ATTENTION
(STEM) Education
CAUCUS STAFFERS:
November 2007 News
Briefs on STEM Education
In this Issue:
6.
Newly introduced STEM Education Legislation
1.
Liberal Arts Schools Offering
Engineering
(Wash Post 11/3)
Liberal Arts colleges
and universities are increasingly embracing and expanding engineering programs as
a way to attract female and minority students. This trend is partly driven by research
showing a need for more well-rounded engineers in the workforce and community. It
is also driven by the perception that the high-profile engineering schools have
a "macho culture" as well as by the growing recognition that engineering needs to
diversify.
Fifty years ago
this month, the
3. Federal Rule Yields Hope for Science
(Education Week 10/5)
Some proponents of science education
say they have faced no greater foe over the past few years than federally mandated
tests in reading and mathematics, which have forced teachers to devote increasingly
bigger chunks of class time to building students’ skills in those two subjects.
But if testing has
squeezed science out, can testing also bring science back?
5. Cultivating Math and Science Teachers
for High-need School Districts
(NSF Press 10/19)
Like doctors in
training, future math and science teachers in
6. Recently Introduced
STEM Legislation
This is a record of recently introduced legislation
related to STEM Ed. but does not represent Caucus endorsement of any legislation
S.2194 Title: A bill to amend
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to establish a partnership between
the Department of Education and the National Park Service to provide educational
opportunities for students and teachers, and for other purposes.
Sponsor:
Sen Salazar, Ken [D-CO] (introduced 10/18/2007)
Cosponsors:
1
Committees: Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Latest Major Action: 10/18/2007 Referred to Senate committee.
Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and
Pensions.
H.R.3955 Title:
Sponsor:
Rep Lipinski, Daniel [D-IL-3] (introduced 10/24/2007)
Cosponsors:
5
Committees: House Science and Technology
Latest Major Action: 10/30/2007 Referred to House subcommittee.
Status: Referred to the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment.
S.2164 Title: NOAA Scholarship
Act of 2007
Sponsor:
Sen Inhofe, James M. [R-OK] (introduced 10/15/2007)
Cosponsors:
2
Committees: Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Latest Major Action: 10/15/2007 Referred to Senate committee.
Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
S.2276 Title: Aeronautics
Competitiveness Act of 2007
Sponsor:
Sen Dodd, Christopher J. [D-CT] (introduced 10/31/2007)
Cosponsors:
2
Committees: Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Latest Major Action: 10/31/2007 Referred to Senate committee.
Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
The Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Education Caucus’ primary mission
is to promote all areas of STEM Education including K-12, higher education and workforce
issues in Congress. At its core, the caucus functions to increase the visibility
and importance of STEM Education and educate Members of Congress and their staffs
on the technical issues and public-policy options surrounding STEM education.
The Caucus serves as an information source and a catalyst for improving STEM education.
If you would like
to join the Caucus, please contact Julia Jester (x53831) in Mr. Ehlers’ office or
Wendy Adams (x52161) in Mr. Mark Udall’s office.
Some
proponents of science education say they have faced no greater foe over the past
few years than federally mandated tests in reading and mathematics, which have forced
teachers to devote increasingly bigger chunks of class time to building students’
skills in those two subjects.
But
if testing has squeezed science out, can testing also bring science back?
That’s
the hope of teachers, scientists, and others who believe that a provision of the
No Child Left Behind Act requiring states to begin testing students in science in
elementary, middle, and high schools this academic year could compel schools to
carve out more time for the subject.
The
attention paid to science in classrooms, particularly in elementary and middle schools,
has eroded over the nearly six years since the federal education law was enacted,
critics say. They say schools were forced to cut back on science lessons in their
attempts to raise achievement in reading and math, which must be tested annually
in grades 3-8 and once in high school.
States
will have to test students once a year in science within three grade spans: 3-5,
6-9, and 10-12. While the law does exam scores to calculate whether schools are
making adequate yearly progress, or AYP, under the federal law—as is the case with
reading and math—some observers suggest the scrutiny generated by the tests could
spark at least a modest scientific rebirth.
“School
systems want to do well on any test where the results are released to the public,”
said Linda Froschauer, a longtime elementary and middle school science teacher in
“We’ve
hit a bottom,” said Ms. Froschauer, a former president of the 55,000-member National
Science Teachers Association, of the time devoted to science. “I’d like to say that
once we see test scores, we’ll see an increase.”
Meanwhile,
the NSTA is one of several organizations that are not content with the current status
of science in the No Child Left Behind Act. A number of scientific, education, and
business groups are asking Congress, as it debates reauthorization of the law, to
demand that states include science scores in judging whether schools make AYP. President
Bush also supports such a change.
The
NSTA, in
That
letter also has been signed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association
of Manufacturers, and the Business Roundtable, a Washington-based association of
chief executive officers.
The
business and science lobby played an active role in supporting the America COMPETES
Act, which authorizes an estimated $43 billion in spending on federal programs in
math and science education and research over the next three years. ("‘Competitiveness’
Bill to Aid Math, Science Is Signed by President," Aug. 15, 2007.)
