Science-Reform Goals Elusive, NAEP Data Find

By Robert Rothman

WASHINGTON--Nearly a decade after national reports sounded the alarm about the state of science education in the United States, the National Assessment of Educational Progress has found that those reports' calls for equal opportunities and excellence in the subject are "just as pertinent'' as in 1983.

In a report issued here last week, based on a 1990 assessment of 19,000 students in grades 4, 8, and 12, NAEP found that few students were able to perform at high levels of proficiency in science.

Even among high-school seniors, who are about to enter postsecondary education or the workforce, the report found, fewer than half demonstrated the ability to apply knowledge to interpret graphs and tables, evaluate and design experiments, and show detailed...