Santa Fe Alliance for Science are putting scientists together with teachers and students. The Santa Fe school district has created an online standards-based science curriculum for sixth, seventh and eighth grades, complete with lesson notes.

Science materials, curriculum, and project and teaching ideas are readily available to teachers.

Still, the state's students struggle. Officials worry about what that means in today's economy where many of the best-paying jobs are in science, engineering and technology.

The New Mexico Math and Science Advisory Council in January released a plan to make New Mexico's K-12 students national leaders in science and math. The plan essentially builds on what science educators advocate — increasing teacher training, involving more professional scientists in classrooms and getting families involved. The plan also calls for more online distance learning to help rural students access science and math classes they might be unable to take locally.

It sounds good. But ultimately, the heaviest burden to make the plan work lies with classroom teachers.

Capital High School teacher Bob Sorensen said he's from the old school of science teaching — read the chapter, answer the questions and take the test on Friday. "That doesn't work now," Sorensen said. "These students think totally different than we do. They see things we don't."

Sorensen thinks teachers today must make science and any subject relevant, rigorous, challenging and exciting. "The teacher has to be excited — or why would the students be?" he said. "If kids are kicking and grousing, I'm not doing what I'm supposed to."

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.