High School Labs Poor, says National Research Council report

WASHINGTON-Most of today’s high school laboratories are of such poor quality that they don’t follow basic principals of effective science teaching, said a report by the private National Research Council, an advisor to government leaders the subjects of science, medicine and engineering.

The report said that 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.

Other factors contributing to the problem are 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.

The review amounts to the latest warning over the condition of science in the United States. 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.

Most students take science classes during three of the four high school years, participating in labs about once a week in biology, chemistry or physics courses. During lab time, students are supposed to be mastering subject matter, developing scientific reasoning and understanding the complexity of work involving observation, the report said.

However many science teachers are limited by old lab equipment, limited money, large class sizes and infrequent training on how to be better lab instructors. Overall, research on high school labs is inadequate, making it difficult to draw conclusions on how to fix the problems, the report said. It recommended no specific policies, calling instead for more research and posing questions for leaders to consider. National Research Council www.nationalacademies.org National Science Teachers Association www.nsta.org