It’s a Monday morning in May here, and an unexpected heat wave makes the city feel like July. But neither the temperature nor the time of year has pushed this class of 4th graders at Central Elementary STREAM Academy into the usual end-of-school-year slump.
The students, seated three or four to a table, chat enthusiastically as they put the finishing touches on their long-term fossil projects. Posters displaying storyboards with illustrations and written descriptions explain the lifespan of students’ chosen fossils. Nearby, handmade replicas—some realistic, others whimsical— sit alongside their crafted habitats, including one made from tangles of brightly colored pipe cleaners.
One 4th grader, Jace, eagerly explains that, for his fossil project, he researched an ancient octopus, an ancestor of the Giant Pacific Octopus. “The carbon dioxide levels got low, and the planet and everything on it froze. Over time, that created fossils,” the aspiring marine biologist said, his explanation sounding more like that of a scientist than a 4th grader.
Jace’s interest in marine biology may stem from his frequent visits to the Da Vinci Science Center, just down the street from Central Elementary STREAM (Science, Technology, Reading and Writing, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) Academy, where he attends elementary school. During weekly instructional periods at the museum, Jace and many of his classmates watch the North American river otters, playful mammals that have become a highlight for many students. The exhibit focuses on the Lehigh River Watershed, a portion of which runs through Allentown.
After roaming the museum, Jace and his classmates—as well as students from other grades at his school—line up and head to the elevators, which deliver them to the museum’s lower level: more than 13,000 square feet of classroom space that functions as the school’s secondary campus. Here, district-employed educators, referred to as STREAM specialists, connect classroom lessons to real-life science experiences.
The school’s partnership with the nonprofit museum, whose mission is “to bring science to life and lives to science,” might seem like a luxury. But all of Central’s students come from under-resourced families, about 20% are English learners, and nearly half are considered transient. In 2025, less than 15% of the school’s students scored proficient in math or reading on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment.
Still, school and district administrators believe change is underway, and this partnership is at the heart of it. At the start of the 2024-25 academic year, Central Elementary rebranded as the district’s first specialized elementary lab: Central Elementary STREAM Academy. The museum partnership supports the school’s strategy to integrate science, technology, reading, engineering, art, and mathematics into the curriculum.
“My aim is that we change the trajectory of these students’ lives because of the experiences and exposures that they’re receiving,” said Carol Birks, the district’s superintendent and chief executive officer.
For many students, simply visiting a state-of-the-art museum regularly is transformative. “If Da Vinci was not here, three blocks away, how many families would actually have the opportunity to make it there?” said Rebecca Bodnar, principal of Central Elementary STREAM Academy. “When it used to be a couple miles away, I don’t think many of our families made it at all.”
Reinvestment in a struggling town and school district led to a rare partnership
The partnership emerged as if from a celestial occurrence, propelled by the alignment of several rare circumstances.
The science center’s new, $75 million, 67,300-square-foot building opened its doors down the street from Central Elementary in May 2024.
Its construction, funded largely by a $72 million fundraising campaign, is a key component of a broader downtown investment tied to Allentown’s Neighborhood Improvement Zone (NIZ), established in 2011.
Once a manufacturing hub, Allentown saw a steep economic decline in the 1970s and ‘80s, which had a ripple effect on the economy and its residents, as the notorious 1982 Billy Joel song “Allentown” aptly described.
Today, many Allentown residents still face economic challenges.
The town’s current majority-Latino population of approximately 126,000 residents earns less money and is less educated than the national average. Just 19% of residents 25 and older hold a bachelor’s degree, compared with 35% nationwide. Allentown’s median family income in 2024 was $55,494, far lower than the national median of $83,730. Until very recently, Allentown’s schools were under-resourced too.
Then, in 2023, a state court ruling in a school funding lawsuit and subsequent legislative action brought new resources to underfunded districts like Allentown. Since the 2024–2025 school year, the district has received approximately $20.2 million, addressing about 11% of the “adequacy funding” gap, according to a district spokesperson. That funding enabled district leaders to expand staffing, invest in curriculum, and launch initiatives like STREAM.
“I have to commend our local officials,” said Superintendent Birks. “They really advocated for Allentown, which had been grossly underfunded for so many years.”
A steadying presence is leading the school into a new learning paradigm
Familiar, trusted leadership can be steadying to a school community asked to adjust to major changes.
Bodnar, Central’s principal, should know. She has served on her elementary school’s redesign committee since February 2024. She began her role as principal a decade earlier.
“We’re building the plane as we’re flying it,” Bodnar said, as she and her staff adjust to inquiry-based learning, combining formerly distinct subjects into an integrated curriculum, and getting accustomed to a dynamic partnership with a science museum.
These changes at the school began by asking Central’s staff to think differently about student learning, an approach based on Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero, a research center designed to help learners observe carefully and think deeply.
“Ultimately, we learned how to ask questions differently in the classroom, so that we’re engaging students at a higher level,” Bodnar said.
