PROVIDENCE — While state officials wring their hands in despair over the new state science scores, three local elementary schools, Vartan Gregorian, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., have far surpassed their urban peers.

In Providence, only 9 percent of fourth-graders scored high enough to be deemed proficient in science. But at Gregorian, 41 percent scored proficient; at Kennedy, 29 percent did and at King, 26 percent reached proficiency.

Compare those figures to the statewide scores, where only 13 percent of urban elementary school students scored proficient. Gregorian’s scores are the same as fourth-graders in suburban ring districts such as Cranston, East Providence and Johnston.

At Kennedy, a Smith Hill school where 75 percent of the students live at or near the poverty line, Principal Gina Picard says that teamwork is the key to the fourth-graders’ success. Last year, Kennedy’s three fourth-grade teachers decided to each teach the subject they knew best.

Karen Rasnick teaches science; Linda Colapietro teaches writing and Kendra Haggerty instructs students in math. They all teach reading because that skill is the foundation upon which other subjects are based.

In most local elementary schools, students in grades three and above receive two 45-minute periods of science a week. At Kennedy, fourth-graders receive a minimum of three hours of science a week because the teachers have chosen to specialize in a particular subject, which allows for greater flexibility in schedules.

According to Picard, the benefits of this approach are threefold. Teachers feel more confident, students receive concentrated instruction in science from teachers who are knowledgeable about the subject and students have more time on task.

“We’ve been so focused on math and literacy,” Picard said. “There are only so many hours in the day. What do you give up? Science and social studies. Instead of trying to focus on seven content areas, we’re asking our fourth-grade teachers to focus on their strengths.”

In Rasnick’s science class, the fourth-graders are having a ball discussing the characteristics of various fruit. The noise level is high, but so is the enthusiasm as students work in teams to figure out the properties of a lemon or an overripe plum.

Rasnick is a true believer when it comes to the “middle-school approach” to team-teaching.

“Teaching one subject allows me to be an expert,” she said. “The children are getting more content because I’m more excited about what I’m teaching. And, at the end of the day, I’m not as tired because I’m not constantly shifting from one subject to another.”

What began as an experiment two years ago has since borne fruit, and next year, this strategy will be expanded to include fifth-grade teachers.

“This is a great model,” Rasnick said. “Our kids are being prepared for middle school.”

(In middle school, students move from one subject to another).

But there are other, more subtle reasons for Kennedy’s success. In a district marked by constant staff turnover, the teaching staff here has been stable; Rasnick, for instance, has been at the school for 20 years. The school has also made a point of reaching out to parents in ways both large and small.

“Parents don’t have to do bake sales or join the PTO,” Picard said. “It can be as simple as making sure their children get their homework done on time. We also expect a lot of our kids. We don’t ever try to limit their learning.”

On the city’s East Side, Gregorian has been successful by partnering with Brown University. Using grants from the National Science Foundation, Brown graduate students work with students in grades three through six every week, planning activities with classroom teachers over summer vacation.

“The grad students and teachers immerse themselves in the standards,” said Colin Grimsey, Gregorian’s new principal. “Our kids take field trips to the physics lab at Brown. They are constantly asking questions, constantly using the scientific method to explore scientific topics.

“Teachers at the school have always felt that science was a priority,” Grimsey said. “We’ve never put it on the back burner. When we teach writing, we talk about science.”

One of the reasons the state as a whole did poorly on the science assessment was that there is no statewide — or district-wide — science curriculum, Providence school officials have said.

“It has to come from the top,” Picard said. “We have grade-level expectations but that’s not a curriculum. A curriculum is very specific. It sets out goals, assessments and student outcomes.”

The other hindrance in Providence is that science isn’t offered in kindergarten through second grade and yet children are tested in fourth grade.

“We live in a technological age,” Picard said. “If you want children to be proficient in grade four, you’ve got to get it to them before grade three.”

Providence is moving to address some of those deficiencies. The district has hired consultants from the Dana Center at the University of Texas to help the school system craft a science curriculum, which is supposed to be finished by June. And Supt. Tom Brady has begun to beef up science training, something that has been done on a piecemeal basis until now.

The district is also hoping to bring consistency to the science offerings at the high school level. Currently, each high school has its own sequence of science courses, and that lack of uniformity undermines efforts to make science more rigorous, school officials say.

lborg@projo.com