CREP Recognized by Smithsonian for K-5 Science Curriculum Project

January 16, 2025 - The College of Education’s Center for Research in Educational Policy (CREP) was recently recognized for their work with the Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) that resulted in improved test scores within elementary school classrooms in North and South Carolina. For the last five years, CREP worked as the evaluator of the Smithsonian Science for the Classroom™ program.

 “It’s rewarding to see the hard work of SSEC, Carolina Biological and the participating schools result in improved student outcomes, especially in light of the obstacles they encountered implementing this program during and after the COVID pandemic.” CREP Research Director Dr. Todd Zoblotsky said.

The SSEC’s recently published executive summary shows that CREP followed more than 1,600 students from third to fifth grade across 37 school districts in predominantly rural North and South Carolina. Overall, students who received the SSEC curriculum performed seven percentile points higher (57) on science assessments than those who didn’t (50).

The SSEC summary also noted that, “students performed better in reading and math on their state assessments than their peers who received business-as-usual science instruction. By standardizing the outcomes across state assessments, CREP combined and analyzed students’ reading scores to find an advantage of four percentile points among Smithsonian students compared to those students who did not receive high-quality science instructional materials…In math, student gains were even more promising, with a six percentile point advantage over the comparison group in both states.”

Zoblotsky said, “The fact that SSEC was able to not only impact student achievement in science, but also in reading and math shows how valuable and powerful their work is for helping teachers and students succeed.”

The curriculum was designed in response to both states showing K-5 students spending less than half the time studying science than they did in other subjects like math. It was SSEC’s intent to put together a curriculum that aligned with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and help lay the foundation for these young students to potentially pursue a career in the STEM field. The curriculum also provided high-quality professional learning (HQPL) to teachers to ensure they were well-equipped to implement the curriculum.

SSEC writes that future research will focus on the effects of turnover rates, as 70% of the schools in the study saw a change in leadership “once or more during the project’s lifetime.” They theorize that better retention of teachers/leaders, combined with HQPL, might further increase benefits.

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