March 2009 Archives

Earth Day, an occasion promoted by environmental organizations and advocates to raise awareness of conservation issues, is April 22. It's an event that dates back to 1970. Teachers sometimes organize lessons and activities in the weeks leading up to that day on environmental themes. That doesn't mean they have to create lessons from any particular political or ideological perspective; a good science lesson can account for the environmental and economic complexities of issues such as climate change, for instance, renewable energy, and land conservation.

Teachers looking for ideas for lessons have plenty of resources. Here are a few on the Web I've come across:

The Globe Project offers reading materials, lessons, and activities, on the carbon cycle, weather, watersheds, and other topics, with downloadable files. The National Environmental Education Foundation offers a "curricula library" for teachers, sorted by grade level. The Environmental Protection Agency's site has several activities and resources for kids and teachers. (Earlier this year, the EPA launched a blog for students.) In addition, here's a Web site that offers a compendium of Earth Day resources.

For teachers who've created lessons around Earth Day, what resources have been of most use to you?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

It's rare to hear of a state that is decreasing its standardized testing in a particular subject. But that's exactly what Michigan is doing, according to an Associated Press article published today. Starting in the fall of 2010, instead of giving a short writing test to all students in grades 3 to 8, the state will give a longer and more comprehensive writing test only to students in grades 4 and 7.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 2:44 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Teachers of science, like teachers of other subjects, often wonder how much structure and guidance they need to provide students. A pair of researchers wondered the same thing.

Robert Tai and Philip Sadler, in a new study, find that students with relatively weak mathematics skills who were given self-led, less-structured science instruction in high school were at a disadvantage in college biology and chemistry classes, compared with similarly skilled peers who had come from more-structured classes. They found that students from the more free-form high school classes received lower grades in their college courses than students who had been given more direct guidance in their high school courses.

Yet among students with stronger math skills, there was hardly any difference in college performance between those who had been taught in structured environments and those who had been in unstructured ones.

Tai is an associate professor of science education at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville. He produced the study with Sadler, the director of the science education department at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in Cambridge, Mass. It was published in the March issue of the International Journal of Science Education. A link to the abstract can be found here.

For their study, the authors used about 8,000 responses from a survey, known as Factors Influencing College Science Success, of undergraduate students.

One question I'm sure a lot of science educators will ask: How did the researchers define the level of lesson structure? The study says students were asked about their high school experiences with "inquiry-type learning activities," specifically, the number of student-designed projects they took part in and the degree of freedom they were given in designing and conducting labs. Tai and Sadler used the same data set for an earlier study on the benefits of "depth vs. breath" in high school science study, which I wrote about recently. Tai told me in an e-mail that the researchers have used the data set for articles published in about 20 peer-reviewed research journals.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 1:56 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

I've received more detail on the precise wording of changes made to the Texas science standards, which were approved by the state board of education yesterday. Since quite a few Ed Week readers are likely to have followed this debate closely, I'm providing an update on where things stand.

The board approved new science standards yesterday by a 13-2 vote. As previously reported, its members voted to strip out language saying that students should be taught the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution. That wording was opposed by many scientists, who said it denigrated evolutionary theory. There's little doubt scientists are happy to see it go.

Board members instead approved language that places an emphasis on "scientific" examinations of evolution. During their discussion, some members of the panel said they saw the wording as a compromise. The standards now say that students should:

"In all fields of science analyze, evaluate, and critique scientific explanations by using empirical evidence, logical reasoning and experimental and observational testing, including examining all sides of the scientific evidence of those scientific explanations so as to encourage critical thinking by the student."

I'd note that the language bears some similarity to the wording approved in Florida's state standards last year, after a heavily publicized debate. Florida officials inserted wording describing the "scientific theory of" evolution in the document. That decision, though it disappointed some observers, was also regarded as a compromise between the various factions.

The board also defeated two controversial amendments, supported by board chairman Don McLeroy, which would have called for students to critically analyze two key pieces of evolutionary theory: common ancestry and natural selection. Scientific organizations said those two proposals singled out common ancestry and natural selection for special criticism, or suggested they are somehow in doubt, when in fact they're broadly supported by years of scientific research. The two amendments were defeated by 8-7 votes.

Even so, other wording approved by the board is likely to receive extensive scrutiny from scientists. One amendment, which was accepted by a 9-6 vote, says students should "analyze and evaluate a variety of fossil types, such as transitional fossils, proposed transitional fossils, fossil lineages, and significant fossil deposits with regard to their appearance, completeness and alignment with scientific explanations in light of this fossil data."

Another amendment was substituted for the earlier language calling for students to weigh the "sufficiency or insufficiency of natural selection to explain the complexity of the cell." The replacement language says that Texas students should "analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning the complexity of the cell."

For those who have been following the discussions in Texas, how satisfied are you with the language approved by the Texas board?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:51 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

Perhaps an unnecessarily provocative title, I know. But you can bet this ongoing discussion about how to revise the British national primary school curriculum is going to be raising hackles among people from lots of subject-matter groups.

I've linked to my colleague Kathleen Manzo's item, on her Digital Education blog, about that discussion, as reported in The Guardian, a British newspaper. It appears that the crux of the matter is that British schools would be given more flexibility over which historical periods to cover. The idea is to emphasize a chronological approach to history, and avoid duplication with the secondary curriculum, the story says. The newspaper calls it the "biggest change to public school in a decade." We'll see where this goes.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 5:32 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

The Texas board of education approved final science standards this afternoon, which say that students will no longer have to be exposed to the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution.

The decision to remove that language was strongly supported by scientists, who said it undermined the teaching of the core biologic theory. The board approved the overall document by a 13-2 vote.

Yet the 15-member board of education also approved a host of amendments that seem likely to draw objections from scientists, based on the audio discussion of the meeting that I heard. I listened to the meeting over the Internet, so I don't have the wording of them. Here's a link to the original document being discussed, and a Twitter record set up on the Texas Education Agency's site, so you can try to do your own comparison. I will try to update later.

Immediately afterward, the Texas Freedom Network, a group that has fought efforts to weaken the status of evolution in the standards, released a statement crediting the board for removing the strengths-and-weaknesses wording. But it also said the new document "still has plenty of potential footholds for creationist attacks on evolution to make their way into Texas classrooms.

"Through a series of contradictory and convoluted amendments," the organization added, "the board crafted a road map that creationists will use to pressure publishers into putting phony arguments attacking established science into textbooks."

The TFN also predicted that the evolution issue would rise again in 2011, when the board considers textbooks, which are based on the state's standards.

On several occasions throughout the discussion, board members sounded as if they had grown weary of the acrimony surrounding the discussion and that they were searching for compromise language on how to treat evolution on several points.

"We appreciate that the politicians on the board seek compromise, but don’t agree that compromises can be made on established mainstream science or on honest education policy," the TFN said. The TFN live-blogged the meeting, and sought to keep up on the exact wording of the amendments as they were discussed, and what came of them.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 4:38 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The theory of evolution's treatment in the Texas science standards is in a state of flux. The board of education took a preliminary vote yesterday. They're meeting again right now. You can listen to a live audio of their discussion on this site. Look under "Agency News," and "listen live." You can follow it on Twitter here.

Here's where things stand, as of this morning:

The Texas board of education has tentatively dropped language from the state science standards that says students should learn about the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, in a move that pleased scientists.

Yet the board, at its meeting on Thursday, was also considering amendments to the document that call into question core aspects of the theory, including the common ancestry of living things.

Curricular decisions in Texas, because of its share of the education market, hold significant sway over textbook publishers and curriculum developers across the country. At an earlier vote in January, the 15-member board narrowly decided to remove the strengths-and-weaknesses language. Last week, in another, preliminary vote, the board rejected an effort to reinsert that language, a move applauded by scientific experts.

At that same Thursday meeting, however, the board had approved an amendment calling for students to analyze the “sufficiency or insufficiency,” of evidence for common ancestry. The board also called for students to “analyze the sufficiency or insufficiency of natural selection to explain the complexity of the cell.”

Scientists consider such language misleading, since it implies that common ancestry, and natural selection are riddled with doubt, when it fact they are backed up by voluminous scientific evidence. Common ancestry is rejected by some critics, including those who believe that God created humans and all living things as described in the Bible. Scientists also objected to other amendments they say undermine the teaching of science generally, such as language calling for critical analysis of molecular biology and the Big Bang.

That language was all tentative, pending a final board vote on Friday. I was just forwarded a copy of the minutes from yesterday's meeting, and it's possible that several amendments could be reversed on final vote. Many of the votes were 7-7 or 6-8, and one of the board members was absent yesterday.

Many scientific organizations have argued for a comprehensive teaching of evolution. ““We urge you to vote for removing anti-science changes to the draft standards and protect the future of science education and technology-based industry in Texas,” the American Association for the Advancement of Science wrote in a March 23 letter to the board.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I'm reading the Common Core's take on a meeting earlier this week hosted by the National Education Association about the approach to learning promoted by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Our reporter who inquired about attending the meeting, Stephen Sawchuk, was told he wasn't invited.

