DeKalb: County can’t lose its science jewel

By Mel Konner

I was saddened to learn that DeKalb County is thinking of eliminating one of its most exciting and effective educational efforts, the STT Program — short for Scientific Tools and Techniques — of the Fernbank Science Center. It’s a supplemental program for DeKalb schools, and it gives hundreds of students a year the opportunity to learn things about science they simply don’t learn in school, with the emphasis on hands-on experience.

We all understand that times are hard. But this particular program is a jewel of our educational enterprise, and we would be foolish to pluck it out of the crown. For 30 years it has given ninth- and 10th-graders valuable opportunities for laboratory research, field trips and individual instruction — in physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology, astronomy, aerospace, ecology, ornithology, microbiology and physiology.

A study done some years ago by the Science Center in collaboration with DeKalb County Schools and Georgia State University showed that the program has an impact.

Comparing students who had gone through the program with otherwise matched students who had not, the STT students were found on follow-up to be twice as likely to major in science in college, three times as likely to be involved in a career in science and four times as likely to have won an award for science in college.

The impact was already evident by the end of high school, but the difference was much greater for African-American males. Average STT students had a science grade point average 7 percent higher than non-STT youngsters, but for African-American males the difference was 19 percent. The number of science courses taken in high school was almost 4 percent higher for typical STT students than those who did not go through the program, but for African-American males this difference was over 20 percent.

Thus one of the most at-risk groups in our student population seems to benefit most from this program, which some people mistakenly think of as a luxury directed at an elite group. Something that works for such vulnerable kids should be held onto and expanded, not cut.

Full disclosure: My daughter Sarah went through the program. I remember vividly the light in her eyes on the days when an STT teacher took her on a field trip in Fernbank Forest, spotting birds, naming trees and turning over rocks to find a surprisingly active living world. Her high school science teachers were dedicated, but they simply could not have provided such enriching experiences in a school day.

The result many years later is that Sarah is about to graduate from the University of Michigan with a B.S. in their program in the environment (in addition to a degree in dance). At college, she has been bragging about her STT experiences for four years. How do we measure the impact of that sort of good will on the prestige of DeKalb County, Atlanta and Georgia?

As she wrote recently in a letter to the DeKalb County Board of Education, “We got to spend time learning outside in fresh air, through touching the earth, which created a connection to the material that cannot be replicated in a classroom.”

Georgia and our country at large need young people who have been motivated to study science. Let’s not cut a program that for 30 years has been so successful at doing just that.

Dr. Mel Konner teaches at Emory.