Despite a decade-long movement to make science the “fourth R” in education nationwide, a recently released survey by the Bayer Corporation found science still remains “a second-tier subject,” according to a release.

The Bayer Corporation seeks to promote science education through a program called “Making Science Make Sense.” One product of this effort is “Bayer Facts of Science Education X,” a poll of the country’s newest elementary-school teachers and college deans.

The poll’s major focus is the responsibility of schoolteachers and deans to make science education more prevalent in elementary and higher education.

“At a time when the U.S. is failing to produce the number of science and engineering graduates … we still haven’t made the full commitment to make science education a national priority,” John Payne, chairman of Bayer’s MSMS program, said.

Bayer’s survey found troubling information reflecting the state of science education in the country.

According to a release, “America’s new teachers say science received less emphasis than English and math in their general teaching methods and courses” and “one in three new teachers (35 percent) say they rely more on what they learned in high school than college to teach science today.”

Andrew Porter, a former UW professor of educational psychology, said schools devote more time to English and language than to science, which is a mere “distant third.”

Porter is the co-director of System-Wide Change for All Learners and Educators and former director of Wisconsin’s Center for Education Research.

Bayer’s findings echo this thought, showing only 14 percent of school teachers rated their school’s science education with an A, while 30 percent gave it a C or D.

“[Science education] is sporadic, not programmatic, and there doesn’t seem to be a continuum across the grades,” Porter said, who is the co-director of System-Wide Change for All Learners and Educators and former director of Wisconsin’s Center for Education Research.

Experts have found the reason for these results variable.

“We don’t hold schools accountable [for science] in the ways we do for reading or math, because we don’t test in science the same way we test in reading or math,” Porter said.

Other experts, like Susan Miller, a senior scientist for WCER, target the way in which science is taught.

“Science is taught as a very dead subject. When you’re in English class you experience literature, you partake in it,” Miller said. “In science you read about discoveries, you’re more of an observer.”

Other recent findings, however, suggest science education is changing.

“There is a lot of change in the air,” Miller said. “Faculty are starting to pay attention to things, there’s some movement and questions are being raised.”

Porter agreed, noting the WCER is the largest research and development center on campus and is dedicated to educational research. The WCER houses the SCALE project as well as $30 million in other educational research annually.

For some UW students, a good science education early on inspired them to further pursue the field at a higher level.

UW sophomore Rachel Rendall said she aspires to be a science teacher because her own high school chemistry teacher “just put so much effort into working with his students. Students came first for him.”