Live Long and Prosper...

SHORTCHANGING OUR CHILDREN...AND OUR FUTURE

Missing an S for Science in the STEM Frenzy

Like other aspects of America's infrastructure, our public education system is being systematically dismantled. We're shortchanging the future of the nation by not providing a full curriculum for all our students.

Two in 5 schools don’t offer physics! In both Alaska and Oklahoma, about 70 percent of high schools don’t offer the course. Florida and Utah are close behind, with nearly 60 percent of high schools lacking physics. Iowa, New Hampshire, and Maine do much better, with only about 15 percent of schools not offering the subject.

Small schools are hurt worse, raising questions about the quality of science instruction in charter schools.

Ninety percent of America’s kids attend public schools, so dwindling science instruction is troubling. But it’s not surprising. Defunding public education is intentional, meant to transform schools into technology hubs—charters for the poor.

What message are we sending to the future?

RETENTION-IN-GRADE

Held back, but not helped

Yet another state discovers that retention-in-grade doesn't help students.

Louisiana is one of the states where you have to pass a test to move on to the next grade (in fourth and ninth grades). After a retention rate of around 25%, they've found that the process doesn't really help.

Retention is a problem that even educators contribute to...not just legislatures, school boards, or politicians. It's true that the legislatures and politicians are the ones who pass the "third grade punishment" laws (fourth grade in Louisiana), but rarely do teachers or administrators object beyond the "we need to make those decisions" stage. Those voices shouting "retention-in-grade doesn't work" are drowned out by the crowd shouting "we have to do something" followed by "what else can we do?" And therein lies the problem.

Teachers can't solve the problem of retention-in-grade on their own. Retention is ineffective as a method of remediation, as is passing a child to the next grade without any intervention. Intervention takes time and costs money.

States should stop wasting millions on testing, and, instead, spend that money on remediation. Struggling students need extra help, not another year doing the same thing over again. Research has repeatedly shown that intensive intervention works...but it costs money.

Only when we decide that our children are worth the cost will we be able to provide the education that each child needs.

Students who fell short were assigned mandatory summer-school classes, after which they took the test again. If that second attempt wasn’t successful, students couldn’t move on to fifth or ninth grade. The practice of retention in Louisiana also extended beyond the high-stakes grades. In 2015-16, more than one-third of all retained students were from grades K-3. In that same year, 10 percent of all ninth graders were held back. In a presentation a few years ago, a top education-department administrator, Chief of Literacy Kerry Laster, wrote, “We retain students despite overwhelming research and practical evidence that retention fails to lead to improved student outcomes.” Laster’s presentation, based on 2010 data, reported that 28 percent of Louisiana students did not make it to fourth grade on time.

WHY TEACHERS QUIT

Why Good Teachers Quit Teaching

Teachers are leaving the profession faster than they're entering. The non-educators in statehouses and legislatures are forcing teachers to do things that are not educationally sound. This has been going on for too long.

In what other profession do outsiders dictate practice? Who tells your attorney how to practice law? Who tells your plumber how to fix a leak? Who tells your doctor how to diagnose an illness?

Let teachers teach.

Bonnie D. left after 30 years of teaching because she felt the system was no longer acting in the best interest of all students. “Everything became all about passing the ‘almighty test,'” she says. “Decisions were made by the administrators to concentrate only on those students who could perform well. Call me old fashioned, but I always did my best to reach and teach every student in my room, not simply the ones who had the best chance of passing a test.”

In addition, many teachers worry about the effect high-stakes testing has on kids. “Sometimes tests coincide with a bad day,” Michelle S. tells us, “or a day when a student is just not feeling it. That is an incredible amount of stress on kids—especially those classified as ‘bubble kids.'”

Why It’s So Hard to Be a Teacher Right Now

Many legislatures are still relying on test scores to tell them which schools are "good" and which are "failing." That continued stress, added to the attitude out of the U.S. Education Department that public schools are a "dead end" means that being a teacher is not getting easier.

...test-prep stressors haven’t gone away, Weingarten says they started to abate late in 2015 when President Obama signed into law an act that gave states more power to determine public school curricula without the threat of federal penalties tied to standardized test scores. “There was hope things would get better,” she says.

But then a new source of stress emerged: the 2016 election, and President Trump’s appointment of Betsy DeVos to the post of Education Secretary. DeVos is a prominent charter-school advocate, and at times has been highly critical of America’s public schools. (She once said America’s public schools are “a dead end.”)

CHALKBEAT'S GREAT AMERICAN TEACH-OFF

Watch Out Padma, Here Comes Chalkbeat!

