Research-Council Studies to Explore Teaching and Testing of Science

As schools across the country brace for a new wave of federal mandates in science, the National Research Council is undertaking three studies aimed at exploring how students learn most effectively in that subject, and how it is best taught and tested.

The NRC, an arm of the congressionally chartered National Academies, has convened three separate committees of experts to work on the projects, two of which are expected to be finished next year.

One of those studies is addressing a topic of increasing urgency to states: helping them devise tests that will comply with the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act. The nearly 3-year-old law requires them to assess students in science for the first time during...