Lynne Munson from Common Core reports that attendees represented education associations and the meeting had the agenda of "how quickly more students can get signed on" to using 21st century skills. She expresses her organization's concern that the teaching of skills may not be integrated with content knowledge. She says that none of the panelists mentioned science, geography, foreign languages, history, literature, art, or civics.

Flypaper echoes Munson's concern that the kind of 21st century skills promoted at the meeting are shallow.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:26 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

As a newcomer to the curriculum beat, I'm excited to learn that educational resources have changed in one really big way since I was in school: Access to primary sources is now easy. I was introduced to some of the 15.3 million items that have been put online by the Library of Congress at an education forum hosted this month by that institution. It's common now for teachers to draw on the library's collection of photos taken during the Great Depression when teaching about the 1930s in the United States, but I learned that the library has much more than that.

The library, for example, has created an interactive version of the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, which enables students to see changes that were made in the text and who made them. It has an 1866 "ribbon map" of the Mississippi River, once used by tourists taking steamboats on the river. It has the laboratory notebook of Alexander Graham Bell, which tells of his invention of the telephone. The notebook includes Bell's first line spoken on his telephone: "Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you."

"You can get so much more out of a primary source than what you can get from a line of fine print in the textbook," said Carrie Veatch, a social studies teacher for the Vilas Online School in Colorado, who explained at the forum how she prompts her students to examine primary sources to answer challenging questions about history.

The Library of Congress has partnerships with nine states to support educators' use of primary sources in the classroom, Geraldine M. Otremba, the library's senior adviser for education, told me at the forum. The library has plans to make its Web site even more robust by June, she said, by adding more lesson plans.

Don't be surprised if you find Library of Congress staff soon at an education conference near you, giving a presentation on primary sources. They're trying to get the word out to teachers any way they can.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 8:40 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has named Kichoon Yang, the provost at Northwest Missouri State University, as its new executive director.

Yang, who replaces outgoing executive director Jim Rubillo, will take over the post on July 1. Rubillo had announced his intent to retire last year from that position at NCTM, an influential, 100,000-member organization based in Reston, Va.

Before working at Northwest Missouri State, Yang was dean of the College of Natural Sciences and professor of mathematics at the University of Northern Iowa from 2001 through 2004, according to NCTM. He also was a program director in the Division of Mathematical Sciences at the National Science Foundation for three years. Earlier in his career, he served for 12 years on the mathematics faculty at Arkansas State University. He received a B.S. in math from the University of North Carolina and a Ph.D. in math from Washington University in St. Louis.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

My colleague David Hoff has a good read about the argument, made most recently by the Alliance for Excellent Education, that the United States should more actively participate in international testing and data collection. Specifically, the Alliance says the United States should increase its participation in the research conducted by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which runs the PISA test. The Alliance also faults U.S. officials for not taking part in another, advanced study for another international test, the TIMSS.

American students already take part in the PISA, but our country could benefit much more if individual cities and states took part, according to the Alliance. In other countries, local jurisdictions do participate, and the data that's produced shapes policy and drives improvement, the organization argues in a report on the subject. Mark Schneider, of the American Institutes for Research, offers several words of caution, questioning whether the data the OECD produces is of sufficient quality to influence U.S. decision-making. Schneider is the former commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.

In the story, Andreas Schleicher, a top OECD education official, noted that his organization's public reports have had a major impact on school policy in foreign countries. I know that I've heard scholars talk about how low PISA scores in Germany were a "watershed" moment for the country, prompting a re-examination of the education system there.

Would the United States benefit from more active participation in the OECD data collection and reporting? It's an interesting argument. Few factors, in my view, have had as great an impact on shaping school policy discussions on "STEM" topics (the area I cover at Ed Week) than Americans' middling scores on international tests, such as the PISA and TIMSS. At times, policymakers seem far more fixated on international tests than they do about American students' marks on the primary domestic exam, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. The media, and policymakers, to this point, have largely focused in broad strokes on the differences in raw test scores between top-performing nations and the United States. How much would the United States benefit from the collection and reporting of a more detailed array of data through the OECD, or another entity? What would the OECD contribute that is not being produced already?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:29 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Teachers often use manipulatives—boxes, shapes, figures and games—which students can handle during in-class activities to explain math and science concepts. A colleague of mine forwarded me a link to a site that offers teachers interactive math and science resources and Web-based "virtual manipulatives," which seeks to help educators build student understanding.

In addition to housing interactive tests and features that allow students to manipulate shapes, the site offers general suggestions on teaching for math and science educators. The entries include tips on how teachers can use popular games to explain math ("The Math in Video Games") and the possible uses of technology ("Using Google Earth in Science and Math").

For the math and science teachers out there: How useful do you find Web-based resources in your classes? How often do you get new ideas from these sorts of sites? Do you have the time—not to mention the computer resources—to have your students make use of Web resources like this one?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 12:56 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

In this New York Times op-ed, E.D. Hirsch Jr. calls for improvement in the reading passages on standardized tests to reflect the content of the curriculum. Hirsch has railed against the teaching of reading strategies over subject matter, and, as the founder of the Core Knowledge curriculum, promotes a rigorous, content-laden framework for K-12 schooling.

"Teachers can’t prepare for the content of the tests and so they substitute practice exams and countless hours of instruction in comprehension strategies like 'finding the main idea,'” he wrote. Test scores have not show significant improvement, however, "because the schools have imagined that reading is merely a “skill” that can be transferred from one passage to another, and that reading scores can be raised by having young students endlessly practice strategies on trivial stories. Tragic amounts of time have been wasted that could have been devoted to enhancing knowledge and vocabulary, which would actually raise reading comprehension scores."

There's a lot of speculation about what the next federal reading initiative will look like. Hirsch has been critical of the kind of skills-driven instruction that defined Reading First, and has called for more attention to vocabulary and background knowledge.

What do you propose?

Posted by at 12:16 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

Last year I wrote about one of the nation's most prestigious universities making its lectures and audio, video, and print course materials available for free to the public online. A lot of K-12 science teachers, it turns out, were interested in making use of those resources, which were offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In a related move, MIT has announced plans to make all of the scholarly articles published by its faculty available for free online. The university will make those papers accessible at no cost through an opensource, online system called DSpace, which was developed by the MIT libraries and Hewlett Packard in 2002. The decision was recently approved by the MIT faculty, though its members can opt out on a "paper-by-paper" basis, the university says.

Some universities have implemented similar policies for their individual schools, but MIT is the first to do so for its entire system, with the approval of the entire faculty, officials at the school say.

I'll be curious to see whether MIT's move to provide free scholarship will draw as much interest from K-12 educators as the free online lectures—a project known as the OpenCourseWare initiative—did. The visual element of university lectures from high-powered faculty appealed to high school science teachers and others. Will students and teachers be willing to wade through academic research papers? Actually, I think so. I could see teachers of science classes, for instance, asking students to dissect arguments from scholarly articles, as part of an independent research project, or simply to prepare them for the work they'll encounter in college. What other uses do you see for K-12 teachers from MIT's new open-access policy?

UPDATE: Here's a link to the DSpace site where the free information will be housed. It currently contains about 20,000 theses and many other digital works from across the university, MIT officials told me. More will be added later, when the policy takes full effect.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 7:10 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

They're going to be debating common ancestry in Texas this week.

Common ancestry is a core piece of the theory of evolution, and as such, it's broadly accepted by the scientific community. It posits that humans and other living things have descended from common ancestors through an evolutionary lineage, and that all living things share common ancestors. Yet some members of the Texas state board of education want to insert language in the standards that calls common ancestry into doubt. The board, following up on a preliminary vote in January, is scheduled to consider language that says students should "analyze and evaluate the sufficiency and insufficiency of common ancestry," as part of the Texas state science standards. A public hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, a preliminary vote for Thursday, and a final vote Friday.

To quickly recap, scientists felt they had achieved some measure of success when the board decided, during earlier discussions, to remove language from the current standards that calls for students to understand the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution. Since evolution is one of the best-established theories in all of science, many experts said that wording improperly singled out evolution for criticism and misled students.

Yet the board also tentatively approved an amendment that asked students to take a critical look at common ancestry—another benchmark theory of modern biology.

Common ancestry rankles some religious conservatives, who hold the belief that all living things were created by God, as written in the Bible.

Evidence for common ancestry exists across the natural world, scientists say. A commonly cited example of the concept is that of humans and chimpanzees, who scientists say descended from a common ancestor and a species that lived 6 or 7 million years ago. (It's not that humans and chimps came from apes, as is often said, but from a species that no longer exists.) Another example: Humans and puffer fish have a common ancestor believed to have lived about 400 million years ago, as was noted in a recent guide to evolution, published by the National Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Here's a fuller explanation of common ancestry from an earlier blog entry on the Texas debate.

Changes to Texas state standards can have a major impact on schools. Publishers tend to write textbooks to meet the academic guidelines of that state and others that occupy a big chunk of the market.

Board members on both sides of the Texas debate seem to be expecting a close vote, judging from this Wall Street Journal article. An apparent supporter of the common-ancestry language is board Chairman Don McElroy, who's quote as saying that school textbooks "have to say that there's a problem with evolution—because there is. ... We need to be honest with the kids."

The article also says McElroy believes the earth is 10,000 years old, not 4 billion years old, as most scientists will tell you. The scientific community is out in force in opposition, as evidenced by this letter from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the world's leading scientific organizations.