Chalkbeat accepts money from the forces of DPE (Destroy Public Education) such as the Gates Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the Anschutz Foundation, EdChoice, and the Walton Family Foundation. They claim that their supporters (complete list here) don't impact their editorial decisions.

Here's what I do know--teaching is not a competition. It's not a reality show. If it were a reality show, it would be judged by experts like Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris. The thing is neither of them would deign to participate in an exercise like this one by reformy Chalkbeat. More likely it will be an exercise in determining who can best read the Moskowitz Academy Scripted Lesson Plan, or who can make the Most Kids Pass the Test, or some other reformy nonsense.

I'm personally offended that Chalkbeat deems itself worthy of judging teachers. I've been reading Chalkbeat since it started. I rate it biased, reformy, ineffective, and totally unqualified to understand our jobs, let alone judge our work. We do not cook meals. We do not just do test prep. We deal with real people, and they have many more layers than the artichokes they prepared three ways on Top Chef last week.

A QUICK PEEK

There are always many more articles I'd like to post than I have room for (I try to keep the Medleys to between 4 and 8 articles). Here, then, are some that I recommend...without comments.

When Readers Struggle: Background Knowledge

This is the first in a series on struggling readers by Russ Walsh. As of Jan 7, there is a second post, When Readers Struggle: Oral Language

Whenever I ask a group of teachers to identify areas that seem to cause difficulty for struggling readers, lack of background knowledge is sure to be near the top of the list.

Liking Those We Don’t Like: The Dissonance Involved with Supporting Public Schools

It’s one of the most exasperating issues for parents and educators, but education goes relatively unmentioned in each campaign.

We can draw school zones to make classrooms less segregated. This is how well your district does.

Is your district drawing borders to reduce or perpetuate racial segregation?

American kids are 70 percent more likely to die before adulthood than kids in other rich countries

A new study ranks 20 wealthy countries on childhood deaths. The US comes in last.

Lawmakers want more research before they spend big on preschool. When it comes to vouchers, there’s no such hesitation.

Lawmakers have demanded lots of proof to determine whether preschool helps kids...

Yet they’ve requested no long-term study of another similarly designed, tuition support program — vouchers for private schools...

The Lasting Payoff of Early Ed

The benefits of early education are found to persist for years, bolstering graduation, reducing retention, and reducing special education placements.

The Mars Rover, Curiosity, is now crawling about the surface of one of our nearest neighbors in space. NASA released a picture which Curiosity took of itself...the equivalent of holding a camera in front of your face and snapping a picture. Take a look...

[Click here to see Curiosity's arm movement for taking a self-portrait]


Can We Afford This?

It's estimated that Curiosity's mission to Mars (over 9 years) has cost us about $2.5 billion. Can we really afford that? Is it worth the money?

Let's put the cost in perspective. Compare $2.5 billion with the following:

$1.38 trillion on two wars over the last 10 years
$17.6 billion on Christmas 2012,and more than $8 billion on Halloween
more than $20 billion a year on beer and more than $80 billion on cigarettes

The cost per American for the Curiosity's mission is about $8.00. For a family of four that's less than the average monthly cost of cell phone service ($47), even less if you have a smart phone.

We also spend around $750 billion on education, including public and private schools, from preschool through college.

We Can't Afford Not to Fund NASA

What have we gotten for our investment in the space program over the years? In an article titled Is Space Exploration Worth the Cost? a group of space experts discussed the cost of the venture...over the lifetime of America's space program.

It is true that, for every dollar we spend on the space program, the U.S. economy receives about $8 of economic benefit. Space exploration can also serve as a stimulus for children to enter the fields of science and engineering.

Apparently STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) is important. Inspiring children to go into those areas is probably a good thing.

Is there a price to inspiration and creativity? Economic, scientific and technological returns of space exploration have far exceeded the investment. Globally, 43 countries now have their own observing or communication satellites in Earth orbit. Observing Earth has provided G.P.S., meteorological forecasts, predictions and management of hurricanes and other natural disasters, and global monitoring of the environment, as well as surveillance and intelligence. Satellite communications have changed life and business practices with computer operations, cell phones, global banking, and TV. Studying humans living in the microgravity of space has expanded our understanding of osteoporosis and balance disorders, and has led to new treatments. Wealth-generating medical devices and instrumentation such as digital mammography and outpatient breast biopsy procedures and the application of telemedicine to emergency care are but a few of the social and economic benefits of manned exploration that we take for granted.

Space exploration is not a drain on the economy; it generates infinitely more wealth than it spends. Royalties on NASA patents and licenses currently go directly to the U.S. Treasury, not back to NASA.

