In the debate about what should be taught in public school classrooms – or any classroom – pretty much everyone has a strong opinion. Tipping the scale in any direction – toward the arts or sciences; toward rote memorization or project-based groupwork – tends to ignite passionate debate from all sides. STEM programs are becoming more and more prestigious and well-funded, but just recently in a Washington Post opinion piece, Fareed Zakaria argued…
“It’s not just the climate outside that is changing—the climate in my classroom is too!” said one Florida teacher recently at one of CEE’s Bite of Science speaker sessions. He was referring to Florida Governor Rick Scott’s direction to state employees in the Department of Environmental Protection to avoid using the phrases “climate change” and “global warming” because use of the phrases indicated agreement with the theories behind them—a directive that has already had…
During a recent TEP session in South Carolina, a speaker pointed out to the teachers in attendance that the number of manufacturing jobs available in the state is truly amazing, and that industry leaders are scrambling to find qualified candidates. Many of the jobs require only a training certificate or a two-year degree, and salaries are high, he said – but students, parents and teachers aren’t aware of the opportunities, and if they are, they sometimes assume jobs in fields like manufacturing will be low-paying or dangerous.
Several of the teachers attending brought up issues like…
Today in biology class, a student logs in to The Radix Endeavor (a new MMOG developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and finds herself wandering on an island where her leader has taken actions that have endangered the local plant and animal life. She must discover what the problems are and how the local environment functions, and devise solutions to preserve the island’s ecosystem. What she doesn’t have to do, in class today, is open a textbook or take notes on a lecture – she’ll do that online, at home.
It’s a “…
A rather goofy video titled “Common Core: It’s Better Than You’ve Heard” (perhaps not the greatest marketing slogan ever conceived; it reminded several internet commenters of the quip “Wagner’s music is better than it sounds,” often attributed to Mark Twain) has been circulating widely online this past week or so. It has irked a lot of people who are against the implementation of the Common Core State Standards… as well as a lot of people who are supporters of the standards.
Such unity…
Countless education news articles comparing US test scores to those from other countries say American students are “slipping” in math and science. They don’t perform well on tests; they miss questions involving higher-level thinking; they have a false sense of confidence about their knowledge and abilities. So what’s going wrong?
Arguments about why the scores are low include reasonable…
One thing we can all agree never changes about our world is that it is always changing. As we guide students through the murky waters of high school and beyond, we try always to prepare them for their futures – even though we’re never quite sure what being prepared for those futures will look like.
The importance, for STEM teachers specifically, of being connected to the “real world” of industry, innovation and research, cannot be overstated if they want to get their students excited about STEM fields and on a path to success. So, how best to stay on top of new information and…
The following is an excerpt from What Lies Ahead for America’s Children and Their Schools, a new book edited by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Richard Sousa for Hoover Institution Press. This excerpt comes from a chapter called “Educating Smart Kids, Too” by Chester E. Finn, Jr.
Barack Obama and Mitt Romney both attended elite private high schools, as did George W. Bush, Al Gore, and John Kerry. Both are undeniably smart and well-educated and owe much of their success to the strong…
During the last ten years, the gifted education field has fallen farther and farther behind as being one of the key areas of American education. The United States Congress has stopped funding research on gifted education, school districts in almost every state have cut back or completely eliminated funding for gifted programs, and STEM initiatives implemented by the federal government and corporate America make few provisions for identifying gifted students to participate in these innovative programs.
I have always believed that our gifted students are our nation’s greatest natural-…