Part two of the science crisis conversation picks up where last week left off. Alyse makes the case that NCLB and ESSA weren't malicious, they were underfunded, and that gap between policy intent and policy follow-through set the stage for everything that came after. Then the tech surge arrived and compounded the problem. TIMSS data shows the same pattern across four different subject and grade combinations: the more in-school computer use goes up, the more scores go down, and that trend predates the pandemic. This episode connects both threads back to one root cause and sets up the rest of the season.

Resources & Links Mentioned

• Abundance — Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson (affiliate link)
• Jackson, C.K., Wigger, C., & Xiong, H. (2018/2021). "Do School Spending Cuts Matter? Evidence from the Great Recession." NBER Working Paper No. 24203; published version in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 13(2), 304–335. https://www.nber.org/papers/w24203 
• National Endowment for the Arts — "Educating Ourselves about Childhood Arts Experiences—and Why They Matter" (2025), based on Snapshots of Arts Education in Childhood and Adolescence: Access and Outcomes. https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2025/educating-ourselves-about-childhood-arts-experiences-and-why-they-matter 
• Broh, B. A. (2002). "Linking Extracurricular Programming to Academic Achievement: Who Benefits and Why?" Sociology of Education, 75(1), 69–95. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3090254
  Special note about this study & my comments: research is mixed and depends on activity type, with sports participation showing the most consistent positive relationship to achievement in nationally representative data. 
• Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong — Emily Hanford, APM Reports. https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ 
• TIMSS 2019 data — daily computer users scored 41 points lower in math and 51 points lower in science than infrequent users. https://timss2019.org/international-database/ 
• The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids' Learning - And How to Help Them Thrive Again — Jared Cooney Horvath (2025), LME Global. (affiliate link)

About Alyse

Alyse is a veteran high school science teacher in Pennsylvania, curriculum writer, and former cancer researcher. She's the founder of Keystone Science, which provides NGSS-aligned, inquiry-based science resources for secondary science teachers. Alyse strongly believes every student deserves a real science education, regardless of background, language, or ability, not a watered-down version of one.

In addition to her teaching load, she currently serves on the PA Science Leadership Collaborative, a state-level committee that provides insights into the implementation of the PA STEELS standards. Comments and analysis in this podcast are her own and do not reflect the position or views of the PA Department of Education.

Outside the classroom, she's outside: hiking, kayaking, running, creek walking, bee & birdwatching in her backyard, or elbow-deep in the garden. She's a self-certified tree hugger who has never met a tree she didn't want to save. Most days, though, she's the full-time chauffeur to two very busy kids.

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The science crisis isn't a pandemic story. It's a pedagogy story, and it started decades before 2020. This episode lays out the data on where student science performance and interest actually stand, then traces the root cause back further than most people look: the shift from teaching students to think like scientists to teaching them to perform on a test. Alyse argues that No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act gradually changed what we ask of students, and that the flood of benchmark data schools now generate has left teachers with less time to act on it than ever. Part 2 continues the argument next week.

Resources & Links Mentioned

• NAEP 2024 (Nation's Report Card), released September 2025
• Jon Miller. Michigan State University. "Scientific Literacy: How Do Americans Stack Up?." ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070218134322.htm (accessed August 22, 2026).
• No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law 2002
• Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), signed December 2015, replacing NCLB
• Ross Wiener, "I Thought 'No Child Left Behind' Would Fix Public Schools. I Was Wrong." New York Times, June 22, 2026
• Populace (nonpartisan research organization) — K-12 priorities ranking study
• Center on Education Policy, District Survey, February 2007 — instructional time changes pre- and post-NCLB
• U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-09-286, February 2009 — arts education and instructional time
• Michigan Education Association — recess time decline since 2001
• Gibbs, C. R. (2014). A Matter of Time? Impact of Statewide Full-day Kindergarten Expansions on Later Academic Skills and Maternal Employment. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.
• Gibbs, C.R., Wikle, J., Wilson, R. (in press). A Matter of Time? Measuring Effects of Public Schooling Expansions on Families. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
• ESSA early learning provisions — Preschool Development Grants and pre-K school readiness documentation requirements

Related Reading

• NAEP Long-Term Trend Assessment Results: Reading and Mathematics (2025 Preliminary Results).
• No Child Left Behind Act (2002). Full Text.
• Every Student Succeeds Act (2015). Full Text.

About Alyse

Alyse is a veteran high school science teacher in Pennsylvania, curriculum writer, and former cancer researcher. She's the founder of Keystone Science, which provides NGSS-aligned, inquiry-based science resources for secondary science teachers. Alyse strongly believes every student deserves a real science education, regardless of background, language, or ability, not a watered-down version of one.

In addition to her teaching load, she currently serves on the PA Science Leadership Collaborative, a state-level committee that provides insights into the implementation of the PA STEELS standards. Comments and analysis in this podcast are her own and do not reflect the position or views of the PA Department of Education.

Outside the classroom, she's outside: hiking, kayaking, running, creek walking, bee & birdwatching in her backyard, or elbow-deep in the garden. She's a self-certified tree hugger who has never met a tree she didn't want to save. Most days, though, she's the full-time chauffeur to two very busy kids.

🌐 Keystone Science Website
🛒 TPT store
📧 Sign Up for the Keystone Science Email List

You don't need to blow up your curriculum to teach differently. You need to change one thing: the order.

In this episode, Alyse walks through why the classic teach-then-lab sequence kills student curiosity, and what happens when you flip it. Using a real classroom example — a very sick newborn, a room full of student-doctors, and a catalase lab most biology teachers already run — she shows exactly how to turn a lab you already have into the thing that drives a whole unit (and your student's curiosity).

