Posted on 01/20/2009 7:55:40 PM PST by neverdem
The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, an international test of fourth- and eighth-grade student achievement, recently released its latest results. As in prior years, the mean U.S. scores were roughly on par with those in most developed nations in Europe, though well below those in Asia. But students in other developed nations far outpaced U.S. students in top-level science scores. For instance, only 10 percent of American eighth-graders performed at the highest level in science, placing the U.S. 11th among the tested nations and well behind countries such as England (17 percent), Japan (17 percent), and Singapore (an astounding 32 percent).
It’s no surprise, then, that the U.S. also lags the world in the proportion of students earning a college degree in technical fields. According to the National Science Foundation, only about 17 percent of U.S. college graduates earned a degree in subjects related to science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM for short). That’s well below the world average of 26 percent. We trail not only economic competitors such as China (52 percent), India (24 percent), Japan (64 percent), and Russia (33 percent), but even Mexico (25 percent) and the nations of the Middle East (24 percent). These figures become even more disturbing when we consider that American colleges grant many of their STEM-related degrees to foreign students, the majority of whom go back home.
American schools simply don’t produce the scientists and engineers whom we need to remain competitive in a technology-driven world. In their excellent recent book The Race Between Education and Technology, Harvard University economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz convincingly show that the economic and political dominance of the U.S. throughout the twentieth century was based on its better-educated workforce, which could create and swiftly adapt to new technologies. But we’ve been losing that edge since our educational attainment began to stagnate in the mid-1970s—and as more nations surpass us in education, they also chip away at our economic dominance.
The troubles in STEM education mirror the broader problems of American K–12 education. The primary issue—and our best chance to make improvements—concerns teacher quality. A wide body of research has consistently identified teacher quality as the most important means within a school’s control to improve student learning. That likely goes double for STEM subjects, which require instructors not only to be knowledgeable but also to be able to convey difficult technical information in a graspable way. Attracting such people to STEM teaching requires a compensation system that recognizes their talents. Unfortunately, though, the way we pay public-school teachers today—based exclusively on seniority and number of advanced degrees held—doesn’t work.
Research consistently finds that these two attributes have little or nothing to do with teachers’ actual ability to improve student learning. Paying the same salaries to teachers of widely varying effectiveness is inefficient, to say the least. But another big problem with the current pay system, especially when it comes to STEM teaching, is that it compensates teachers in different subjects equally, too, and this ignores labor-market realities. With the same number of years in the classroom and the same number of advanced degrees, a high school gym teacher earns the same salary as a high school chemistry teacher.
A better system would pay STEM teachers more than their counterparts. After all, the skills required to teach STEM subjects are often more valuable in the broader labor market than those required to teach most other subjects. Of course, not every good math teacher would make a good engineer, and vice versa. But an individual with math and technology skills has more attractive job opportunities than, say, someone with the skills to teach elementary-level reading. The bottom line: public schools must dig deeper into the labor skill pool, hiring STEM teachers of lower quality than teachers in other subjects.
A system of differential teacher pay, on the other hand, could not only attract new teachers from the outside labor market, but also encourage the current crop of teacher talent to move into STEM subjects, which they’re currently shunning for understandable reasons—the coursework required to become a teacher in a non-technical subject is much less demanding than what’s necessary for STEM subjects. We need to give these people a financial motive to take the more difficult STEM path. Teachers’ unions support increasing the pay of STEM teachers—so long as the pay of all other teachers goes up as well. But spreading dollars around equally means giving small increases to all teachers instead of large pay increases to those we most need.
We can still ensure that this century will be as much an American Century as the last—but only if we address our students’ performance gap in math and science. And the best way to do that is to incentivize more teachers to master the hard stuff.
Marcus A. Winters is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
“It’s not like science in public schools is anything worth mentioning as it is”
In yours maybe.
” I would like to see science teachers teach even more science and less nonsense.
And the anti-science religious fundamentalism that is being pushed in some areas has no role in science education.”
I just said science teachers do just that teach science.
And as for the religious fundamentalism, that’s just a tad bit of a strawman. There’s no real danger of religion replacing science. In many cases, religion backs up the science.
What the idiot Muslims do is there problem.
