STEM education in the media spotlight

In the wake of his State of the Union address this past week, President Obama is touring the country and speaking, among other topics, about the relationship between STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education and the American economy.

For instance, yesterday, Obama toured a new Intel manufacturing plant in Arizona that has struggled to find qualified workers in the U.S. and thus has had to outsource some parts of the manufacturing process overseas, as PC Magazine reports. The president addressed the issues of STEM education and the American workforce’s readiness to participate in the high technology economy in his State of the Union speech (see Scientific American’s roundup of expert reactions to Obama’s STEM-related remarks).

Perhaps due to the attention brought to this topic by the president’s speech, a number of STEM education-related news items have surfaced in recent days:

• A new survey conducted by M.I.T. uncovers reasons why American secondary students decline to pursue STEM studies (and, hence, STEM-related careers). Reasons include the perception that STEM fields are “too challenging.”
• The National Center for Science Education has announced it will “fight efforts to slip incorrect climate science information into school lessons. ‘We are seeing more efforts in legislatures and schools to push climate misinformation on teachers and students,’ says NCSE head Eugenie Scott.” [Source: USA Today]
• In a new podcast, the New York Times reports “an increasing number of parents are turning to outside organizations to supplement science education in the schools.”

South Texas school district suspends all sports programs

The Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller Times reports:

Premont ISD has canceled its sports programs to save money and focus on academics as it tries to meet sweeping improvements proposed by the state.

[Superintendent Ernest] Singleton decided to temporarily end athletics after basketball season ends.

The ban runs until basketball season in late fall, meaning Premont students will go without tennis, track, baseball in the spring and volleyball and football in the fall. Other extracurricular activities, such as fine arts, are not affected.

When trustees last week signed an agreement with the state to stay open, Singleton warned parents and residents that he would make tough and unpopular choices to meet the Texas Education Agency’s 11 demands…

According to a school district press release:

Premont I.S.D. has been assigned an Accredited-Probation status due to the ratings assigned to the district in the financial accountability rating system and the state’s academic accountability rating system. Specifically, Premont I.S.D. was assigned a 2009 academic accountability rating of Academically Unacceptable, and a 2008, 2009, and 2010 financial accountability rating of Substandard Achievement.

Science teachers face students skeptical about climate change

The Huffington Post reports:

Around the country — from Washington State to Oklahoma– pressure and pushback from skeptical students, teachers and administrators pose challenges.

In 2008, Louisiana voted to allow public school teachers to teach both creationism and the views of climate change skeptics. Last May, a school board in Las Alamitos, Calif., voted unanimously to require environmental science teachers cover “multiple perspectives” on climate change. That decision was later rescinded…

The National Center for Science Education, long-touted for its efforts to help teachers address evolution in the classroom, has recognized the predicament and announced this week that it would add climate change to its repertoire, offering teachers a range of tools and legal support.

Arizona judge upholds Tucson district’s finding that ethnic studies program is illegal

The Associated Press (via the Washington Post) reports:

An administrative law judge ruled Tuesday that a Tucson school district’s ethnic studies program violates state law, agreeing with the findings of Arizona’s public schools chief.

[Judge Lewis] Kowal’s ruling, first reported by The Arizona Daily Star, said the district’s Mexican-American Studies program violated state law by having one or more classes designed primarily for one ethnic group, promoting racial resentment and advocating ethnic solidarity instead of treating students as individuals.

Higher teacher salaries lead to better student achievement, economists argue

Writing in the blog of the London School of Economics and Political Science, researchers Peter Dolton and Oscar Marcenaro-Gutierrez describe their analysis of data from the world’s largest economies and argue:

[There is] a clear statistical association between higher relative teachers’ pay and higher standardised pupil scores across countries. Our research with aggregate country data supports the hypothesis that higher pay leads to improved pupil performance. As an indication of the relative size of this effect, we find that a 10 per cent increase in teachers’ pay would give rise to a 5-10 per cent increase in pupil performance. Likewise, a 5 per cent increase in the relative position of teachers in the income distribution would increase pupil performance by around 5-10 per cent.

Kansas high school student reprimanded for tweeting criticism of Gov. Sam Brownback

The Wichita Eagle reports:

A Kansas teenager is in trouble after mocking Gov. Sam Brownback during a mock legislative assembly for high school students.

Emma Sullivan, a senior at Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, was in Topeka on Monday as part of Kansas Youth in Government, a program for students interested in politics and government.

During the session, in which Brownback addressed the group, Sullivan posted on her personal Twitter page:

“Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot”

On Tuesday, Sullivan was called to her principal’s office and told that the tweet had been flagged by someone on Brownback’s staff and reported to organizers of the Youth in Government program.

The principal “laid into me about how this was unacceptable and an embarrassment,” Sullivan said. “He said I had created this huge controversy and everyone was up in arms about it … and now he had to do damage control.

Virtual schools continue to draw controversy – and government dollars

Last April, I posted about a New York Times article which described growing controversy surrounding Web-based distance education in K-12. Now, the Washington Post has profiled one particular company, K12, Inc., that has become “the country’s largest provider of full-time public virtual schools.”

Conceived as a way to teach a small segment of home-schoolers and others who needed flexible schooling, virtual education has evolved into an alternative to traditional public schools for an increasingly wide range of students — high achievers, strugglers, dropouts, teenage parents and victims of bullying, among them…

It’s an appealing proposition, and one that has attracted support in state legislatures, including Virginia’s. But in one of the most hard-fought quarters of public policy, a rising chorus of critics argue that full-time virtual learning doesn’t effectively educate children…

People on both sides agree that the structure providing public education is not designed to handle virtual schools. How, for example, do you pay for a school that floats in cyberspace when education funding formulas are rooted in the geography of property taxes? How do you oversee the quality of a virtual education?

Researchers develop new tools for learning computer programming

The New York Times reports:

New and more sophisticated tools are changing the way that the next generation learns to program computers. Children can now create elaborate scenes and games without the cryptic commands that were once the only way to tell computers what to do. The most talented children can also use some of the sophisticated tools normally used by professional programmers, because the tools are now often easy enough for someone to pick up with only a few months of study.

Despite often poor job prospects, college students seek out ‘easy’ majors

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Time will tell if the poor job market persuaded more students to push into disciplines such as engineering and science. Although the number of college graduates increased about 29% between 2001 and 2009, the number graduating with engineering degrees only increased 19%, according to the most recent statistics from the U.S. Dept. of Education. The number with computer and information-sciences degrees decreased 14%. Since students typically set their majors during their sophomore year, the first class that chose their major in the midst of the recession graduated this year.

Research has shown that graduating with these majors provides a good foundation not just for so-called STEM jobs, or those in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields, but a whole range of industries where earnings expectations are high. Business, finance and consulting firms, as well as most health-care professions, are keen to hire those who bring quantitative skills and can help them stay competitive.

For many school districts, economic recovery remains far in the future

The Associate Press reports:

Even in a best-case scenario that assumes strong economic growth next year, it won’t be until 2013 or later when districts see budget levels return to pre-recession levels… That means more cuts and layoffs are likely ahead…

Already, an estimated 294,000 jobs in the education sector have been lost since 2008, including those in higher education.