UPDATE: The National Science Teachers Association makes its position known. The organization opposes any effort to return to the "strengths and weaknesses" language. Also note the organization ties the teaching of evolution, and cultivating students' science skills, to their future success in college and the workforce, as well to the nation's overall economic prosperity. Other scientific organizations have made similar arguments during recent debates.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A few years ago, a California parent filed a lawsuit objecting to a Web site, sponsored by a public university in her state, that basically espouses the view that believing in evolution is not incompatible with belief in God. Many scientists, who are Christians and believers of various stripes, share that view, though the plaintiff in the lawsuit apparently does not.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case of that parent, Jeanne E. Caldwell. Our school law blogger Mark Walsh has a nice summary of the case, with plenty of background information, here.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 4:56 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

There are many efforts under way in the United States to increase students' passion for science, run by private companies, nonprofits, state and local governments, and universities. But I'm not sure that any of those programs are as large scale as the Science and Engineering Ambassadors effort, which is under way in Britain.

The program arranges to have volunteers from British science, engineering, and technology companies come into schools, with the aim of encouraging students in their math- and science related studies.

Currently, 18,000 volunteers from British companies are participating, which is sponsored by the U.K. government (specifically through a program called STEMNET) according to this story in the Financial Times. The goal is 27,000 company volunteers taking part by 2011, the article says. More than half the ambassadors are younger than 35, and 40 percent are women.

British officials, like U.S. leaders, are deeply concerned about having enough workers to fill jobs in scientific professions in the years ahead. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Gordon Brown put forward plans to increase the academic talent pool in those subjects, as we discussed on this blog. What might the United States learn from Britain's program? Could a government-run model of this size and scale work here?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

It's difficult to find a set of academic programs that aren't being scaled back, or at least whose administrators aren't scrambling to reduce costs, in this economy. It appears that programs serving the most-elite students in math and science aren't being spared, either.

Today's Washington Post has a story about the impact of budget cuts on the magnet math and science program at Montgomery Blair High School, almost certainly one of the nation's top secondary programs in those subjects. The magnet program was created in 1985 with the idea of turning around an underperforming school, according to the article. Now it routinely produces students who match up well against students in the most elite math- and science-talent competitions.

Yet because of budget cuts, Blair's program has been forced to pare down its faculty, which could affect the amount of one-on-one attention students receive, the article suggests. It is also drawing fewer applications, according to the story, though school officials say they don't see that as a reason to worry.

You could debate whether the cutbacks at Blair merit comparison with some of the more severe scaling-down that's going on in other schools. But the story is at least a reminder of the breadth of the nation's economic woes and their reach across academic levels. To what extent might the federal stimulus money go to magnet programs, public math and science academies, and other programs targeting high-achievers? Should the money flow in that direction?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Few report cards these days include a line to mark achievement in an age-old skill that our parents and grandparents toiled over in school. Even when I was a kid, a good grade in penmanship or handwriting was enough to elicit pride and boastfulness in both parent and student, not to mention the teacher who forced us to practice perfect little curves and carefully crossed 'T' s.

Now with computer keyboarding and text messaging taking on greater importance than legible cursive, many a curmudgeon have decried the state of children's handwriting.

There's even a new book that chronicles the history of this phenomenon. Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting, is reviewed by Michael Dirda in this Washington Post Book World piece from last month.

Thousands of schoolchildren around the country, however, put their best pencil forward recently when they were asked to write, in their own hand, a letter to President Obama. On Wednesday, more than 34,000 of the letters were delivered to Washington filled with advice for how Mr. Obama should wield his influence to improve the nation's schools. The project was sponsored by the publisher of the "Handwriting Without Tears" curriculum.

Here are some of their requests:

"I would like you to let teachers have more money to buy school supplies. My teacher had to use her money to buy supplies. It makes me unhappy."
Ian
Grade 6
Florida

"I think you should make schools better by keeping kids safer, having more field trips and having more than one teacher in a classroom."
Savannah
California

"Next year nearly 500 to 700 schools will be closing because of budget cuts.
I think that when we end the war in Iraq you should try to fund schools."
Krissy
Grade 5
Washington

"As a student, I would like you to cut back on all the tests we take and let the teachers teach more."
Nicholas
Grade 5
New York

In this exercise, penmanship counts. But I think the students' sentiments might be what gets them the extra credit.

Posted by at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spoke today before a major professional organization, the National Science Teachers Association, at its annual meeting in New Orleans, delivering a message that members of the audience were likely to find appealing.

I only have a transcript from NSTA, but I'm willing to bet that the secretary drew some applause when he spoke about paying science—and math—teachers more, as a way to lure them into the profession and keep them there.

"We need to respond to the market by paying more to teachers in high-need subjects like science and math," Duncan told the audience. "I’m a big believer in differential pay. I want to reward excellence by paying teachers and principals who do a great job in the classroom.

"I want to reward them for going into struggling school districts," he continued. "That’s where the challenge is. If you’re going to take on a tough job, you should be rewarded."

Much of the discussion about the Obama administration's agenda so far has focused on the idea of performance or merit pay—basically, paying teachers more for raising student test scores, or other measures. (See this story and this one for recent background.) But differential pay, or rewarding educators in high-need or hard-to-fill subject areas, is popular with groups like NSTA. Many potential science and math teachers, the argument goes, have more lucrative opportunities in the private sector than, say, English or history teachers might. Differential pay, as you might guess, can be controversial, if other subject-area teachers feel they're being left in the dust.

The education secretary said he anticipated that a lot of NSTA members would be interested in what the $100 billion in federal stimulus money for education would do for them. While he couldn't give many specifics, he did say that the money will: A) likely pay for the modernization of outdated science labs, though the decisions will be made locally; B) save science teaching jobs; and C) fund reforms in science education though the $4.35 billion "Race to the Top" pot. Money could also flow to science education through Title I, special education, and school improvement money, he added.

Speaking more broadly, Duncan said that U.S. schools have failed to keep up with other nations in terms of promoting innovative science education and challenging students. Referring to the former Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik, and its impact on the space race, he said: "America won the space race, but—in many ways—American education lost the science race."

He seemed especially worried about the struggles of low-performing students, at one point referring to a study finding that U.S. students in urban areas performed at roughly the level of students in developing nations in science.

"This kind of extreme inequity in education is not unique to science, but it has enormous repercussions in the workforce, where science-based industries are desperate for skilled workers," Duncan said.

It's difficult to convince students of the value of science, Duncan suggested, if you're boring them. He stressed the importance of using "inquiry-based" lessons, which essentially means having students learn science through hands-on experiments and the same kinds of processes used by real-life scientists.

"You need to challenge yourselves and each other to move the curriculum beyond dinosaurs and volcanoes—and I know that many of you already have—but we need to take the best ideas to scale in tough inner-city districts like this one—as well as rural areas that cannot find qualified teachers in every subject," he said.

"You need to make inquiry-based science relevant to kids—stimulate their curiosity—connect it with their lives. Together we need to change the national dialogue about science—to prepare our kids to be honestly critical and technically competent.

"Science is all about questioning assumptions, testing theories, and analyzing facts. These are basic skills that prepare kids not just for the lab—but also for life. We’re doing kids a disservice if we don’t teach them how to ask tough and challenging questions."

Duncan also alluded to the broad efforts to improve math and science instruction in Chicago, where he headed up the school system before moving to Washington. You can read a bit more about those efforts here.

UPDATE: Here's a video of the speech. Also includes a Q and A with teachers at the end, in which Duncan talks about the narrowing of the curriculum and the movement toward national standards. He was also asked for more specifics about differential pay and performance pay. Duncan mentioned a mix of possible pay approaches, such as rewards for working in high-need schools, for test-score gains, for national board certification; and rewarding all employees at schools, rather than just individual educators, for results.

Duncan also said, not surprisingly, that he's been focused so far more on the stimulus than No Child Left Behind reauthorization. He said he intends to focus on the law more later this year, and that he'll collect ideas from educators around the country about NCLB.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 11:52 AM | Permalink | 4 Comments | Recommend

The AIG fiasco and the uproar over those executive bonuses might provide a timely opportunity for talking about character in the classroom. But it might be more difficult to integrate lessons on morality and ethics day to day, particularly at a time when many educators are hesitant to cover issues that can be colored by personal values and beliefs, and therefore open to misinterpretation and conflict.

So I was intrigued by an announcement from the Josephson Institute that its Center for Youth Ethics is now offering free online lesson plans. The Los Angeles-based institute runs the Character Counts! program, perhaps the largest character education program in the country, works with teachers and schools to set and meet curricular and behavioral goals.

The Web site now offers lessons across the curriculum, searchable by subject and age group, and aligned to state standards. While the lessons are grounded in subject-area content, they aim to promote values that most people would agree upon (without any religious or political bent): caring, citizenship, fairness, responsibility, respect, and trustworthiness.

A lesson on forest fires, for example, requires high school students to explore how physical conditions like the slope and density of the forest, might effect how the fire spreads. But it also infuses discussions about responsibility and the consequences of careless behavior.

I wonder if they have a version for grown ups?

