JOHNSTON — Governor Carcieri yesterday unveiled a $12.5-million program that will employ the state’s universities in a five-year campaign to steeply upgrade the math and science lessons taught in Rhode Island’s middle and high schools.

The program aims to equip secondary school teachers with tools and expertise to give highly interactive science and math lessons. The lessons would expose students to content from university research and also help them meet proficiency standards.

The National Science Foundation awarded the $12.5-million grant to the University of Rhode Island, Carcieri said at an event in the Johnston High School auditorium.

“This is a great, great amount,” Carcieri told program organizers as well as some Johnston students and some local officials. “A lot of money. It’s a huge vote of confidence in what we’re trying to build here in Rhode Island for science education for our young people.”

Earlier this week, Carcieri announced that only 24 percent of the state’s fourth-graders, eighth-graders and 11th-graders had demonstrated proficiency in Rhode Island’s first assessment in science.

The new program is seen as an unprecedented effort to strengthen high school and middle school science education with tools, guidance and knowledge from the corridors of higher education, including Rhode Island College and Brown University.

Carcieri and others say the program is essential for preparing and developing the type of work force that will be necessary to compete in the challenging new global economy.

Educators say the particular brand of collaboration that the project will strive for — teamwork between high school teachers and university researchers — is unique.

The state’s application was plucked from a pool of 181 proposals. Only 22 other proposals secured financing, Carcieri said.

The project will focus on putting secondary school students in a situation where they learn by pursuing their own inquiries, aided by technology and guided by teachers.

Over the five-year grant period, scientists, mathematicians and engineers will offer “content expertise” to local secondary teachers. Simultaneously, the universities’ education faculty will ensure curriculum consistency.

In the first year, pairs of middle schools and high schools will develop a uniform plan to address their students’ needs, according to Daniel P. Murray, a University of Rhode Island geosciences professor who is among the educators leading the program.

Next summer, teachers will join scientists from the universities in workshops and develop lesson plans for the 2009-2010 school year. The workshops will help them devise “virtual experiments” using computer software that allows students to affordably work with scientific issues as if they were in a laboratory.

Another partner in the program, the Concord Consortium — the Concord, Mass.-based nonprofit group — will outfit teachers with interactive materials to help them exploit the power information technology.

One example, a kind of computerized lab experiment, showed how the individual molecules of a substance would behave under varying temperature conditions.

Such lessons allow students to take ownership of the material, Murray said.

During the school year that starts next semester, teachers in the paired middle and high schools will begin teaching the new lessons, Murray said.

In the program’s second year, organizers envision another 10 to 15 districts beginning the same process. An even larger group is expected to launch in the third year.

Murray said he expects each of the districts to complete the job of devising strategies, preparing teachers and launching the improved lesson plan within a two-year period.

Johnston was the first school district identified for the project because the system was the first to commit an administrator — Assistant Supt. Kathryn Crowley — to all of the necessary preparatory work.

Officials did not identify any other school districts being considered for the first year of the project.

Johnston Supt. Margaret A. Iacovelli acknowledged that the scores at the town’s high school and middle school had not met the state’s standard for science. This is one of the reasons why the town is participating in the program, she said.

Crowley said the project provides a “marvelous opportunity for Johnston teachers to move to the forefront of Rhode Island’s educational community — a place they rightly belong.”

mreynold@projo.com