Educators Rally To Salvage Science Dropouts

Experts urge schools to leave the door open for potential researchers who fall outside the conventional talent pool WASHINGTON--Science educators, searching for ways to avert a projected shortage of scientists, have begun to question the conventional wisdom on how tomorrow's scientists are identified and trained. The prevailing view that scientists are survivors, identified early as the best and brightest of a static pool of talent that shrinks as students progress through school, isn't borne out by recent studies on student academic preferences and career decisions during and after high school. As a result, say those concerned with the problem, federal officials must go beyond efforts to enlarge the size of that initial pool of talent in elementary and secondary school. Rather, they must seek to better understand the reasons why a large group of talented high school students either forgo college entirely or study something besides science as undergraduates. "Rather than waiting for the winners to reveal themselves, we need to take the kids who have expressed an interest and encourage them to stay in science and math," says Valerie Lee, assistant professor of education at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who has written extensively on the issue. "If a student says at a certain point that he or she is interested in science, our educational system needs to respond." Policymakers agree that the United States must improve its system of science education. President Bush, for example, has promised that U.S. students will rank first in the world in science and mathematics by the end of the decade, and the nation's governors have pledged to work toward that goal. At the same time, every federal agency that funds research, from Agriculture to Energy, is also increasing its spending on education. Most of these programs are based on the traditional view that the younger the science bug bites students, the better. But some analysts are now wondering if that emphasis is misplaced. Shouldn't the government look more closely at older students who have already demonstrated some interest and ability in science, they ask, rather than just lighting a spark in a third-grade student in the hope that 15 years later it grows into a burning desire to do science? "It's certainly more manageable from a policy perspective to work with [high schoolers]," says the National Science Foundation's Iris Rotberg, who directs assessment studies of education programs funded by the foundation. "We don't know enough about how to affect the entire science curriculum, and we don't have the resources to make a significant impact. Even if we did, nobody knows exactly what elementary school teachers should be doing to get kids excited about science." Lee's work on the characteristics of students making the transition from high school to college is derived from "High School and Beyond," a longitudinal study by the Education Department that tracks a sample of 1980 high school sophomores. Her analysis is part of the well-known 1988 study by the congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) entitled "Educating Scientists and Engineers: From Grade School to Grad School." Both studies contribute to a growing body of literature indicating that the pool of scientific talent in the U.S. is not fixed, and that students are continually rethinking whether to become a scientist. That finding suggests a serious flaw exists in the traditional depiction of the future supply of scientific talent as a pipeline that keeps narrowing as it flows through the educational system. "I never use the word `pipeline' in my work," says Thomas Hilton, senior researcher at the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, N.J., and director of a study published in 1989 on the college performance of high-achieving minority high school students. "I prefer `pathways,' because it takes into account the flow in and out of science in a way that `pipeline' does not." In Lee's analysis of student preferences, more students entered and left science than remained in the field at critical points in their academic careers. "Contrary to popular perception," she writes, "interest in science seems to be relatively unfixed at points along the educational pipeline thought by many to be too late for attracting students to scientific pursuits. Moreover, this `tranfer-in' behavior is much more likely to occur from outside science than from one science to another. . . . In fact, the latter years of high school and the early years of college might be the most effective intervention periods." One segment of the students who were tracked that troubles psychologist Richard Atkinson, chancellor of the University of California, San Diego, and past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), are those high school students who, according to that same longitudinal study, do well in science and math but do not enroll in college. These students, who represent as much as 5 percent of the 4 million high school seniors in 1982, have taken at least 10 science and math courses and have a grade point average equivalent to a B-plus or better. This group, says Atkinson, is ill-served by the present educational system, which forces students to take courses in lock step. "I worry about the whole issue of maturation, those who haven't yet focused on what they want to do," he says. "We need to do a better job of letting them catch up to their peers at their own rate, rather than keeping them out because they haven't taken the right courses in the right sequence." Atkinson cited this group in his presidential address on science education given last February at the annual meeting of AAAS. He estimated that the number of high school graduates interested in science who don't go on to college is equal to one-fourth the number of students who declare majors in science and engineering. And he predicted that "the projected shortfall [of scientists] in the next two decades could