Posted by at 11:48 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

A recent article in Edutopia makes the case that interest in arts education is on the upswing. It says that states and schools are carving out more time for arts education, despite the pressure to test in other subjects, because of the belief that the arts contribute to students' development and can be used as a learning tool. Research on student cognition is fueling this interest, the article says.

The story offers a lot of good links to studies and reports describing trends in arts education across the states. One of the arts advocates featured prominently in the piece is Arizona schools superintendent Tom Horne.

"If they're worried about their test scores and want a way to get them higher, they need to give kids more arts, not less," Horne said. "There's lots of evidence that kids immersed in the arts do better on their academic tests."

Horne has a longstanding interest in the arts, the story notes. He's a classically trained pianist, who founded the Phoenix Baroque ensemble. Sweet music to art lovers, no doubt.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

One of the more fascinating and too-often underplayed aspects of the immigration debate centers on U.S. policies toward foreign college students and highly skilled workers. Many high-tech and industry leaders say those students and employees have played a vital role in our nation's business innovation and economic growth.

A 2007 study, for instance, found that 52 percent of Silicon Valley startups had one or more immigrants as a key founder, compared with the California average of 38 percent. More broadly across the economy, immigrant-founded companies produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers in 2005. One of the authors of that study is Vivek Wadhwa, a researcher who has written and spoken extensively on the impact of highly skilled immigrant workers.

The issue of whether to increase the cap on H-1B visas, which would allow more highly skilled, foreign-born workers to stay in this country, has been heavily debated in Congress. A number of corporate leaders want it. Some critics say these measures would take potential jobs away from U.S.-born workers and drive down salaries.

Now a new survey examines the attitudes of foreign-born college students and their interests in staying in the United States after graduation. Titled "Losing the World's Best and Brightest," it found that very few—6 percent of Indian students, 10 percent of Chinese, 15 percent of European—would like to stay in the United States permanently. A higher percentage indicated they would be interested in staying for a few years, then leaving.

What's interesting is what the survey suggests about students' reasons for heading for the exits.

On the one hand, the vast majority of foreign students—for instance, 85 percent of Indians and Chinese—were concerned about obtaining work visas. Yet they also had worries about where the U.S. economy is headed and job prospects here. Only 7 percent of Chinese students, 9 percent of Europeans, and 25 percent of Indians said they believed the best days of the U.S. economy are ahead of us. By contrast, 74 percent of Chinese students and 86 percent of Indian students saw a bright future for their home nations' economies.

The survey was based on responses from 1,224 foreign nationals currently studying in the United States who had graduated by the end of 2008. It was conducted in October of last year via the Facebook social-networking site.

It was sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. (Disclosure: Kauffman provides funding to Ed Week for math and science coverage.)

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

When he's not jabbing President Obama for making public his NCAA tournament picks, Sen. Lamar Alexander is introducing legislation aimed at improving the teaching of U.S. history. Alexander, a former U.S. secretary of education, is sponsoring legislation that would sponsor 100 new summer academies for outstanding teachers and students of U.S. history. The academies would be "aligned with academies in the U.S. Park System," such as Independence Hall.

The measure, sponsored by Sen. Robert Byrd and Sen. Edward Kennedy, would also require states to develop standards for testing using history, though history wouldn't be made part the AYP mix under No Child Left Behind. They also want to create a 10-state pilot project for history and civics on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, allowing for state-by-state comparisons. It's an issue that Alexander and Kennedy have been interested in for some time.

No offense to Alexander, but I'll confess that I watched "Barack-Etology" (as ESPN called it) with interest, as I'm sure lots of hoops fans did. I'll take March Madness tips wherever I can get them.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

At a time when policymakers are interested in improving the quality of math and science teaching, a new book examines strategies for the professional development of educators in those subjects.

It's written by Iris R. Weiss and Joan D. Pasley of Horizon Research, Inc., a private research company in North Carolina. Weiss, the president of Horizon, and her team spent several years studying the Local Systemic Change programs, professional development efforts sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The LSC program sought to reach large numbers of teachers across districts in provide them with sustained professional training (teachers were required to take part in 130 hours of PD work). Weiss' group conducted an evaluation of the LSC program in 2006.

The authors make suggestions about the development of PD programs, based on their observations of the Systemic Change programs. The book, which just came out, is titled, "Mathematics and Science for a Change: How to Design, Implement, and Sustain High-Quality Professional Development." Read a sample chapter here.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

It's been nearly a month since Jim Burke announced that his long-running CATEnet listserv, an e-mail forum for California English teachers, was heading into early retirement and it's taken me that long to get over the news.

Burke, a veteran English teacher at Burlingame High School in the San Francisco area, started the listserv nearly 16 years ago to foster discussion, professionalism, and collaboration among his California colleagues. I know that he also attracted many list members from around the country. CATEnet has been required reading for me throughout my 12 years of covering reading policy and curriculum for Ed Week. And it was always a great way to reach out to teachers to find out how policy was affecting classrooms.

Now it's back under new management, and educators can sign on by emailing askstanford@gmail.com.

Under Burke, the listserv had periods of little activity, but I remember some very heady discussions and debates about English/language arts curriculum and pedagogy, as well as policy implications.

Burke is still providing an online community for English/language arts educators through his website and blog, the English Companion. There are some pretty interesting discussions going on as well at the English Companion Ning, which has a couple of thousand members.

Posted by at 11:54 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

The federal Institute of Education Sciences, the main research arm of the U.S. Department of Education, is sponsoring a first-of-its-kind longitudinal study of the International Baccalaureate (IB) program, the popular college-prep curriculum used in schools.

The IES has awarded a $700,000 grant to the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education to carry out the project. The study will be the first quantitative study of the relationship between participating in the college-prep program and how well students actually do in higher education, according to IB officials.

The study results will provide "important insights into student outcomes in postsecondary education and how well the IB prepares students for college and university," said Beth Brock, global director of policy and research for IB, in a statement. The IB program, founded in 1968, works with 2,577 schools in 134 countries. The main alternative to it is the Advanced Placement program, which is run by the College Board.

The study will rely on research indicators of academic readiness for college, access to college, persistence in college, among other factors, analyzing 12 years of data from the Florida K-20 Education Data Warehouse and the National Student Clearinghouse. It is scheduled to be finished in 2011.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:41 AM | Permalink | 7 Comments | Recommend

The names of new staffers at the U.S. Department of Education continue to trickle out, week after week. Here's one that may be of particular interest to math and science teachers around the country: Steven Robinson, who will carry the title of special adviser to Secretary Arne Duncan.

I'd heard that Robinson was working at the department, and earlier, on the presidential transition team, from math and science folks in and around the Beltway, and thought readers might like to know a bit more about him. Robinson will advise the secretary on K-12 and higher education "STEM" issues, according to department officials. His background suggests he's familiar with both worlds. He's a former middle and high school and college teacher with 17 years experience in the classroom, agency officials said. (He's taught both AP biology and AP chemistry, among other classes.) He has a Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology from the University of Michigan and a degree in biology from Princeton.

He began working with Barack Obama back when the president was a U.S. senator from Illinois. Robinson served in Obama's office as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Education Fellow. Einstein Fellows are math and science teachers given financial support to work on Capitol Hill and in federal offices. The idea is they provide policymakers with an on-the-ground perspective on teaching and education issues. He was an adviser during Obama's presidential campaign, and, as I mentioned, he worked on the transition, consulting with Congress and advocacy groups.

He also volunteered with the D.C. public schools while working in the Senate, reading and tutoring elementary students and helping middle-grade students in math, according to the biographical sketch from the department.

Where are Robinson and others in the new administration likely to focus their attention when it comes to math and science issues? Judging from what Obama's said so far, it's a safe bet recruiting and retaining more teachers in STEM subjects, and making sure they are prepared, could be a focus. One question is whether the Obama administration will carry forward some of the STEM efforts promoted by President Bush, such as the work of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. The panel released a much-publicized report last year that called for a more focused curriculum in early-grades math, an approach that won both praise and criticism, depending on the audience.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

It is difficult to figure why some education ventures attract impressive financial and political support, while others flounder despite their value to the field. For years, I've written about The Concord Review and the really amazing history- research papers it publishes from high school authors/scholars.

The review has won praise from renowned historians, lawmakers, and educators, yet has failed to ever draw sufficient funding. The range of topics is as impressive as the volume of work by high school students: In 77 issues, the 846 published papers have covered topics from Joan of Arc to women's suffrage, from surgery during the Civil War to the history of laser technology. (The papers average more than 7,000 words, and all have been vetted for accuracy and quality. Many of the students do these research papers for the experience and knowledge they gain, not for school credit.)

But here's the kicker: It operates on a shoestring, as Founder and Publisher Will Fitzhugh reminds me often. Fitzhugh, who has struggled for years to keep the operation afloat, challenges students to do rigorous scholarly work and to delve deeply into history. His success at inspiring great academic work is juxtaposed against his failure to get anyone with money to take notice.

Well, if the grown-ups in the world have failed to recognize and reward the review for its 22 years of contributions, the students themselves have not.

Fitzhugh has shared many of the letters he receives from students whose work has been published in The Concord Review over the years. Yesterday, he shared with me one of the most memorable of those letters, which arrived recently at his Sudbury, Mass., office.

