Lights Off for Hands On Science
Nonprofit After-School Program Ending Its 27-Year Run

By Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 1, 2007

Hands On Science, a Silver Spring nonprofit that once served 40,000 children a year across the country with after-school lessons in soapmaking and the properties of prisms, is shutting its doors after 27 years.

Founder Phyllis Katz called it "recreational science." Over the course of an eight-week session, students might learn to upend a cup of water without spilling, to separate salt and pepper with electricity and to operate a turbine. Classes were led by parents and certified teachers, retirees and graduate students.

The program is a victim of societal change, officials said. They cited growing competition among after-school offerings, many of which, unlike Hands On Science, could justify themselves by showing student gains on standardized reading and math tests. And there is the increase in two-income families, who build their schedules around child care and have no use for enrichment lessons offered just once a week.

"You know, the country was a very different place 25 years ago," Katz said.

The program exits as Maryland and the rest of the nation prepare for mandatory testing in science, a requirement under the No Child Left Behind Act as of 2008. Many elementary schools offer half as much science instruction as they did before the law was enacted five years ago. Katz said she fears that Maryland, at least, might have lost "a whole generation" of future scientists.

Yesterday at Woodlin Elementary School, near the Hands On Science headquarters, students gathered rocks and buried tiny artifacts beneath layers of dirt and moss as they bid the program farewell.

"Does everyone have some dirt?" teacher Rich Swanson asked.

Students mixed the dirt with shells and pebbles, fashioning a colorful, if slightly grubby, take-home project, a model of what is known in archaeological circles as a "midden," or household dump.

Michael Lichtenstein, father of 6-year-old Woodlin kindergartner Stephanie, said he had enrolled her in several science sessions and had no idea that this would be the last.

"I think it satisfied her intellectual curiosity, her interest in science, beyond what she's getting in class," he said, as he waited for her to emerge from the one-hour lesson with her midden in tow. "I think she's very energized in it."

Katz said she started an after-school science class at a Montgomery County school in 1980 after returning from a sabbatical in Ontario, where her family had become "enchanted" with the touchy-feely interactivity of the Ontario Science Centre.

The program expanded across Montgomery County with help from the county PTA, which had its own nonprofit corporation devoted to the sort of fee-based enrichment classes that Katz was offering. At the start, fees were $15 or $20 for eight classes, Katz said, and are now in the $50 range.

"It really grew out of my enthusiasm for what's called informal science education," said Katz, who retired from the organization in 2005 but still lives in the county. "I was really keen to see kids have science as a choice, like music or dance or sports. It's really your way of finding out about the world you live in."

By the mid-1980s, Hands On Science was running in 66 Montgomery elementary schools.

A National Science Foundation grant made further expansion possible. At its peak in the early 1990s, the program reached about 40,000 children a year through about 4,000 eight-week sessions conducted in more than 40 states. In Montgomery, 7,000 children, from preschool through grade 6, were taking part.

Participation has eroded to about half that peak, with about 21,000 children nationwide this year, including 3,500 in Montgomery, said spokeswoman Beth Hess. Part of the problem, Hess and Katz said, was the lack of evidence that Hands On Science raised test scores. Hands On Science vied with programs that could help schools make progress in statewide reading and math tests required by No Child Left Behind.

Katz, who has a doctorate in science education, said she conducted research that demonstrated the effectiveness of Hands On Science. Children showed a broader view of science at the end of the program than at the beginning, she said, and they seemed to be assimilating the collaborative nature of the activities.

But because the lessons were informal, "we didn't test the children," Hess said. "So we couldn't tell you at the end of an eight-week session, 'The kids learned X amount.' "

Katz said some schools probably will continue to offer the after-school science lessons; each Hands On Science program is more or less self-sustaining.

"Everybody's made the point," she said. "We've had a 27-year run, and we've impacted hundreds of thousands of kids and tens of thousands of adults. We had an impact."