be largely avoided if such students went on to college in science and engineering, even allowing for subsequent attrition." That prospect has great appeal for Sheila Tobias, an independent researcher based in Tucson, Ariz. (see Commentary on page 11). Tobias is the author of a booklet published last May by the Tucson-based Research Corporation that argues strongly for the need to broaden the traditional definition of who belongs in science. Entitled They're Not Dumb, They're Different: Stalking the Second Tier, her study details the experiences of six graduate students in the humanities who agreed to enroll in undergraduate science courses and to record their impressions. They and their peers constitute what Tobias calls "the second tier," successful students who sidestep science in favor of law, business, or another profession. "I think that [Atkinson's] group is of enormous significance," she says. "At the very least, we need to find out more about them. The key question is: Can we serve them, and translate their skills into what they need to pursue a career in science?" That turns out to be a tall order, however. Analysts know very little about these students, or their reasons for not continuing with higher education. What type of science and math courses did they take in high school? Did they enjoy these classes? Are they rejecting college because they or their parents don't value education, or because they can't afford it? Would they pursue science in college if given the chance? "High School and Beyond" doesn't provide many answers. Some observers believe that the group is actually much smaller, and therefore a less significant pool of talent, than it appears. They argue that researchers have not tracked these students long enough to conclude that they will never attend college, and that some of them are likely to show up in college after a stint in the military or the labor market. "My estimates are that it's a very small group," says Cliff Adelman, director of the division of higher education with the Education Department's Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Adelman works with the data from a 1972 survey of high school students known as the National Longitudinal Study, which tracked students from age 18 until age 30. That 12-year span, Adelman believes, gives a more accurate picture of actual career choices than does the 1980 survey, which so far has examined data for only four years beyond high school. Adelman says that the 1972 survey shows that less than 10 percent of a comparable group (those in the top fifth of their class, with more than 10 semesters of math and science) did not attend college. Adelman also thinks that it would be wrong to assume that a significant portion of these students would study science, even if given the chance. "People have an inflated view of their abilities," he says. "That's particularly true for men," he says, noting that males constitute about two-thirds of the group with good grades and 10 or more courses in science or math. Not taking any more science may be the best thing for many of those students, says ETS's Hilton. The enormous fluctuation in academic preferences between the sophomore and senior years of high school, and between high school and the sophomore year of college, reflects the value of giving students great leeway in choosing careers, he says. "I worry a lot about statements that we could solve the manpower problem if only all the students who are capable of it went on in science and math," says Hilton. "I think there's an inherent wisdom in the U.S. educational system that exerts itself as students pass through it." Myles Boylan works with the "High School and Beyond" survey in his position as an analyst for NSF's Division of Policy Research and Analysis. He acknowledges readily that the survey, which is intended to explore the effectiveness of various federal education programs and, eventually, the relationship between education and early work experiences, has limited value for understanding why students study science. "It's possible that a lot of them would have wanted to go on to college but couldn't afford it," he says, echoing the comments of several science educators on the issue. "A lot of kids just don't understand what sources of financial aid exist, or how to apply for them. But we just don't know for sure. They were asked about their goals, but it's hard to isolate what factors are important. And there are few questions on the survey about why they have or haven't chosen science." The dearth of hard data on these would-be science students makes it difficult to draw conclusions about them, some educators warn. Still, most believe that the group's very existence should force the U.S. educational system to reexamine its methods and underlying beliefs. "I don't believe Atkinson's projections about a manpower shortage," says Daryl Chubin, a senior policy analyst at OTA and director of the "Grade School to Grad School" study. "But his call for bringing more people into the field is an important idea to get across to people." Chubin acknowledges that appealing to those students who may not choose science initially runs the risk of "raising their expectations about their chances for a good career" at a time when many scientists believe that employment prospects are poor and that opportunities for research support are slim. However, with science attrition rates at the undergraduate level running at 50 percent or greater, he says, it makes sense to reach out to those "who have already shown the commitment." This approach, he believes, also has the advantage of focusing on the needs of students, rather than forcing them to conform to the system. "The point is, you don't blame the victim," he says. "We're got a problem, and the solution is to make it more attractive or interesting for students to pursue science. And anything that helps bring that about is worth looking at."

Educators Rally To Salvage Science Dropouts

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