America's report card – science skills improving

After years of handwringing, some good news about science education in the US: between 2009 and 2011, there was a small rise in the average scores attained by 13- to 14-year-olds in the leading national survey.

In the latest round of the National Assessment of Educational Progress – popularly known as the Nation's Report Card – eighth-graders from across the US were quizzed on problems in the physical, life, Earth and space sciences.

The average score, on a 300-point scale, rose from 150 in 2009 to 152 in 2011. That might sound modest, but in a huge sample of 122,000 children from 7290 schools it was statistically significant. What's more, the gains were across the board, with kids at all attainment levels – apart from the top 10 per cent, who held their ground – doing significantly better in 2011 than in the previous survey.

The knowledge tested in the science survey was revised in 2009, making it difficult to compare the new results with earlier rounds. Still, the gain in average attainment follows a long period from the mid-1990s in which scores remained stagnant.

Obama effect?

So does this mean that Barack Obama, who has made investing in science education a theme of his presidency, can claim credit for the shift? That's hard to tell, says Jack Buckley, who heads the National Center for Education Statistics in Washington DC, which runs the survey. The results are "very good at telling us where we are but they're not very good at telling us why," he says.

Nevertheless, the survey did identify factors that correlate with success, including frequent hands-on projects in class and participating in science-related activities outside of school. "It isn't just about a fact base. It's about engaging with the science," says Shirley Malcom, head of education and human resources with the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington DC.

Despite the recent gains, Malcom sees no room for complacency. She is particularly concerned about gaps in average attainment between the races and sexes. While African Americans and Hispanics improved more between 2009 and 2011 than did whites and Asians, large disparities remain – there was a 35-point gap between white and black students in 2011.

There was also no narrowing of the gender gap in science between 2009 and 2011, with boys leading by five points on average in the latest survey.