It seems that NASA is bringing money back into the US Treasury...not just taking it out.

Unquestionably, manned exploration of that era also created unintended economic consequences and benefits, such as the spinoff of miniaturization that led to computers and cell phones.

To be certain, tax dollars spent on space projects result in jobs — a large proportion of which are high paying, high tech positions. But many other government programs do that as well — some more efficiently.

I don't remember any of the presidentail candidates talking about stimulating the economy and helping the job market by increasing spending for NASA...

Still, for those who would moan that this money could be “better spent back on Earth,” I would simply say that all of this money is spent on Earth — it creates jobs and provides business to companies, just as any other government program does. You have to spend all of NASA’s money “on Earth.” There is no way to spend it in space — at least, not yet.

One of my favorite people, Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about space exploration...

Innovations of scientific technology have been the drivers of...they've been the engines of economic growth ever since the Industrial Revolution.

The space program can be the tentpole for the entire scientific enterprise which can give manifold benefits in various different ways.

He also wrote an article for The Atlantic, How Space Exploration Can Make America Great Again. We need to educate adults about the benefits of space exploration.

Give NASA the money it needs, he argues, and the agency will stimulate the economy and inspire students to pursue innovative, ambitious projects. (Say, for example, a way to thwart a wayward asteroid that could threaten to wipe out humanity.) Continue to fund NASA at its current rate -- a shade more than $18.7 billion in 2011, or as Tyson often reminds, six-tenths of a percent of the federal budget -- and the country will lose an ongoing space race to the Chinese and European space agencies of the world.

The challenge has never been children. The challenge has been adults. I don't think you have to do anything special to get kids interested in science, other than to get out of their way when they're expressing that curiosity.

All the adults are saying, "We need to improve science in the world. Let's train the kids." I've never heard an adult say, "We need more science in the world. Train me." I've never heard an adult say that. It's the adults that need the science literacy, the kind of literacy that can transform the nation practically overnight.

...and in his book, The Space Chronicles...

At least once a week, if not once a day, we might each ponder what cosmic truths lie undiscovered before us, perhaps awaiting the arrival of a clever thinker, an ingenious experiment, or an innoabtive space mission to reaveal them.We might further ponder how those discoveries may one day transform life on Earth.

Absent such curiosity, we are not different from the provincial farmer who expresses no need to venture beyond the county line, because his forty acres meet all his needs. Yet if all our predecessors had felt that way, the farmer would instead be a cave dweller, chasing down his dinner with a stick and a rock.

During our brief stay on planet Earch, we owe ourselves and our decedents the oppportunity to explore -- in part becuase it's fun to do. But there's a far nobler reason. The day our knowledge of the cosmos ceases to expand, we risk regressing to the childish view that the universe figuratively and literally revloves around us. In that bleak world, arms-bearing, resource-hungry people and nations would be prone to act on their "low contracted prejudices." And that would be the last gasp of human enlightenment -- until the rise of a visionary new culture that could once again embrace the cosmic perspective.

Just how has the space program benefited us? Specifics? Here are two sites with some information.

NASA Technologies Benefit Our Lives

Space exploration has created new markets and new technologies that have spurred our economy and changed our lives in many ways.

Health and Medicine (Artificial Limbs)
Transportation (Anti-Icing Systems for aircraft)
Chemical Detection (Identification of corrosive conditions in aircraft)
Public Safety (Firefighter Gear)
Consumer, Home, and Recreation (Freeze Drying Technology)
Environmental and Agricultural Resources (Harnessing Solar Energy and Water Purification)
Computer Technology (Better Software)
Industrial Productivity (Improved Mine Safety)
Food Safety Systems (guidelines for handling food to prevent danger)

Space Program Benefits: NASA’s Positive Impact on Society

...since 1990, NASA has recognized its “Government and Commercial Invention of the Year” and, since 1994, the “Software of the Year.” The following examples, shown by the year they were published in Spinoff, are merely indicative of NASA’s positive societal impact over the years.

1978: Teflon
1982: adaptations for portable cooling systems for treatment of medical ailments such as burning limb syndrome, multiple sclerosis, spinal injuries and sports injuries
1986: lightweight breathing system for firefighters
1991: safer, more reliable, advanced school bus chassis
1994: a mechanical arm that allows surgeons to operate three instruments simultaneously
1995: an artificial heart pump
2000: Global GPS Network
2000: a low cost ballistic parachute system that lowers an entire aircraft to the ground in the event of an emergency

We can't afford not to fund NASA and the space program. Looking at the list of benefits to society it's clear that most of us live in a society built on NASA's innovations. Finally, click here to see a longer list...