Supporters
depicted that measure as crucial to ensuring the United States’ long-term economic
success—an argument advocates are now making in their support for adding science
to AYP calculations.
“Including
science as a required component of the No Child Left Behind accountability system
is a critical element in ensuring
Susan
Denning, who oversees curriculum and professional development for the
“It
would certainly add pressure to schools that are already struggling,” Ms. Denning
said. “It would be one more thing that would make it difficult for us to get to
AYP in any year.”
Over
the past three academic years, three of her district’s 14 middle schools have reduced
by one semester the amount of science taught in grades 7 and 8, in an effort to
devote more time to reading and math and make adequate progress. Only one school
has made those same cutbacks this year, she said.
In
addition to establishing science tests this year, states will be required to report
publicly the results of those exams, as they now do in reading and math. So far,
only five states have had their science tests approved by the U.S. Department of
Education, said Patrick A. Rooney, a senior policy adviser in the office of elementary
and secondary education.
States
can voluntarily use science- test scores as part of determining whether their schools
make AYP by selecting science exams as the “other academic indicator” for judging
elementary and middle schools, alongside reading and math.
So
far, the Education Department knows of six states that have included science in
some fashion in calculating AYP:
Most
states have chosen attendance rates as their other academic indicator, Mr. Rooney
said. States are required to use graduation rates as a measure of AYP for high schools.
But they can also use science as an additional measure at that level if they choose,
he said.
In
a draft proposal for reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act, released last month,
Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House education committee, and
other leaders of the panel suggested permitting states to include science along
with reading and math in calculating AYP. Schools would be allowed to use some combination
of test scores in science, civics, government, history, and writing to count for
up to 15 percent of elementary and middle schools’ yearly-progress targets.
Though
its “first preference” would be to have science added as a mandatory piece of the
AYP formula, the science teachers’ association would support the 15 percent plan,
said Jodi Peterson, its director of legislative affairs.
The
debate over the place science should occupy in the NCLB law generally divides advocates
interested in promoting science content, such as teachers and curriculum experts,
and state testing officials, who believe adding science to the AYP mix is unrealistic,
said Arthur Halbrook, a senior associate with the Council of Chief State School
Officers.
Many
state officials worry about their ability to craft meaningful science assessments,
which will gauge students’ overall understanding of scientific thinking and processes
and promote good teaching. Multiple-choice tests are easier and cheaper to develop
than exams that require short or extended answers, but they provide relatively little
information about students’ scientific competence.
Richard
N. Vineyard,
If
science tests are made a mandatory part of AYP, “there will have to be enough flexibility
provided for the states to develop assessments that will reliably and validly measure
progress in science,” Mr. Vineyard wrote. “They must be reflective of the ways that
the standards encourage science to be taught using a handson, inquiry-based approach.”
Gauging
the exact impact that No Child Left Behind has had on instructional time in science
is difficult. Many science educators were concerned about neglect of their subject
during the school day long before the law took effect.
A
study released this year, however, by the Center on Education Policy, a Washington
research and advocacy organization, found that 28 percent of districts surveyed
reported having reduced the amount of time devoted to elementary school science
since the law’s enactment, while 8 percent said they had increased that time. Of
those that reported a decrease, instructional time in science dropped an average
of 75 minutes a week.
By
contrast, nearly 60 percent of districts reported having increased the time spent
on elementary English language arts, and 45 percent said they had boosted time devoted
to math.
If
states devise high-quality tests, and continually refine them, those exams could
end up helping teachers who are weak in science, said Iris R.Weiss, the president
of Horizon Research Inc., a
Too
many students are taught scientific vocabulary in isolation, without understanding
that those terms are a type of shorthand for broader, essential scientific concepts,
Ms.Weiss said.
“If
we get the measures right, it could really take it in the right direction,” Ms.Weiss
said of science instruction. “We might gain some focus on science, which would be
a good thing—if [tests] could go deep.”
Some
teachers say science tests are helping them accomplish that already. At
Most
of the questions are multiple- choice, but students are also asked to answer open-ended
questions structured around a lab, which include coming up with relevant questions
and hypotheses. Testing those scientific skills is harder than simply quizzing students
on terminology, Ms. Smith said, but it’s necessary.
“It’s
holding teachers accountable,” Ms. Smith said. “You can’t always do your favorite
project. You have to make sure you’re doing all the relevant content around science
and not missing anything.”
Coverage
of mathematics, science, and technology education is supported by a grant from the
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation at
www.kauffman.org.
Vol. 27, Issue 07, Pages 1,13
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i07/07a02201.htm
|
From the issue dated
October 12, 2007 |
The government's latest push falls far short of its reaction to
the Soviet satellite
Fifty
years ago this month, the
Today
the country sees a new challenge: that other countries might outpace
"Fifty
years after Sputnik, the
The
federal government has now answered, enacting a law, the America Competes Act, in
August. Academic leaders and Congressional sponsors have called it a good start.
But
the measure is a significantly smaller effort, in scale and scope, than the surge
of money that followed in Sputnik's wake.