Young learners: tailor-made for inquiry-based, integrated learning
This inquiry-based approach is tailor-made for early learners, explains Christine Royce, former president of the National Science Teachers Association and a professor in the teacher education department at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.
“Young kids are the ideal students [for inquiry-based learning]. … They are constantly asking, ‘Why?’” Royce said. “If they’re asking questions and they’re thinking about new ideas, they’re also learning about reading and math and the connection to their local environment.”
At the Da Vinci Science Center, even kindergarteners engage in applied learning. After studying pollinators, Central’s kindergartners visit the garden on the terrace at the Da Vinci Science Center, where they see local bees and butterflies in their natural environment.
Back in a classroom at the museum, kindergartners cluster around miniature tables. On top are bee bots—giant yellow and black plastic, programmable devices.
By deliberately pressing the buttons atop the bots, the students control when and where they move. They’ve programmed the bots to head, some more directly than others, toward faux paper flowers scattered on the tabletops. Once the bots reach their destination, students pretend that the bots are pollinating the flowers.
“We do things differently than most schools, ensuring students are able to not only recall information but instead gain a deep understanding about connecting classroom learning to real-world experiences and making sense of the world around them,” Bodnar said.
Bucking a trend of minimal science instruction in elementary schools
Because science lessons are integrated into most of what Central students learn, it’s hard to say exactly how many minutes per week they’re spending on the subject. But it’s likely that they spend far more time on science-related topics and posing related inquiries than their same-age peers elsewhere.
In recent years, elementary schools have spent significantly more time on instruction in English and math—the subjects tested annually on states’ standardized exams—than on science. In one national survey, K-3 teachers reported spending a daily average of 89 minutes on ELA, 57 minutes on math, and 18 minutes on science.
In a 2019 national survey, 4th grade teachers gave widely diverging responses when asked about how frequently their students participated in inquiry-based activities during science class. Overall, they indicated that inquiry-based science learning is not a routine occurrence, and less so for students who score below the 25th percentile.
Efforts to boost reading and math scores may drive uneven instructional time, but some experts say that deprioritizing science can be counterproductive.
“Studies have demonstrated that having a broader wealth of general background knowledge is linked to better reading-comprehension abilities. It’s easier for a reader to understand a book or an article if they already have some grounding in what it’s about,” Royce said. “Allowing students to explore, engage, and investigate is going to give them a lot of prior experiences that they can connect to reading.”
Why an integrated, inquiry-based model works for all students
Tying science lessons to real-world exhibits and resources at the Da Vinci Science Center is likely to make the subject more accessible, and interesting, to all students—especially those who may struggle with traditional classroom learning.
“The students are more excited. They’re more connected. They’re not just sitting in a class listening to the teacher talk,” said Allyssa Haag, a 4th grade teacher at Central.
Before, students who struggled with reading would inevitably find science class more difficult, too, Haag said. That’s not necessarily true anymore.
“There’s a lot more discussion that happens, and a lot more of the students sharing rather than being afraid of just being right or wrong and being made fun of for it,” Haag said. “And that allows them to be more connected to the learning.”
It may be too early to look at test scores as a benchmark of whether the school’s redesign is working. But Bodnar says she’s seeing positive changes. “There’s just a higher level of academics happening here in the school. Students are writing at a higher level. They’re able to articulate science concepts. … We have all of these really cool things happening that didn’t happen before.”
Students also seem more eager to be at school. Bodnar noted that daily average attendance is at 90.2%, slightly higher than last year. Notably, the school’s chronic absence rate has dropped to 34.5%, down from 48% last year.
The link between early, real-world exposure to STEM and interest in related careers
The partnership aims to expose students to hands-on science activities and related careers available in their region that they could eventually pursue.
One of the center’s permanent exhibits features an 8-foot-tall robotic dinosaur designed by local industrial automation company Bosch Rexroth. There’s also an enormous Mack LR Electric—the first fully electric garbage truck produced by Mack Trucks, with an assembly plant 10 miles from Allentown. Visitors can take a “career personality” quiz at a kiosk in the museum, and then learn about related STEM professions, from geologist to nature illustrator. The quiz, the job descriptions, as well as all the museum exhibits, are in English and Spanish.
Research shows that students who get early and frequent exposure to real-world STEM concepts and activities are more likely to pursue STEM-related higher education and professions. Limited exposure may have the opposite effect. In a 2023 study of 2,000-plus Gen Z youth ages 12 to 26, only 29% pointed to a STEM role as their first-choice career, despite 75% of the respondents expressing interest in STEM occupations. Fewer than half of the survey respondents reported ever engaging in hands-on STEM learning activities.
From this perspective, students at Central already have an advantage. There’s 4th grader Jace, plotting his future as a marine biologist. For other students, signs that they’re thinking about their futures may be more subtle, but Bodnar finds them equally exciting.
“One of my favorite moments this year came at Halloween. We had kids come to school as astronauts. We’d never had kids dress up as anything science-based before,” she said. “But at Da Vinci, they see it everywhere. So just having that exposure, I definitely think that that is helping them understand all the different options that they have.”
