New York City fourth graders who receive a climate change curriculum with hydroponic gardening have higher science achievement scores

Abstract

We compared 2014–15 New York State Science Assessment scores of fourth grade students who received the New York Sun Works (NYSW) Program (n = 638) with two comparison groups: students who received NYSW the following year (n = 993) and students attending matched schools (n = 1490). We first applied a multi-level regression model to compare scores between NYSW recipients and the first comparison group, which revealed non-significant but higher scores among NYSW recipients. We then compared the achievement scores of the NYSW recipients to both comparison groups using Welsch two sample t-tests. On average, NYSW recipients scored significantly higher than both the comparison groups (p < 0.001). Results suggest that further testing should explore the impact of climate change education on science achievement.