President Bush was right to address math and science education in the United States during his State of the Union address, considering this nation is falling behind in these areas as others improve. The gap is closing, and Bush is right to address it.
But there appears to be a knowledge gap here at home, too. Bush’s message isn’t getting through to average Americans. Fifty-seven percent of them think “things are fine” when it comes to math and science education at their public schools, a recent poll found. And 70 percent of high school parents approve of their schools’ curriculum.
As Jean Johnson, executive president of Public Agenda, points out: “There’s energy and leadership at the top, but there is a task to be done in getting parents and kids to understand some of the ideas. You can do a lot from the top, but you can’t do everything. Schools are local. The leadership needs to reach out and help the public understand the challenge.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- Heckler on Open thread 11/23
- Chas on Open thread 11/23
- BobChi on Moore has had enough of House
- Chas on Open thread 11/23
- Heckler on Open thread 11/23
- Chas on Open thread 11/23
- Chas on Open thread 11/23
- Monkeyhawk on Open thread 11/23
- Regular on Open thread 11/23
- Regular on Open thread 11/23
13 Comments
With the Unions that control the teachers, I don’t think an improvement will happen in education so long as the teachers are unionized.
At one time in this country, having a career in science had not only financial awards, but also had a carried with it a degree of respect. Talented students were encouraged to pursue careers in science by government prorgrams such as grants and scholarships, but more important was that a career in science would be recognized by society-at-large as a way of making a meaningful and substantial contribution. It is human nature to want to pursue a career that is considered to have a certain element of prestige associated with it. Now however, society largely views science, and scientists, with suspecion. When we go to the physican and we are prescribed medicine, we praise the doctor for making us well, but never give the scientists who developed the drug a second thought. We marvel at the skill of the pilots who fly technologically advanced airliners, but are largely unaware of the scientists and engineers who developed the craft. When scientific experts describe the evolutionary history of the human race, they are mocked as being atheists, and when atmospheric scientists warn of the risks of global warming, they are censored by their own government employer. Our society does not value, nor does it trust, science or scientists. Until we learn to value the contribution of scientists, why would any talented student want to pursue a career in this field?
Glad … very true.
Glad, I agree as well.
Two of the most egregious mistakes made by President Bush, imo, were his hat tip to intelligent design and his refusal to honestly examine global warming (latest news is that he’s relying on Michael Crichton, the author of such novels as “Jurassic Park,” for expert advice on the subject of global climate change).
This is not leadership, folks. A president who confusedly fails to support the scientific method – in fact, condemns the scientific method at its core by refusing to directly support it – then belatedly calls for the creation of more American scientists is doing more harm than good.
Very dark days indeed for the USA.
This from a NYTimes article:
“ST. LOUIS, Feb. 18 — David Baltimore, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist and president of the California Institute of Technology, is used to the Bush administration misrepresenting scientific findings to support its policy aims, he told an audience of fellow researchers Saturday. Each time it happens, he said, “I shrug and say, ‘What do you expect?’ ”
The whole article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/national/19science.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
We have an administration who is pretty hostile to science. But there are still kool-aide consumers like “Little Joe” blaming teacher’s unions. Sigh . . .
If 70% of parents are content with their child’s curriculum, then most of our parents just don’t have a clue what is currently going on in American education as a result of No Child Left Behind. Our current state of education amounts to nothing more than teaching to state assessment tests. Other subjects are completely neglected. Sure, test scores will go up the few percentage points needed to show improvement, but at what real cost?Administrators should be complaining, but they aren’t. Teachers are complaining, but it falls on deaf ears. In the meantime, children are not just being “left behind”; they are being trampled in the dust.Parents, become involved! Ask your child’s teacher what they think about the current educational trends of which they are being forced to teach. The current trend needs to be radically altered. It will take a parental coalition in order to get such changes accomplished. That will mean that it will take some of your time.If you would like just a small taste of the outcomes of one of such recently implemented policies (requiring 3 credits of Algebra 1 and above in order to graduate – including most special ed. students), please take a look at this L.A. Times article:The Vanishing Class – A Formula for Failure in L.A. Schools. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dropout30jan30,0,1678653.story?track=mostemailedlink
Melissa,
Once again you have not done your homework. The biggest reason that there is difficulty in getting and keeping good Science and Math teachers is because they need to be paid at a different level and guess what? The teachers union will not allow that.
Remember what the teachers union opposed this past year when Wichita wanted to pay an extra benefit for teachers in schools with a large number of hard to teach children? They fought it. They want everyone equal so we have not been able to give extra to special teachers.
You should really be willing to take on the teachers union and find out why they keep holding teachers down expecially in Math, Science and our low income schools. Look at what the salaries are and the years of experience in some of those schools and you will see that they are not getting experienced teachers.
