The 2022 study focused on school 8th grade passing rates on the Oregon Statewide Assessment System (OSAS) science test. For this study we matched 68 schools that purchased and used STEMscopes Science 8th grade with schools that did not use STEMscopes. Schools that purchased and used STEMscopes for 8th grade had a 3.98 percentage point increase in the percent of students passing (non-STEMscopes M = 26.95, STEMscopes M = 30.93, b = 3.98 p < 0.05, ES = 0.22). Sub-group analyses revealed that there was a significant increase in the school passing rate among Hispanic/Latinx students (non-STEMscopes M = 14.57, STEMscopes M = 17.81, b =3.24, p<.05, ES =0.28). Likewise, there was a significant increase in school passing rate among students receiving special education services (non-STEMscopes M = 8.09, STEMscopes M = 11.11, b = 3.02, p<.05, ES = 0.24). We estimate ~409 more 8th graders passed in these STEMscopes schools relative to matched control schools.
Districts that purchased and used STEMscopes for 5th grade had a 4 percentage point increase in the percent of students passing (non-STEMscopes: 63%, STEMscopes: 67%; B = 4.0, p < 0.05) relative to districts that did not use STEMscopes in 5th grade. This means ~ 371 more 5th graders passed in these STEMscopes districts relative to control districts. See full report for details. Please note this report uses a different science assessment than the 2022 results.
Is a rural district that serves 2,300 students living in Aumsville, Turner, and Marion, Oregon. Back in 2017-2018, district leaders recognized a need for a well-rounded science curriculum “that would be aligned to the standards and prepare students for our state assessment. We wanted to give teachers the curriculum materials they needed, so they wouldn’t have to research and come up with their own materials, investigations, and experiments.” STEMscopes Science fits this bill. “When a new curriculum gets adopted, teachers worry that they’ll need a lot of professional development and that they’ll have to spend hours planning to implement it. They didn’t do that with STEMscopes. They jumped in really quickly,” said Cyndi Ganfield, principal of Aumsville Elementary. “STEMscopes is very intuitive and simple to use. I have many brand-new teachers in my building, and it made it easy for teachers to work together and plan lessons as a team.” Not only that, STEMscopes helped raise Cascade district 5th grade test scores such that 6.2% more students passed their state assessments.
“Our scores went up from 2016-17 to 2017-18, and I have to believe that part of it is the science curriculum we’re using and how we’re instructing our students with STEMscopes,” said Dawn Moorefield, assistant superintendent of Cascade School District. In 2019, Oregon completed its transition to the NGSS and launched a new statewide NGSS assessment and then in 2020 the global Covid-19 pandemic hit. Throughout this time, Cascade ISD continued to use STEMscopes Science. Although scores were somewhat lower than their pre-pandemic counterparts (28.2% passed in 2019 compared to 27.1 in 2022 or –1.1 percentage points), the state of Oregon saw 4Xs more learning loss than Cascade SD with an average loss of 4.4 points in 5th grade (and 10 points in 8th). Although comparison across cohorts of students (5th graders in 2018-2019 versus fifth graders in 2021-2022), this suggests that STEMscopes may have helped insulate Cascade SD from greater learning loss.
“Our scores went up from 2016-17 to 2017-18, and I have to believe that part of it is the science curriculum we’re using and how we’re instructing our students with STEMscopes.”
- Dawn Moorefield, Assistant Superintendent of Cascade School District