You'll walk away with four criteria for picking a phenomenon that actually works, a simple way to capture the questions your students generate on their own, and a lightweight seven-phase planning template you can start this week, not next semester.

Same labs. Same content. Different order. That's it.

Resources & Links Mentioned

• Free 7-phase phenomenon-based unit planning template
• The Wonder of Science by Paul Anderson of Bozeman Science fame
• The Inquiry Cycle Poster from The Wonder of Science
• List of Phenomena by Standard from The Wonder of Science
• Anchoring Phenomena 101: How to Make Any Biology Unit Student-Centered and NGSS-Aligned (blog post)

Related Reading

• 7 Practical Strategies for Using Driving Question Boards in Secondary Science (blog post)
• Asking Questions and Defining Problems: A Complete Guide to NGSS Science and Engineering Practice #1 (blog post)

About Alyse

Alyse is a veteran high school science teacher in Pennsylvania, curriculum writer, and former cancer researcher. She's the founder of Keystone Science, which provides NGSS-aligned, inquiry-based science resources for secondary science teachers. Alyse strongly believes every student deserves a real science education, regardless of background, language, or ability, not a watered-down version of one.

In addition to her teaching load, she currently serves on the PA Science Leadership Collaborative, a state-level committee that provides insights into the implementation of the PA STEELS standards. Comments and analysis in this podcast are her own and do not reflect the position or views of the PA Department of Education.

Outside the classroom, she's outside: hiking, kayaking, running, creek walking, bee & birdwatching in her backyard, or elbow-deep in the garden. She's a self-certified tree hugger who has never met a tree she didn't want to save. Most days, though, she's the full-time chauffeur to two very busy kids.

🌐 Keystone Science Website
🛒 TPT store
📧 Sign Up for the Keystone Science Email List

Episode Summary

Less than a third of eighth graders in this country scored proficient on the most recent National Science Assessment. Interest in science dropped ten points in just five years. In this first episode of The Lab Bench, Alyse shares her origin story: the classroom she started in back in 2011, the years she spent writing cancer treatment guidelines alongside physicians who lived and breathed scientific thinking, and the classroom she came back to in 2020 that she barely recognized - and not just because of the pandemic. This isn't just a biography. It's the lens for everything else this season covers: scripted curricula, one-to-one devices, grade inflation, and a system that has quietly decided real science is too hard for most students. Alyse makes the case that it isn't. Every student can think like a scientist, if we let them.

Resources & Research Mentioned

• National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2024 data, released September 2025
• Fordham Institute: “Equitable” Grading Through the Eyes of Teachers
• Grade Inflation a Systemic Problem in US High Schools, ACT Report Shows
• Former student sues school, saying he graduated with a 3.4 GPA but couldn’t read
  • Court Case
• CT teen says Hartford denied her an education. Teachers say she’s not alone
  • Court Case
• High school diploma cost Edmonds student future access, family says
• New South Carolina law bans grade floors to boost transparency in student performance
• University of North Dakota: Should teachers be allowed to give zeroes to students?

Follow The Lab Bench wherever you listen so you don't miss Episode 2, dropping August 17.

About Alyse

Alyse is a veteran high school science teacher in Pennsylvania, curriculum writer, and former cancer researcher. She's the founder of Keystone Science, which provides NGSS-aligned, inquiry-based science resources for secondary science teachers. Alyse strongly believes every student deserves a real science education, regardless of background, language, or ability, not a watered-down version of one.

In addition to her teaching load, she currently serves on the PA Science Leadership Collaborative, a state-level committee that provides insights into the implementation of the PA STEELS standards. Comments and analysis in this podcast are her own and do not reflect the position or views of the PA Department of Education.

Outside the classroom, she's outside: hiking, kayaking, running, creek walking, bee & birdwatching in her backyard, or elbow-deep in the garden. She's a self-certified tree hugger who has never met a tree she didn't want to save. Most days, though, she's the full-time chauffeur to two very busy kids.

🌐 Keystone Science Website
🛒 TPT store
📧 Sign Up for the Keystone Science Email List

Less than a third of eighth graders in the United States scored proficient on the most recent national science assessment. Interest in science dropped ten points in five years. Something is wrong, and it starts long before the pandemic.

I'm Alyse: high school science teacher, former cancer researcher, curriculum designer. After fifteen years in and out of the classroom, I'm done waiting for policy to catch up to what we already know works. This podcast is for science teachers who know something is broken and want to do something about it. Not eventually. Now.

No scripts. No edits. Just honest conversation about what we've lost in science education, what we can reclaim, and what it actually looks like to teach science the way it was meant to be taught, for every student in front of you.

Season 1 launches Monday, August 3rd, with new episodes dropping the first Monday of every month.

Find resources, blog posts, and more at keystonesciencepa.com.

About Alyse

Alyse is a veteran high school science teacher in Pennsylvania, curriculum writer, and former cancer researcher. She's the founder of Keystone Science, which provides NGSS-aligned, inquiry-based science resources for secondary science teachers. Alyse strongly believes every student deserves a real science education, regardless of background, language, or ability, not a watered-down version of one.

In addition to her teaching load, she currently serves on the PA Science Leadership Collaborative, a state-level committee that provides insights into the implementation of the PA STEELS standards. Comments and analysis in this podcast are her own and do not reflect the position or views of the PA Department of Education.

Outside the classroom, she's outside: hiking, kayaking, running, creek walking, bee & birdwatching in her backyard, or elbow-deep in the garden. She's a self-certified tree hugger who has never met a tree she didn't want to save. Most days, though, she's the full-time chauffeur to two very busy kids.

🌐 Keystone Science Website
🛒 TPT store
📧 Sign Up for the Keystone Science Email List