Marvin, please tell me that you aren’t a teacher. No one is going to come up with any funding to pay any particular teachers more than any others. No way, no how! The only way that some teachers will make any more will be at the loss of others – and that just isn’t right. Math and Science scores will not increase until more students decide to behave appropriately and take their studies more seriously. Period!
You must understand that we are teaching in a day and age when more students (who would have been dropouts years ago) are being retained within our educational system – many by court order. Our teachers and building administrators are overwhelmed by the number of discipline problems that they have to deal with – often from the same children repeatedly – while getting little, if any, support from the home.
When our Superintendent decided that half of the teachers in our district should be paid more because they happened to work in school buildings, some of which only had a somewhat higher number of “Free or Reduced” students enrolled (whether or not the teacher even worked with any of those students), that was purely a union-busting tactic. And that decision may yet be found to have been illegal on his part.
Over the past decade, it seems that the primary mission of our teachers’ union during salary negotiations is to keep them from paying us any less for more of our time. Sure we received a decent raise this past year, but that came in a year when the state had earmarked more funding and it came immediately after a salary freeze and several years of trying to stay afloat as our base salary raises did not keep up with inflation. Keep an eye on our next few years of negotiations if more state funding is not appropriated. And don’t bash the unions if you haven’t attended a negotiations session.
Finland, Iceland, Japan and other countries don’t have millions of low IQ blacks and non-White latinos that can’t cut it academically so the gap will never be closed. Racial differences are real and thus Race Matters!!
Viva La Raza Blanco!!
Wichita Teacher,
I don’t know how you can say that Winston Brooks was trying to bust the Union when he has been so very supportive of it for years!
If you want experts you pay a price for experts. I had a 3rd grade teacher tell me that a high school math or science teacher should not recevie more money for specializing because as a 3rd grade teacher she was teaching math and sciensce. But when she was asked some high school level questions in those areas she could not answer them.
As far as raises for teachers I think you had best go back and look at the track record and you will see that raises for teachers have increased much faster than the private sector jobs. Also you must take into account the 100% paid for health insurance that you receive (a lot of working people would love to have that) and the absolutly wonderful retirement program you receive.
I am a little concerned that as a teacher you only look at once piece of the picture and not the entire picture. Most private sector people would love to have the benefits that you have and also work 9 months out of the year (actually 7 when you take into account all of the breaks you have with days off).
You should look at the positives and if you still do not like what you are receiving you can always do something else.
And yes I am a teacher for USD259
http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm
To all my American homies. One love baby, one love…
Marvin, you are so full of it that your eyes are brown! If, indeed, you are a teacher as you say that you are, you must either be a fairly new teacher or you just stay within your little room and don’t have a clue about what has been going on outside of it. That is possible, because there are teachers like that. But I just don’t buy your story or your angles. I can understand your spelling and grammar problems because lots of teachers aren’t good at either. But when you speak to me in second person (you) and expect me to believe that you are a teacher as well, I just can’t buy your story.
High school teachers aren’t necessarily “experts” in their fields (or they wouldn’t necessarily be teaching). They tend to be knowledgeable (certified) in certain areas and (usually) enjoy teaching those subjects. Elementary teachers, on the other hand, are more of a jack-of-all-trades. They are masters of synchronizing a variety of different lessons into a daily plan (of course our district keeps making that more difficult for them). They deal with an age group of children that you couldn’t pay most high school teachers enough to deal with, and vice-versa. And most teachers in either elementary or high school are very thankful that some people decided to become middle school teachers.
If you are, indeed, a Wichita Teacher, you are a rarity. And I almost hate to tell you to pull your head out and ask other teachers what they think of their job situation, because I would hate to ruin your rosy outlook on life ;)
As usual, when the subject becomes education and what is “wrong” with it many of the comments erroneously focus on the union and how it is responsible for the problems. Now, I am not a union member but it does have its place-by the way, we are not “controlled” by the union, it actually has almost no power to affect anything in education. In my opinion the major problem facing education in Wichita today is the top heavy administration that is willy nilly forcing the latest fad down the throats of the students of the district. This is of course done without the advise or input of the real experts in the district, the teachers who deal with the students on a day to day basis. Some of the ideas and programs that are presently being implemented may indeed have some merit but the fact that they are being capriciously thrust upon the students does not speak well of the thought that has gone into them. Any competent teacher, and some of us are not, can point to any number of programs that have worked to the detriment of their students, regardless of the ability level of the students. The vast majority of the teachers of USD 259 wish to see their students progress and prepare themselves for whatever future endeavors that they wish to pursue. Unfortunately this is not what is happening because of the top down administration that is the present policy of the district. We need to work together, not snipe at each other, to help the students. Part of this is a true collaboration of teachers, parents and administrators. A district that simply “tells” its teachers what to do and how to do it is not a district that is working toward the best interests of the students.