Nicole Heise won one of the review's Emerson Prize awards for excellence this year. The senior at Ithaca High School in Upstate New York sent the check back, with this note:

"As you well know, for high school-aged scholars, a forum of this caliber and the incentives it creates for academic excellence are rare. I also know that keeping The Concord Review active requires resources. So, please allow me to put my Emerson award money to the best possible use I can imagine by donating it to The Concord Review so that another young scholar can experience the thrill of seeing his or her work published."

The prize was no pittance either. Each of the winners received $800, thanks to a $5,000 donation from Douglas B. Reeves, CEO of the Leadership and Learning Foundation in Salem, Mass. Reeves, and a couple dozen member schools, are all that help Fitzhugh continue publishing. Now the student-scholars themselves are starting to pool their pennies.

I keep wondering just what will it take for the review to get the kind of attention, and support, it deserves? Maybe some of the Wall Street executives can follow Heise's lead and put some of those huge "retention awards" they've received—some at taxpayer expense—into this worthy cause, or at least donate it back to the U.S. Treasury.

Here's a complete list of the winners of the 2009 Emerson Prize, some of whom are now studying at some of the nation's top universities:

2009 Paul Armstrong, of Richard Montgomery High School, in Rockville, Md. (Fall 2007 issue: the historical relationship between Poland and Lithuania)

2009 Pamela Ban, of Thomas Worthington High School, in Worthington, Ohio, (Summer 2008 issue: the stages of Chinese economic reform)

2009 Nicole Heise, of Ithaca High School in Ithaca, N.Y. (Winter 2007 issue: the Tu Quoque defense at Nuremberg and after)

2009 Benjamin Loffredo, of the Fieldston School in the Bronx, N.Y. (Winter 2007 issue; the Philippine War)

2009 Colin Sellers Harris, of Sidwell Friends School, in Washington, D.C. (Fall 2007 issue: the United Arab Republic)

2009 Elize S. Zevitz, of the Prairie School, in Racine, Wis.. (Spring 2008 issue: the Northern and Southern reactions to Uncle Tom's Cabin).

Posted by at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I recently came across an intriguing item about a new resource called "Wordnik," an online dictionary that is supposed to provide users with a wealth of information they would not be able to get by looking up a word in print.

Created by a Chicago lexicographer (someone who writes or compiles a dictionary), Wordnik is designed to provide a wealth of resources on the meaning and even the pronunciation of words. As I understand it from reading the story in the Christian Science Monitor, Wordnik would allow a user to click on a term and receive an audio replay of how it is pronounced, as well as its definition and how it is used in context. The database so far includes 4 billion words. A user can see examples of words used in the same context as the ones they've looked up. Other features include a "frequency graph," a resource that allows viewers to see how often a word has been used in print in a year.

Unfortunately, the link to Wordnik has been down when I've tried it. The creators are redirecting people to a blog for now.

To what extent might a tool like Wordnik help K-12 teachers? Would language arts teachers and other educators approach it cautiously? And what would it take for them to embrace Wordnik as a credible, authoritative resource?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Businesses, philanthropies, and other organizations have been staging math and science competitions and contests for years as a way to motivate students to take on independent projects and have their work judged by experts in the field.

If you're interested in a competition with a theme pulled from the day's headlines, have a look at the Moody's Mega Math Challenge 2009, known as "M-3." This year, participating teams from schools around the country were given the following mission:

—Determine which elements of the $787 billion economic-stimulus plan will produce the greatest increases in employment;
—Figure out how quickly the money could have an impact on the economy; and
—Evaluate whether a second stimulus package is needed.

The contest is sponsored by the philanthropic arm of Moody's, the global financial and research firm, and it's sponsored by the Society for Industrial and Applied Math, or SIAM. Students are competing for college scholarship awards valued at between $2,500 and $20,000, which will be divided up evenly among team members.

Students were encouraged to use resources from authoritative sources on federal spending, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Congressional Budget Office, and the White House Council of Economic Advisers. The deadline for submitting answers was last week.

The Moody's competition traditionally focuses on financial and economic issues. The 2008 challenge question asked students to examine the economic implications of replacing traditional gas with ethanol. In 2007, students were asked about a hypothetical investment portfolio. My question for readers: Of the other school math competitions out there, how many of them center on financial or budgetary themes? Is the focus of these competitions changing, given the issues of the day?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Mike Smith, a senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, said in a speech today at the Library of Congress that he's "somewhat skeptical" about the value of "common standards," which he said he uses interchangeably with "national standards." His biggest concern, he said, is that if common national standards are funded by the federal government, "you can't keep ideology or politics out of the ball game."

Smith prefaced his speech with a statement that he was presenting only his views and not those of President Barack Obama or of Duncan. He then proceeded to lay out arguments for and against having national standards.

He put in the category of "weak" arguments the idea that the nation needs common standards because, as matters stand now, all 50 states set different proficiency levels. The argument is weak, he said, because the proficiency levels can be standardized. Another bad argument for common standards, he said, is that even though policymakers and educators acknowledge they don't know much about what constitutes high-quality standards or assessments, they claim it would be beneficial to create a single, nationwide system.

But Smith also spelled out two reasons why the nation should move ahead with common standards. One, he said, is that a common set of standards is efficient. Another, he said, is that the common standards could foster a common curriculum. The potential to develop a common curriculum is the "core reason" that he supports the advancement of common standards, he concluded.

He suggested a scenario for development similar to what Duncan has alluded to, that states would form consortia to create common sets of standards and apply to use money from the $4.35 billion Race to the Top fund to do so. Smith envisions that different sets of common standards would be created by six or seven clusters of states. He said he thinks a healthy competition would evolve between the different clusters.

But he acknowledged that politics would still be part of the mix.

He told me after the meeting that his proposal that six or seven clusters of states should create sets of standards with stimulus money is "not policy" yet.

But in case it does become policy, here's a clue for states that may want to apply. Twice in his speech, Smith highlighted Massachusetts as having a strong set of standards.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 3:50 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

This just in: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is expected to address the National Science Teachers Association at its annual meeting on March 20. The event is being held in New Orleans.

To the science educators out there: let's suppose the secretary opens the floor for questions after his remarks. What questions would you ask him about science education policy in this country? NSTA and some other organizations have suggested that No Child Left Behind should be changed so that it mandates that science scores count towards AYP, as reading and math do now. Do you agree? What else might you ask the secretary?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Many organizations have taken a strong interest in increasing young girls' engagement in math and science, as a hook to leading them into "STEM"-oriented fields and careers. The congressionally chartered National Academy of Sciences is trying to do its part through a web site, "I Was Wondering," which seeks to introduce female students to the possibility of science careers, and to the curiosities of the scientific world.

To date, the site has offered a number of resources for girls, including the biographies of female scientists in different fields, who talk about what they do in their work, day after day. They idea is to show girls that a scientific career is not only a feasible option, but a desirable one. The site also includes ideas for labs that can be used by teachers.

Now the site has added a feature that allows young students to submit questions about science and have them answered by a scientists. It's a moderated forum called "Ask It!" in which students can write in with questions about science, vote on which questions they would like to see answered by experts in the field. The Academies staff say they have arranged for scientists from around the country to post responses to selected inquiries.

The web site includes ideas for teachers on how they can use Ask It! their classes, not just for individual students, but for group activities. Here are some other links to online science resources for students and teachers, sponsored by federal agencies, museums and others.

My question: What other moderated science forums for students are out there? What makes them valuable? How could they be improved?

UPDATE: I was curious about how scientists were chosen to answer questions on the site. Terrell Smith, who works on the project for the National Academies, told me in an e-mail that while the process is still being refined, it begins with the Ask It! team checking to see which questions have received the most votes. The team then matches the question with a scientist in the appropriate field. The scientist might from one of the Academies' institutions (the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, or the Institute of Medicine), an in-house National Academies staff member/scientist, or another expert with whom the Academies have connections.

"Currently the Ask It! Team creates an account for the scientist and posts the answer on his or her behalf," Smith told me. "But for each posting, the scientist identified as the expert answering the question has been involved one-on-one with a member of the Ask It! Team to prepare the answer. We review each scientist's response and in most cases we also have an education consultant review the answers for age appropriateness before they are posted."

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

When a college freshman doesn't do well in a first-year science course, whose fault is it?

There's a lot of interest in how to better prepare students for the rigors of undergraduate study, and how to measure those skills. But this week I was reminded that it's probably important to examine the general disconnect between how various subjects are taught at the high school and college level, with science in particular.

The issue came to mind when I wrote about the debate over whether it's better to focus on teaching science in more depth, or breadth. A new study, to sum it up quickly, says the answer is depth. Near the end of the story, I quoted Francis Eberle, the executive director of the National Science Teachers Association. I'd asked him why students taught science by teachers using a "breadth" approach, covering a lot of topics, didn't do better in their freshman year college classes, according to the study.

He basically said that while it was fair to look at shortcomings in high school science teaching, not enough attention gets paid to how college-level science is taught. College science courses are heavily oriented toward lectures and covering reams of material, he said. The goal often seems to be to weed out people who don't have the skills to pursue college science majors, Eberle told me, rather than attempting to nurture and build the skills and interests they already have.