I agree with you on this. The bump science got in the late 1950s and early 1960s was somewhat lost by the dope smoke of the late 1960s. And then the fundamentalists got a jumpstart and haven't helped the situation a bit.
And as for the religious fundamentalism, that’s just a tad bit of a strawman. There’s no real danger of religion replacing science. In many cases, religion backs up the science.
No strawman--fundamentalist religion is looking to replace science, or when they can't, to censor science. Look at the Texas squabbles; look at Dover and a host of other issues that were taken to the courts to prevent fundamentalism from being forced on students.
And you don't have to go any further than these threads to see that exact process in action. If a certain group of posters here had their way, the age of the earth would be fixed at about 6,000 years and the theory of evolution would be banned from the schools. As a fallback position they generously admit that they would like both science and fundamentalist religion taught.
No, they hate science, or at least those results that contradict their religious beliefs. They are working and hoping to censor science in the short term and to "replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions" in the long term -- at which point it will no longer be real science.
Look at history. What you claim is *religious fundamentalism* was just what most people believed several decades ago and further back. There was no theocracy. Reintroducing creation back into the schools like it was taught for centuries is no more going to harm science than it did then.
Creation was removed from public schools decades ago. Show us how science education benefited from it. Show us how it improved our ranking in science education in the world to have only evolution taught in public schools.
That should be easy to do because all you have to do is go back in our own history.
You're getting to be a one-trick pony. You really should realize that its not an either-or situation. There are a lot of other factors in the equation.
To claim, as you do, that the drop in educational excellence over the past 50 or more years is a direct result of the removal of fundamentalist religion from science classes is a delusion of the highest order.
To claim that ignores the vast changes of the 1960s. It also dishonestly cojoins those changes with having "only evolution taught in public schools." Sorry, that's a fundamentalist's delusion.
The surge in science education of the late 1950s and early 1960s (largely brought about by the space program) was severely impacted by the liberal surge of the late 1960s.
Neither of these had any relationship to whether fundamentalist religion was taught in the schools or not.
And no amount of fundamentalism--not even an absolute theocracy--will bring back your incorrectly remembered "golden years." Sorry, Humpty has taken the big fall and he's not coming back. (Remember "The Enlightenment?")
You write, "Reintroducing creation back into the schools like it was taught for centuries is no more going to harm science than it did then."
You are advocating teaching religion as science; your religion in place of science. Creationism is religion--everyone agrees to that. What you want is that your religion be taught as fact, as verifiable evidence, and as science--but I suspect you don't want your claims to be subjected to the scientific method, to testing of the "weaknesses," if you will. To "critical thinking." You are glad to have "weaknesses" and "critical thinking" applied to the theory of evolution, but that's really the last thing you want for your own beliefs.
And you claim not to be anti-science... Sorry, you (and a couple of others here) are the poster children for anti-science fundamentalists.
Tell you what, when you can provide sources that are mainstream or at least neutral in viewpoint get back to me.
I’m well aware of your “bias” towards anything that smacks of religion, especially when it comes to the subject of evolution.
And yes your argument is a strawman. You throw it out there everytime this subject comes up, just like you’re really afraid of the truth.
“Forced government control of education and mandatory draft because it’s good for you, whether you know it or not, and whether you like it or not?”
I never thought of coyoteman as ‘conservative’ but his post was quite revealing. The evolutionists really do want total control over education.
You should see where most of them stand on mandatory vaccines and their opinion of people who oppose the mandatory part.
Idiots! Can't even tell the difference between analyzing a situation and advocating it? My comment on the draft analyzed the effects of its elimination. That's a far cry from advocating for its return.
No wonder you guys dislike science and anything requiring analytical reasoning; you're so poor at it.
I never thought of coyoteman as ‘conservative’ but his post was quite revealing. The evolutionists really do want total control over education.
Not conservative because I'm not a theocon zealot? I can live with that. But I supported Reagan during his first campaign and was president of a Young Republican chapter -- both back in the 1960s.
And my goal as far as eduction is concerned is to keep you and your ilk from peddling your fundamentalist anti-science beliefs in place of science, or instead of science as I'm sure many of you would prefer.
“And my goal as far as eduction is concerned is to keep you and your ilk from peddling your fundamentalist anti-science beliefs in place of science, or instead of science as I’m sure many of you would prefer.”
