“I used to think you had to cover every concept in the textbook,” says Bramlett, a science teacher at Tuscaloosa Magnet Middle School in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Her students would dutifully regurgitate the information on tests.

Laboratories, when she could afford them, were low-tech affairs. She taught mitosis by giving her students pipe cleaners to model chromosomes in a dividing cell. Often she just did what she calls “pencil and paper” labs, in which students plodded through problems in a workbook. “For the students it was boring. Science wasn’t one of their favorite subjects,” Bramlett says.

“It really wasn’t fun for me either,” she adds.

 Then Bramlett got some training. She enrolled in the Alabama Math, Science, and Technology Initiative, an extensive, state-run teacher training program for science and math teachers aimed at boosting student performance. Bramlett took advantage of every aspect of the program: She completed a two-week workshop two summers in a row, connected with a science-teaching mentor, and began borrowing modern laboratory equipment and teaching her students how to use it. Her teaching—and her students’ learning—turned around.

Today only about one-third of eighth graders in the United States show proficiency in math and science. Several standard-setting groups have taken action to boost U.S. performance in science and math. Last summer the National Research Council outlined new science teaching standards that lean heavily on inquiry-based learning. The College Board has overhauled the Advanced Placement Biology curriculum to emphasize scientific inquiry and reduce the emphasis on rote memorization. And 45 states have adopted the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, a state-led initiative that raises the bar for K–12 mathematics education. These efforts are built on an education research base that says students understand science better by doing it and they learn math best by applying it to real-world problems.

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