Eberle's organization, of course, represents the K-12 teacher's perspective. But he's not the only science advocate I've heard make this argument about college science instruction. And he raises an important issue, particularly at a time when policymakers are keenly interested in boosting the number of students who pursue "STEM" careers. What if the "STEM pipeline" as it's sometimes called, is springing leaks at the entry-level undergraduate, rather than high school level? If anyone can point me to any useful data or studies on this point, I'd like to see it.

Of course, some researchers, such as Linsday Lowell and Hal Salzman, have argued that schools and college are in fact producing enough STEM-focused students already. The larger fault, they say, lies with graduate programs and private-sector companies, which don't do enough to convince them to stay in the field.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I've had a lot of people tell me there's been a reduction, however slight or gradual, in the level of bluster and acrimony emanating from various combatants in the so-called "math wars" in recent years.

To the extent that there's an easing of the harshest rhetoric, I would trace it partly to the release of "Curriculum Focal Points" by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in 2006. Much of the anger from parents, mathematicians, and others who believe schools have gone too far in promoting "fuzzy math" at the expense of traditional problem-solving methods was directed at NCTM. "Focal Points," a blueprint for ordering early-grades math lessons, won over some of the organization's critics. The document calls for a more focused and coherent early-grades math curriculum, with an emphasis on certain crucial topics, like whole numbers, fractions, and quick recall of number facts. "Focal Points" reflects a growing consensus that A) the current math curriculum is overcrowded and confusing for teachers and students; and B) creating a more focused curriculum and encouraging students to master certain key topics lay the groundwork for their foray into more difficult math later.

By no means am I suggesting that debates about math curriculum are going away. To believe that, I'd have to ignore the heated comments that roll into my in-box when I write a story about one curricular approach or another. (I often forget which side of the "math wars" I'm supposed to be on. Then one of these commenters will helpfully remind me.)

You could also make the argument that in a nation where what gets taught in schools can vary considerably from state to state and district to district, debates about math curriculum are inevitable, and in fact, a vital check on policymakers' decisionmaking.

This story, about a debate over math curriculum in Palo Alto, Calif., shows why we're not likely to see debates over math curriculum go away any time soon. But I'm also highlighting it because it reveals a few of the undercurrents at work in debates over curriculum, which tend to get lost in the tangled forest that is the math wars.

In one sense, the debate is familiar: A group of parents are questioning why the district appears to be favoring one curriculum, in this case Everyday Math, over another, enVision Math, and a third one, Singapore Math, that some of them seem to like best of all.

Some parents said Everyday Math doesn't place a strong enough emphasis on traditional problem-solving methods. (The program did get a qualified, positive review from the federal What Works Clearinghouse, not easy to come by.) And as is the case in many districts, part of the parents' concerns seems to be that the lessons in the textbooks look much different from those they're familiar with from their days in the classroom, years before.

But there are issues in play. Some district officials said Singapore Math didn't offer an approach that could serve students at a broad range of ability levels, including English-language learners. Others applauded enVision Math's focus on "depth" but worried that it was too easy and "treats math as a sequence of little ideas rather than big ideas."

One parent quoted in the story, a recent transplant from Minnesota, said he was having to supplement the Everyday Math lessons with after-school work because the approach was so different from what his son used in his previous district—a common problem in a nation with a student population as mobile as ours, I suspect.

"This is a difficult choice," one parent said in written comments about the math curricula, which the board asked for. "Well-meaning parents should not be able to vote based on five minutes of Google research."

Which raises another question, in all of these skirmishes: Where are parents getting their information about the various math curricula? Is there any emerging consensus on the math curriculum at early grades? What do debates like the one in Palo Alto say about where these debates are going?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:23 AM | Permalink | 13 Comments | Recommend

Apparently bowing to intense pressure from the all-powerful mathematicians' lobby, Capitol Hill lawmakers have approved House Resolution No. 224, calling for March 14 to be recognized as "National Pi Day."

Kidding aside, the chief sponsor of the resolution, Rep. Bart Gordon, a Tennessee Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Science and Technology, and other lawmakers have a serious intent.

Teachers around the country can plan math lessons and events around March 14 to celebrate Pi, or "π," which is the relationship between the diameter of a circle (its width) and its circumference (the distance around the circle). But I'm completely confident that you knew that already.

Gordon sees the resolution as a chance for schools to emphasize the importance of math and science, at a time when there's widespread worry about U.S. students' performance in those subjects.

"This is a lighthearted event but the goals are serious,” Gordon said in a statement. "By engaging students in math and science activities from a young age, we are setting our students on a path toward science and math literacy and careers.”

On a side note, you have to love arch, ultra-formal language of congressional resolutions, especially when they're focused on a topic as quirky as Pi.

"Whereas mathematics and science can be a fun and interesting part of a child's education, and learning about Pi can be an engaging way to teach children about geometry and attract them to study science and mathematics; and

Whereas Pi can be approximated as 3.14, and thus March 14, 2009, is an appropriate day for `National Pi Day': Now, therefore, be it resolved...."

For teachers interested in crafting math lessons around this math-themed day, check out this web site, sponsored by a group that's also looking to promote the magnificence of Pi.

UPDATE: The final vote was 391-10, according to this tally. Ten holdouts apparently opposed to paying righteous tribute to Pi.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 3:48 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

I got my chuckle for the day over a blog post by Timothy McSweeney that's being passed around. It reduces William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" to a Facebook news feed. Even Robert Pondiscio over at the Core Knowledge Blog acknowledges that the Facebook rendition of "Hamlet" is a good example of world-class skills and world-class content working together hand in hand.

My favorite stanza (if it can be called that) is the one that refers to how Hamlet's mother took a husband immediately after her first husband, Hamlet's father, went to his grave.

The king poked the queen.

The queen poked the king back.

Hamlet and the queen are no longer friends.

Marcellus is pretty sure something’s rotten around here.

Hamlet became a fan of daggers.

I saw "Hamlet" most recently last summer, performed by the Shakespeare Theater Company as a "free for all" in a local park. Hamlet's madness seemed surprisingly contemporary. Why shouldn't it be adapted for Facebook?

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 12:47 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

A recent study, which I wrote about last week, makes the case for building students' depth of knowledge in science—as opposed to focusing on "breadth," a long list of topics across the subject.

But in the era of high-stakes tests, how do you test for depth? It's not easy. Many states and schools, at the urging of science advocates and others, believe exams should be broad enough to cover a lot of topics in science, as my story explains.

It's fine if you want to pare down the list, those advocates seem to be saying—just don't jettison the particular science topic we care about the most.

Another factor that favors testing "breadth": Multiple-choice tests are typically cheaper and easier to administer, as opposed to trying to trying to gauge students' knowledge through constructed-response, or adaptive testing, or what have you.

Yet despite those odds, there are efforts to test deep science knowledge. In my story I discussed efforts by the College Board to revamp its AP science tests to probe fewer subjects with greater intensity. The College Board had been criticized for promoting an overly broad approach on its exams.

Movement on that front is also occurring with the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP science test.

I didn't have room to get into this in my story this week, but that NAEP test, which has been given in the nation's schools over the past couple weeks, includes an interactive computer feature, administered to a subset of students. The goal of that portion of the test is to measure student science knowledge that cannot easily be assessed on paper, such as the ability to formulate and and perform experiments.

That process allows students to make choices based on data during experiments, officials at the Educational Testing Service, which is helping with the NAEP science exam, told me. This, in turn, allows for a better measure depth of knowledge.

If this approach takes hold, it's possible that the science test of the future will look much different than what's being used across the country today.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The federal What Works Clearinghouse, which offers reviews of education programs according to rigorous standards, has released three new reports. But only one of the programs reviewed, the I Can Learn focused on helping students with prealgebra and algebra, was found to have been studied enough to qualify for a rating—it was found to have positive effects on student achievement.

A new study that I wrote about this week also found that I Can Learn, which uses computer software and hardware, is effective, particularly in working with classes where students miss a lot of school.

Two other programs had not been studied sufficiently to merit a WWC rating. Those were Kumon Math, a supplemental math curriculum, and I Have a Dream, a dropout-prevention program. Links to the reviews of all three programs are provided, above.

The findings on I Can Learn could be of keen interest to educators, given the strong interest in preparing students for the challenges of algebra these days.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

At an event in Washington yesterday, President Barack Obama spelled out some of his priorities for rewarding effective teaching through extra pay. "[W]e know it can make a difference in the classroom."

And in the pages of Ed Week, a pair of researchers presented some surprising data on the question of what can be done to create and secure a more stable pool of math and science teachers—among the most sought-after educators in the market.

Much of the attention given to Obama's speech rightly focused on what he said about performance pay, and rewarding teachers who excel with more money (though it turns out listeners interpreted his message in multiple ways, as my colleagues Steve Sawchuk and Alyson Klein have aptly reported).

But given the overall attention being paid to teacher quality these days by the administration and others, I think it's fair to raise the question: How will the president's priorities mesh with what the new research on teacher supply-and-demand is saying?

As my colleague Debbie Viadero explains in her story, Richard Ingersoll and David Perda, of the University of Pennsylvania, have put forward new research suggesting that the real problem in trying to fill enough classrooms with math and science teachers is not that too few are being lured into the profession—it's rather that too few of them are staying.