No, your goal should be to simply post whatever you feel like on freerepublic because you will certainly not be able to control the education of OUR kids.
As for the draft, I sure didn’t see any ‘analysis.’ I guess the standard for analysis has been so butchered by evolutionists that you can come up with any connection you want and still call it ‘analysis.’
If you don’t like what your kids are learning in publicly funded schools paid for by those parents who consistently vote to have creation and ID taught along with evolution, start your own God-free, evolution only private atheist school or homeschool. You’re free to do that any time you wish.
Advertise for it and watch the stampede as people flock to your school.
Educate them on your own dime and stop trying to force your views on us because you think that you can justify dictating your views to others, whether they like it or not.
“those parents who consistently vote to have creation and ID taught along with evolution”
or at least simply be allowed to question evolutionary claims in school.
You want to question evolutionary claims try the peer reviewed journals. That's where science is conducted.
In schools students are expected to learn something about science before they start saying its all wrong.
(That's the difference between real science and creation "science.")
The difference is that creation science makes predictions that can be confirmed while evolutionists simply make up lots of fudge factors to get the data to appear to fit to their contrived conjectures after the fact.
Kind of hard to do when truth is a wopd best avoided in science.
If you don't know what's true, you can't tell other people that they are wrong.
wopd=word
How dare they!
There is simply no reason for the evo/atheists to demand that creation be removed from the public schools.
Poll after poll indicates that the majority of parents want it addressed along with evolution. For those who don't want their kids to hear it, they have several options besides using litigation to force their worldview on others.
Those options are: homeschool, start their own private God free evo only schools, or opt out of that part of the class on the day that creation is addressed.
There is simply no justification for using the heavy hand of the government to oppress something that they don't think should be taught.
I wonder if their faith in their theory is so weak that they're afraid that if their kids hear about creation in school that they might believe it.
Kind of hard to do when truth is a wopd best avoided in science.
If you don't know what's true, you can't tell other people that they are wrong.
You are showing that you are either incapable of learning, or committed to deliberate distortion and misrepresentation. I suspect the latter. That's what creation "science" is all about anyway.
For the lurkers not following the discussion, I frequently post a definition from a CalTech physics website:
Truth: This is a word best avoided entirely in physics [and science] except when placed in quotes, or with careful qualification. Its colloquial use has so many shades of meaning from ‘it seems to be correct’ to the absolute truths claimed by religion, that it’s use causes nothing but misunderstanding. Someone once said "Science seeks proximate (approximate) truths." Others speak of provisional or tentative truths. Certainly science claims no final or absolute truths. Source
This is deliberately and consistently misrepresented--until it amounts to a lie--to claim that science is untrue and that scientists don't know what is true (as in the above post) so that they can't say something is wrong.
Science is not about "truth," "Truth," "TRUTH," or "TRVTH" -- science is about increasingly accurate descriptions and explanations for natural phenomena. And science is exceedingly good at this.
To turn this around, as posters here frequently do, to imply that science is untrue etc. is both sophistry and outright lying. It also shows the abject dishonesty of their arguments that they can't argue the merits of a position but automatically seek to misrepresent and to distort. It makes one suspicious of pretty much everything they post.
Lets try again:
In schools students are expected to learn something about science before they start saying its all wrong.
The question remains...
If you don’t like the idea of public schools teaching your children creation and ID as polls consistently show parents want, why don’t you homeschool them, or send them to a private school? Or even the more reasonable option of simply having them opt out of the class that day?
Why the push to ban what you don’t like from all public schools for all kids and parents?
Is you faith in the ToE so weak that you’re even afraid that your kids might hear something you don’t believe in? Is you faith in the ToE so weak that you can’t even allow any competing viewpoint to be presented?
You’re getting to be a one-trick pony. You really should realize that its not an either-or situation. There are a lot of other factors in the equation.
Riiiiiiiiight!!!!!
Your problems remain:
1. science thrived just fine pre-godless liberal NEA, as did education in general, without all the theocracy, inquistion, and burnings at the stake strawmen you regurgitate ad infinatum...
2. Home-schooled and private schooled kids perform better academically, than their counterparts who are taught by people with endless insecure God-hang-ups.
3. You can’t blame creationists because your cult saw to it to stomp God out of education!
There’s just no wiggling loose from the facts CM.
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