A
centerpiece of the America Competes Act is a plan calling for a doubling of spending
over seven years on physical-sciences research supported by the National Science
Foundation and the Energy Department. The bill provides no actual money and expires
after three years, but Congress's Democratic leadership has vowed to find the dollars.
After
Sputnik, the growth was more meteoric. The NSF's budget doubled in the first year
alone, and all federal support for academic research quadrupled in seven years.
Actual growth in spending was also greater, adjusting for inflation, than the increases
authorized by the America Competes Act for research and science education, according
to a Chronicle analysis.
The
new law does share this with a Sputnik-era forebear: Its educational provisions
do not emphasize training more college-educated scientists and engineers. Instead
the act pushes better-qualified science teachers in elementary and secondary schools,
with a goal of improving the general public's scientific literacy. That approach
is sensible, experts say, because despite the alarm over growing numbers of engineers
being trained in
The
challenge for the federal government will be to find money to fully finance the
act in a time of war and tight budgets. Chinese engineers do not seem to inspire
the same fear and awe among taxpayers that Sputnik and its Soviet designers did.
Some economists say, however, that the economic threat from other countries has
been overblown, and that a cautious response is warranted.
A Massive Expansion
The
explosive postwar growth of American universities started before Sputnik, with the
GI Bill, but the satellite scare provided a major boost. Before that, only about
20 research-intensive universities received most federal research funds. Today about
100 such universities exist.
Following
Sputnik, the number of doctoral degrees awarded skyrocketed, from 8,611 in 1957,
to 33,755 in 1973. The National Defense Education Act, passed in 1958, helped students
pay for their studies by providing graduate fellowships in science and a loan program
that later became the Perkins Federal Loan Program.
Federal
spending for all academic research has steadily grown since Sputnik. But most of
that growth has come for biomedical research financed by the National Institutes
of Health. Money for all other scientific disciplines has stayed flat since 1970.
The
new America Competes Act is an attempt to redress that imbalance. Supporters of
a realignment say that research in chemistry, physics, engineering, and computer
science has the potential to lead to valuable new commercial technologies, like
the transistor and the Internet. However, science-policy experts say it is hard
to justify Congress's decision not to double physical-sciences research financed
by the Defense Department and NASA.
The
plan also leaves out the NIH, which its supporters argue also contributes to
The
act's provisions for science education are an answer to a series of recent reports
warning that other countries are quickly catching up to the
To
name just a few widely cited statistics, about half of undergraduate degrees in
American
12th graders have scored toward the bottom of the pack in international science
tests. And on a domestic test of science understanding, the National Assessment
of Educational Progress, almost half of
Quantity Vs. Quality
But
the stark differences in numbers are not the end of the story.
"
Many
other factors influence economic innovation, such as creative, independent thinking,
which analysts say is not encouraged by many Chinese educators. What is more, the
country needs improved corporate management and regulation, analysts say.
Still,
several national reports about competitiveness — including the National Academies'
"Rising Above the Gathering Storm" from 2005 — have suggested that to keep pace
with
Congress
declined that call because lawmakers knew that attempts to project the number of
jobs in science and engineering have been notoriously inaccurate, says a staff member
on the House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology, who spoke on
condition of anonymity. What's more, wages for scientists and engineers grew no
faster than for all workers from 1995 to 2005, according to the Commission on Professionals
in Science and Technology — not what you'd expect during a shortage.
Members
of Congress concluded that rather than trying to produce more scientists and engineers,
the clearest need was earlier in the educational pipeline, in schools, where a clear
target for federal help exists. Nationally, about two-thirds of high-school chemistry
and physics teachers lack a degree or certification in those fields. And studies
have shown that that correlates with poor student performance on math and science
tests.
Improving Scientific Literacy
The
America Competes Act authorizes a new set of grants to colleges from the Education
Department to set up undergraduate programs that will award both a degree in science
or math and a teaching certificate.
Explaining
that approach after the act's passage, U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon, a Tennessee Democrat
who leads the House Committee on Science and Technology, argued that the United
States' economy will need to accelerate technological innovation to keep ahead of
developing countries that have an edge in attracting low-tech manufacturing jobs
because of their abundant, cheap labor. As a result, he said, American workers across
all skill levels, with and without college degrees, will need better quantitative
skills.
The
America Competes Act also lags behind Sputnik-era legislation in proposing new spending
for science education. The new law proposes increasing spending by about $2-billion
over three years for science-education programs in the Education and Energy Departments
and doubling the NSF's education division, which received $807-million this year,
over seven years. Those sums combined fall well short of the amount spent by the
federal government on the Sputnik-era National Defense Education Act, about $7-billion,
in today's dollars, over four years.
In
spirit, though, the America Competes Act does echo the federal response after Sputnik,
in its focus on broad scientific literacy and school education. And there is plenty
of room for improvement: Nearly 30 percent of adults surveyed in 2004 for the National
Science Foundation did not know that the earth revolves around the sun.
http://chronicle.com
Section: Government & Politics
Volume 54, Issue 7, Page A22
Copyright © 2007 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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