Efforts to expand the pipeline of math and science teachers by focusing primarily on what colleges and universities are or aren't doing may be misdirected, their findings suggest. Relatively large numbers of teachers are picking up necessary degrees at the bachelor's and master's levels to teach, or graduating in math- and science-related subjects with an interest in teaching, they conclude.

The larger issue is turnover. With so many teachers leaving math and science classrooms, the problem is that the supply side simply can't keep up. "[W]e're pouring water into a leaky bucket," is how Ingersoll puts it.

Obama talked about creating new incentives for luring teachers into the classroom. He also touched on the importance of mentoring new educators. "Teachers throughout a school will benefit from guidance and support to help them improve," he said.

Ingersoll's and Perda's work indicates that those training, mentoring, and professional development efforts are indeed crucial, perhaps as much or more than teachers' concerns about their pay. General dissatisfaction—as the Ingersoll-Perda research noted—and lack of administrative support, traditionally rank high on the list of reasons why math and science teachers leave, in some cases more than pay concerns.

The Ingersoll-Perda research, at the very least, could carry implications for federal and state investments in teacher recruitment and retention. The federal government invests a considerable amount in trying to lure new teacher into the profession, despite, as I've reported, limited research showing that those approaches work. Much of that investment flows in the form of grants and scholarships for math and science teachers.

Other efforts, such as Math and Science Partnership programs, run through the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education, are geared more toward improving the skills of teachers already in the classroom. Is that where Obama and other policymakers should be devoting the most attention? If Obama is attempting to halt, or at least slow, the revolving door in math and science teaching, what's the best way to do it?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:28 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

I reported some bad news recently about the status of foreign-language programs in the United States in Education Week. Fewer elementary schools are providing foreign-language programs now than a decade ago. This decade of decline follows a decade in which elementary schools had increasingly launched foreign-language programs.

But this week I reported some good news in Education Week about the attention that the nation's foreign-language needs are receiving. A task force in Maryland has handed the state legislature and Gov. Martin O'Malley a report that tells state agencies how to better take advantage of the native-language skills of the state's highly educated immigrants and their children. The Maryland Department of Education has assigned a staff person to carry out a number of the recommendations in the report, including better supporting people who have a native language other than English to get certified as foreign-language teachers in the state and making it easier for students to get foreign-language credit for a language they have learned at home.

Also, after last week's article was published about the decline of foreign-language programs at the elementary level (for the most part, secondary schools are maintaining their foreign-language programs), I received a couple of e-mails from educators who said they are forging ahead to expand foreign-language programs or dual-language programs despite the overall national trend.

If you're a district that doesn't match the national trend of cutting back foreign-language programs in elementary schools, please use the comment button on this blog and tell us how you are doing this in these hard economic times.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Barack Obama is expected today to announce a new policy lifting restrictions on funding for human embryonic stem cell research. He will also issue a presidential memorandum meant to protect federal scientists and scientific research from political influence, according to reports.

I would argue that it's the second action has the most potential for creating intriguing discussions in science classrooms. Bush administration officials were accused repeatedly of attempting to disregard or squash scientific findings and views that did not mesh with their political ideology, especially on issues such as climate change and environmental regulation. A recent series by the Philadelphia Inquirer delved into some of those issues.

Regardless of whether they agree with the Obama administration's new policy, the topic offers teachers of science and other subjects with a springboard. What constitutes political interference into scientific research and science policy? Critics of the Bush administration clearly believe the former president's staff ignored science that didn't support their political points of view and policies. Yet some conservatives have argued that the evidence supporting climate change is not as strong as the mainstream scientific community claims and that too little attention is paid to how controlling carbon emissions could hurt the economy. (A prominent expert panel has concluded that it's clear that global warming is occurring and there's a "very high confidence" that humans are contributing to it.)

These topics could merit discussion in science or social studies classes. Why do federal scientists need to be guarded against political interference, or do they? Would such a policy in any way make it more difficult for a political leader—Democrat, Republican, Independent—more difficult to govern? What if a federal scientist puts forward a conclusion that is later called into question, not only by policymakers, but other scientists?

Many scientists were disappointed when President Bush, when battles over evolution in the states were running hot, appeared to say that he supported having both evolution and intelligent design taught in classrooms. The vast majority of scientists do not regard intelligent design as science. Neither did the president's own science adviser, as the above story notes. During debates over the teaching of evolution, many scientists often voice frustration that the public not only fails to grasp the tenets of Darwin's theory, but also seems confused about the rules and principles of science, and how scientists go about their work.

I haven't yet seen any comments from Obama today on his new policy, but it's safe to assume that his goals are broader than the policy itself. He seems to want to change the public's perception of the role and status of scientists. A teacher might ask: To what extent do presidents, through the bully pulpit, have the power to shape the public's, and student's understanding of what science is, and what the rules of science are?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Originally created in Japan, the practice known as "lesson study" grew more popular in the United States in the 1990s. Basically, it's a research and instructional-improvement method in which a teacher conducts a class under the observation of other educators and interested observers. The idea with these lab-type environments is that teachers discuss the teaching methods on display and how to refine them to improve student learning, engagement, and behavior.

When we wrote about lesson study techniques in 2004 (I linked to it in the above paragraph), teachers in 29 states were experimenting with that practice, according to the story.

Educators and academic researchers interested in learning more about this practice and its application to math might consider attending a conference this spring. It's being hosted by the Chicago Lesson Study Group, from May 7-9. More details here. The organization's Web site houses several good resources on lesson study, including its uses in secondary math.

The conference is now in its 8th year, the organizers tell me. They've highlighted not only the uses of lesson study in the United States, but also in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:47 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

There's a lot of debate these days about how to define "technology literacy," but in a couple years, the National Assessment of Educational Progress will take the unusual step of testing students in those skills.

This week, the panel that oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress heard an early report on how it is attempting to forge a working definition, in preparation for judging students' tech literacy in 2012.

The National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for the NAEP, must first develop a framework, or basic blueprint for that test. The board has put together steering and planning committees to work on the project. Those panels include lots of familiar names in education and school technology fields, including Don Knezak of the International Society for Technology in Education, Mary Ann Wolf of the State Educational Technology Directors Association,Senta Raizen of WestEd, who's co-chairing the committee, and many others.

On March 6, governing board member Alan Friedman, a science and museum consultant from New York who is working on the tech literacy test for NAGB, talked about how the board is going about that task. A prime challenge is developing a definition that will stand the test of time, Friedman said, so that the test is not outdated within a few years after it's been unveiled.

Despite the name of the test, Friedman made it clear that goal of the NAEP tech literacy exam is not simply to test students' familiarity with computer products or features, or digital games. The goal is to evaluate their understanding of "interconnections among technologies," with technologies including processes from the designed world, he said. This could include not only computers but technology's relationship to processes such as metallurgy (in the manufacture of buildings, or individual products) or woven textile technology (used to make clothes and fabrics). Of course, computer technology is essential to many manufacturing processes today, noted Friedman, who was joined by Raizen in his presentation. But the point is that students need to have a broader grasp of technology that takes them beyond their computer keyboard, if they're to understand complex scientific issue today.

"We need to understand what all technologies have in common, and how they inter-relate," Friedman told the board. It's likely to be a major task, he suggested. "This project is working with probably more of a blank slate than any other framework we've developed."

The governing board awarded a $1.86 million contact to WestEd last year to develop the framework and test specifications. The committees are expected to deliver a framework to the full governing board by November of this year.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 5:06 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

The test referred to as "the nation's report card," is perhaps best known for producing results that allow for state-by-state comparisons of student achievement, as well as national trends across grades and subject areas.

But now the board that oversees that exam, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, is considering an intriguing option: adding a special report that would provide much more detailed information on the five biggest states in the country.

That option appeals to some members of the National Asessment Governing Board, which is meeting in Washington, D.C., this week. They say that a "mega report" would provide more useful information to policymakers and the public about states with similar student populations and similar challenges.

The idea is to supplement (not replace, of course) the current NAEP, which presents information on student performance from all states, including those serving very different populations, such as say, Florida and Iowa, or California and Wyoming.

The five states being considered for the mega-exam are California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas, all of which have at least 2 million K-12 students.

A mega test also would allow officials to better compare the progress of burgeoning and established demographic groups, such as Latinos, said board member David Gordon, the superintendent of the Sacramento County Office of Education, who's interested in the idea.

"It could give you insight into how you're doing with those fast-growing populations," Gordon told me at today's meeting. It has the potential, he said, "to give much more meaning to the NAEP results."

Gordon leads a sub-committee of the governing board that heard a presentation from researcher Paul Barton, who was hired by NAGB to study the issue. Barton presented several options for what kind of information could be collected and presented in the five-state report, such as an examination of school and non-school factors and possible links with state and student achievement. Those factors included teacher preparation, class size, the rigor of curricula, and parents' interaction with children.

No action on the mega-report is expected for some time. Gordon's sub-panel, the Reporting and Dissemination Committee, agreed to keep studying the proposal and its feasibility.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 1:09 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Kent Fischer has one of the most provocative local education blogs, one he's written as a reporter for The Dallas Morning News for about four years now. He focuses mostly on issues related to Dallas ISD, but writes about broader trends and concerns for K-12 schools as well.

