Museums, zoos, and gardens: how formal-informal partnerships can impact urban students' performance in science

Informal science education institutions (ISEIs) are critical partners in public science education, as they support the science efforts of school systems by providing authentic opportunities for scientific inquiry. This study reports findings from an evaluation of urban advantage (UA), a collaboration between the New York City Department of Education and eight ISEIs designed to improve science education in New York City (NYC) middle schools. Now in its 10th year, the program harnesses the resources and expertise of NYC's ISEIs to (a) enhance the science content knowledge of middle school science teachers, (b) develop teachers' skills at using inquiry-based approaches in their classrooms, and (c) improve the science achievement of middle school students.

We examine whether the UA program has led to increased student achievement on the eighth-grade New York State standardized science exam for students in participating schools; in supplemental analyses, we examine the effects on longer term (ninth-grade) outcomes.

We use a difference-in-differences framework with school fixed effects to estimate the impact of attending a UA school in eighth grade on science achievement.

Our key outcome is performance on New York State's eighth-grade intermediate-level science assessment; longer term outcomes include enrollment at specialized science, technology, engineering, and math high schools as well as taking and passing the high school (Regents) science exams.

We find that attending a UA school increases student performance on the eighth-grade science exam by approximately 0.05 SD, and there is some evidence of small effects on Regents taking and passing rates.