One of Kent's items has been making the rounds among education reporters this week, with a link to this video that questions the notion of "learning styles." The focus on the idea that children all have different optimal ways learning has been revelatory for many educators. But the learning-styles model also has a significant corps of dissenters that deems it's misguided, even destructive.

I'm not familiar with Daniel Willingham's work, but the Web site for the University of Virginia psychology professor says he is focused on "applying cognitive psychology to K-12 education." He writes the “Ask the Cognitive Scientist” column for American Educator magazine. His views are pretty clear. What do you think?

Posted by at 12:17 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

I attended an interesting event in Washington yesterday: a conference celebrating the 20th anniversary of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for the NAEP. The gathering brought together a lot of people from the nation's capitol and outside the Beltway who have been instrumental in shaping the exam known as "the nation's report card" and making it what it is today. Those attendees spent an afternoon looking forward, and looking back.

The conference was divided into a series of panel discussions. The last one of the day brought together four people who have played insiders' roles in shaping federal education policy for decades: Jack Jennings of the Center on Education Policy, Chester "Checker" Finn Jr., of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, education historian Diane Ravitch, and Mike Cohen of Achieve.

Much of their discussion focused on what role the NAEP, or the National Assessment of Educational Progress, might play amid the rebirth of interest in national standards and, potentially, national testing. Not federal standards or national standards emanating from Washington, everybody seemed eager to point out—but standards originating with states, nonprofit organizations, subject-matter groups, and others.

The panelists, like other attendees at the conference, heaped praise on the NAEP as a barometer of student progress, independent of state tests. (Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who also spoke during the day, called the test a "truth teller" on student achievement, no matter whether the truth was good, bad, or ugly.)

How might the NAEP's role change if states, governors, and interest groups unite behind common standards, or tests? Cohen suggested that NAEP would continue to be a valuable tool for judging state standands and exams for the forseeable future. "We need a check on state tests," he said. Jennings said it was his impression that the National Assessment Governing Board, the independent entity that sets policy for NAEP, is interested in getting involved in the standards movement. "I would approach this issue very cautiously," he said. If the public and political perceptions are that national standards were guided from Washington, they could derail those efforts. Even so, NAGB could play a role in leading a discussion over how standards could be set, and bring some coherence to those academic goals, from early grades through 12th grade, Jennings said.

The panelists also touched on other debates over federal and state testing. Finn, who played a big role in designing the "achievement levels" used on the NAEP to judge students as proficient, basic, and so on, acknowledged that they were controversial when they're created, and they're controversial now. "Among people who have never seen a standard they like," he quipped.

"Nobody likes it," Finn added, and "nobody has come up with a decent alternative." (Here's an Ed Week story from 1990 on how the achievement levels were set.)

Ravitch noted the oft-cited discrepancy between the rosy state estimates of student proficiency and those reported on the NAEP. She described the reported state gains as "ridiculous," made possible by "politically motivated" cut scores. Ravitch said one way to cope with those differences would be for the feds to require states to not only report on the status of students scoring "proficient," but also to report how they set their scale scores for their exams.

You can check out out papers and presentations made at the conference here.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 9:21 AM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

An issue brief by the NGA Center for Best Practices cites examples of a number of states that have developed K-12 literacy plans. It's not enough to have a literacy plan only for students in grades K-3, such as the ones many states created to participate in Reading First, the flagship reading program under the No Child Left Behind Act, according to the National Governors Association. The 15-page brief says that "reading on grade level by 3rd grade is not sufficient for preparing students for success in high school and beyond."

Alabama sponsored summer training sessions to expand a statewide reading initiative to secondary schools. Florida and Ohio appointed adolescent reading coordinators in their state departments of education.

The brief stresses the need to identify struggling readers at all grade levels and to intervene. Rhode Island requires "personal literacy plans" for any students in grades K-12 who are reading three or more years below grade level. Initially the state required such plans only for students in grades K-5, according to the brief.

There seem to be lots of good ideas here on how to take efforts to improve literacy among adolescents to scale on a statewide level.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

My colleague David Hoff, over at NCLB: Act II, is on top of this.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

When teacher Mike Fletcher leads students through a geometry lesson, he brings a special kind of authority to the subject. He helped write their textbook.

Fletcher, a teacher from Mobile, Ala., applied and was accepted to the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project to help draft that text, titled "Geometry" and published by McGraw-Hill, which he now uses, according to this story from the Mobile Press-Register. The story provides a glimpse at the behind-the-scenes role that talented K-12 teachers sometimes play in drafting texts in math, science, and other subjects.

Fletcher spent several weeks over the summer of 2006 working with a team of K-12 teachers and university officials on the text. Zalman Usiskin, the director of the Chicago math project, told me in an e-mail that his group relies heavily on secondary math teachers to help draft its books. In fact, some of the K-12 teachers who have worked on math texts through the UCSMP first became involved in that process in the 1980s and continue to work on newer editions of those books today.

Every teacher who's listed as an author on a UCSMP text spent at least one summer writing for the organization, as Fletcher did, Usiskin noted. (Aside from the standard role Fletcher played in drafting the book, it appears his influence is evident in other, subtle ways, the story says. Geometry teachers who notice references to driving distances in southern Alabama can thank Fletcher.)

I often see math and science textbooks where K-12 educators are listed as contributing in a variety of ways—as authors, contributors, and so on. I've got a high school biology text at my desk that lists several teachers as "consultants," though the two main authors are university-level researchers. Jay Diskey, the executive director of the school division at the Association of American Publishers, said teachers play an "invaluable" role in textbook development, in many subjects, as authors, editors, and subject matter experts. Publishers have been seeking out teachers' advice for decades, he said.

For teachers out there who've worked on textbooks, a question: What is the best role for K-12 teachers in textbook development? Are there duties for which they're not well-suited? And what is the division of duties for K-12 teachers, university scholars, and outside wordsmiths in crafting a textbook?

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 10:20 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Barack Obama is not the only national leader talking about the importance of education during a period of deep recession. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is seeking to revamp his nation's approach to math and science instruction, pitching that proposal as a matter of long-term economic health, according to this BBC story.

Brown says he wants to double the number of British secondary students taking "triple" science—biology, chemistry, and physics. Currently, just 8.5 percent of British students take the triple science option, the story says. Brown's plan is to double that figure by 2014, which the story says would represent an extra 100,000 pupils.

Another of his ideas will seem familiar to educators on this side of the pond. The prime minister is pledging to make it easier for workers laid off in science and technology industries to find jobs as math and science teachers.

In fact, British leaders seem concerned about a lot of the same issues as U.S. officials, judging from the story. They're worried about graduating too few college majors in science- and math-related fields. They also say there aren't enough qualified teachers in specialized subjects like physics.

Conservative Party leaders, by the way, don't seem to think much of Brown's ideas. One of them is quoted bemoaning the Labour Party's "appalling record on science." Brown is affiliated with Labour.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Here's another good story on the gray area surrounding "mercy" rules—policies aimed at curbing vicious blowouts that are fairly common in high school sports. This article, from the AP, is set in Nebraska, where lopsided scores in girls' basketball —92-18, 72-13, 92-11 and the like—apparently occur pretty regularly.

The story does a good job of adding some nuance to the discussion of mercy rules that emerged a few weeks ago in the wake of a Dallas girls team's 100-0 demolition of a rival. In some games, even when the white flag goes up, and coaches take out their starting players, or the game is put on a running clock and thus brought to an end more quickly, it does very little to stop the onslaught, if one side is woefully outmatched. It's just not that easy.

This reality was reflected in the philosophical perspective offered by Omaha South coach Ricky Ruffin. You might be philosophical, too, if your team had lost by a score of 92-8.

"Did we expect to score just 8 points? No. Did Southeast run up the score on us? No," he said in the story. "They're the No. 1 team and they shot lights out. We turn over the ball more than 30 times a game, so they're going to get easy baskets.

"Could they have beaten us worse if they wanted to? Yes."

I wonder if creating more high school sports districts, to prevent contests between the larger and smaller schools would help. Then again, in a rural state like Nebraska, school sports teams are generally forced to look for opponents anywhere they can find them.

Posted by Sean Cavanagh at 3:32 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

This video of the last day at the Rocky Mountain News, the latest newspaper to close up shop in the midst of a spiraling downturn in the news industry, was posted on Vimeo a few days ago by Matthew Roberts. Over at The Joy of Children's Literature blog Denise Johnson wonders if today's generation will remember how the news "used to be published."

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

Of course this is a topic near and dear to me and my colleagues. It's not just the demise of the broadsheet that worries journalists, but the seeming growing indifference to the kind of content that newspapers and their expert staffs crank out day in and day out. Just this morning we see that the government is undertaking an investigation of the effectiveness of children's car seats, not because of crash test results, but because the Chicago Tribune discovered that those results were not made public.

There are countless other examples.

How can we get the digital generation to appreciate that not all "news" on the Internet is equal, and that the Fourth Estate is an essential component of a democracy? Do today's students know how to distinguish between legitimate online news and the info they get from their favorite sites?

Posted by at 9:31 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend