As the clock ticks down on Race to the Top

The official ED.gov website actually has a countdown timer (by the second, no less!) until applications are due -as if the folks preparing state applications need to be reminded how much of the 681 hours of preparation they still need to cram in before the deadline.

This morning’s Wall Street Journal has an  op-ed on the issue du jour related to RTTT: the priority for states to get union buy-in on their application:

Teachers unions in Minnesota and Florida are currently threatening to withhold support for their state Race to the Top applications, which are due later this month. So is the school boards association in Louisiana. This matters because the Administration has placed a premium on states garnering “local school district support” in order to win a grant. Not having union buy-in isn’t fatal, but it definitely hurts a state’s chances of getting federal funds.

States will be evaluated on a 500-point system, with the largest number of points (138) going to states that improve teacher effectiveness by using student performance to help rate instructors. States are awarded 45 additional points for getting “local education agencies” to sign off on their applications—about the same number of points they get for turning around failing schools.

Unions are mainly opposed to teacher accountability reforms. Both Florida and Minnesota want to implement or expand systems that tie teacher pay to student test scores. The irony is that both President Obama and Secretary Duncan have expressed support for such programs, yet Race to the Top is giving leverage to reform opponents who would eliminate or weaken these policies, and it punishes states that want to expand them over union objections.

What’s the STEM spin? Well, there is a competitive priority for STEM in RTTT, and I’m sure most states are at least paying lip-service to including STEM in their proposals. But given the extremely fast timeline on these proposals, if states are spending those precious hours trying to chase down union letters of support from each and every locality, how much time are they really able to devote to being thoughtful about how STEM fits into their state’s plans?

Word is that the first round decisions will be out in early April. We’ll see which states win out and whether – or how – STEM will move forward in those states.

On a lighter note, what I’d love to see this week is a state leader (somewhere, anywhere!) saying, “Actually, we don’t think our state is very well-positioned for Race to the Top Funding, but what the heck, we’re going to throw something together and see what happens.” No, instead we have 36 states (at last count) claiming that they are, indeed, well-positioned for the expected 12 or so awards .

Dollars…cents…same difference

This is making the rounds, and may have already reached you, but if not: a good object lesson in why math is important. This is apparently an actual recording of someone trying to straighten out their cellphone bill:

Nurturing Hispanic STEM success

Inside Higher Ed reports on a USC effort to identify colleges and universities that are really getting the job done in terms of nurturing Hispanic STEM students, and even more importantly, identify why they’re doing a better job than their peers.

[T]he USC scholars applied to the list of institutions a formula that accounted for such factors as their proportion of Hispanic enrollment, proportional enrollment in STEM fields, and selectivity, in order to develop a list of 25 colleges that had produced more Latino STEM graduates than would have been predicted based on their enrollments, selectivity and other criteria…The goal, Dowd wrote in an e-mail, is to identify those institutions that “produce a greater number of Latino STEM graduates than peer institutions with similar characteristics … because the underlying assumption is that they may be doing things (e.g., special programs, curricular innovations, smart administrative policies, culturally responsive pedagogy, focused counseling and advising, outreach to community colleges and Latino communities, Latino-targeted scholarships) that allow them” to do so. (Future analyses, she says, will examine those practices.)

The study looks at both enrollment in STEM programs and getting students through their study to earn a STEM degree. Reaction to the work seems positive.

“We don’t need to worry as much about la crème de la crème of Latino students who are going to go wherever they want — the highly selective institutions are going to be fighting over them,” [State Council of Higher Education for Virginia associate director] Quintana-Baker said. “I’m more concerned about the next layer of student who is bright, who is eager, but who just doesn’t have either the brilliant [high school] grades, the command of the language, or maybe doesn’t have social capital to be able to get over that difficulty…This approach is a very interesting and logical way to begin to get at that set of questions.”

The study didn’t look at all institutions (they focused in on four-year universities in states with high proportions of Hispanic residents, and within that, on universities with high proportions of Hispanic students). The full report is here.

$250 million to develop STEM teachers

Big news this morning from Washington: the feds are kicking in an additional $250 million to their already announced STEM campaign, this time to specifically target teachers, both existing and new. The goal is 10,000 new STEM teachers over 5 years, and professional development for 100,000. Because money is tight in Washington, funding is coming from corporate entities, universities, and foundations. 

“There is a recognition we can’t do everything,” said John P. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “We really need all hands on deck from the private sector and the philanthropic sector because the government can’t foot the whole bill for this.” 

Intel’s getting involved, with $200 million (cash and in-kind), and will be offering a math course (80 hours) for elementary teachers. 

“There’s a lot of research that says if the teacher has that content knowledge, they can spark excitement,” said Shelly Esque, Intel vice president for corporate affairs.  

To increase the supply of teachers, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Program is expanding to place an additional 700 teachers (including new efforts in Michigan and Ohio), UTeach will expand, and commitments from public universities to prepare 2,500 more STEM teachers a year. That last seems the fuzziest – guess we’ll have to watch the announcement at  1 pm (eastern time). 

“If we’re going to be economically competitive and continue to innovate and create jobs, we have to get much, much better in STEM education,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan. “There’s a huge sense of urgency.”  

via The Washington Post .

The rundown on robotics

For whatever reason, there’s been a bumper crop of robotics items in the news of late. Rather than post them individually, I’m going to devote this post to the topic – if you’re already doing robotics with students, maybe one of these resources will be new. If you’re not but are interested in how robotics fits into STEM education and workforce development, this list should give you a sense of some of the current activity.

Starting with the “real world” outside the classroom, MIT’s Technology Review has a summary of 2009 developments in robotics. If you’d like to gaze back further, here’s a robotics blog with the decade’s developments.

On to developments in education, whether formal (classroom-based) or informal (afterschool programs, etc.). NASA has launched a new page related to robotics education. Robin Shoop at the Robotics Academy at Carnegie Mellon University continues to do great work on building STEM curriculum using robotics as the gateway. There’s more on the way, Robin tells me.

iRobot (home of the Roomba) is getting involved in STEM through their SPARK  program (Starter Program for the Advancement of Robotics Knowledge). Lots of resources at this site, and they don’t restrict themselves to a single platform. You can find links to FIRST, VEX, and others, including iRobot’s Create.  Here’s  more on SPARK at Robot Review. If you’re interested in FIRST, you’ll definitely want to check out Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Think Tank .

Bottom line, of course, is whether robots can really turn kids on to STEM. Georgia Tech researchers want to know, too.

Photo: TWM on Flickr.

Calendar alert: Science Online 2010

It’s too late to attend in person, but you can still virtually participate in  Science Online 2010. There will be plenty of wiki-ing, Twitter-ing, blogging, etc. for the conference, which will be January 14-17.

Tackling the college “achievement gap”

Irving Epstein at Brandeis University has an op-ed in this weekend’s L A Times describing his efforts to raise the number of African-American students persisting and achieving in science at the university level:

The most promising approach I came across was developed by Uri Treisman at UC Berkeley in the late 1970s. Treisman wanted to understand why, over a 10-year period, there was not a single year in which more than two black or Latino students at Berkeley received grades of B-minus or better in first-term calculus. He set up a study to follow 20 African American and 20 Chinese American students with comparable socioeconomic backgrounds. His findings defied the stereotypes.

Treisman demonstrated that several widely held assumptions — that black students were less motivated or less prepared or had less family support — could not explain their lower grades. His conclusion was that “the black students typically worked alone” while “the Chinese students learned from each other.”

Using this insight, he constructed “an anti-remedial program,” open to all but populated primarily by minority students, which emphasized “group learning and a community life.” The results were dramatic, with participants in the program not only outperforming their minority peers but their white and Asian American classmates as well.

As it turned out, my university, Brandeis, already had a program that utilized team-building and peer support as mechanisms to help students survive and thrive academically. The program, run by the Posse Foundation, works with universities to select and coach “posses” of 10 inner-city students who then attend, in a group, some of the country’s top universities. The program is remarkably successful, producing a graduation rate over 90%. But even the Posse Foundation fell short in the sciences. Fewer than 10% of its students graduated in science, even though nearly half started off intending to do so.

Brandeis now has “science posses” of students from New York City. Students get intensive support tailored specifically for success in science (students work in a research lab, for example). The first cohort (it’s a new program) has been very successful.

Where is NASA blasting off to now?

NASA Watch reports that NASA’s STEM education efforts may be picking up some new momentum:

“On December 3, 2009, the NASA Office of Education hosted the NASA Industry‐Education Forum at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. The purpose of the NASA Industry Education Forum was to obtain ideas on how NASA and industry can make a demonstrable impact on student achievements in STEM and their desire to pursue careers in the aerospace industry. Aerospace companies who had demonstrated success in STEM workforce development were invited. Participants presented innovative ideas to increase our collective impact on the future aerospace workforce. The forum accomplished its intent: provide a mechanism to start a dialog, identify areas for collaboration and explore next steps. … A full report as well as well as a strategy for moving forward will be provided to participants and others upon request.

NASA Watch is less than enthusiastic about the event, or at the very least wants more information - the blog’s tagline in part reads”It’s YOUR space agency. Get involved. Take it back.”

Tufts set to engage students with STEM

The Tufts Daily reports that Tufts students are teaming up with Citizen Schools to lend a hand in Boston-area middle schools to get kids excited about STEM:

Citizen Schools’ teaching model focuses around weekly 90-minute-long apprenticeships taught by volunteer students and professionals. Citizen Schools will provide the volunteers with a small stipend to purchase needed supplies for demonstrations and simulations.

As part of the [Experimental College] course, teams of Tufts students will develop and implement a STEM curriculum in their own once-weekly, after-school apprenticeship taught at a local middle school. This ExCollege course, entitled “Teach What You Love: Become a Citizen Teacher,” is designed for students of all academic backgrounds and interests. A science background is not required. Whether you spend your time in East, Halligan, Miner or Barnum Halls, this opportunity is designed to bring students from a variety of disciplines together to find creative ways to engage middle school students in an educational endeavor. Each team of students will have the option to create an original course or teach one of Citizen Schools’ pre-made STEM curricula. These pre-made curricula have the entire 10-week apprenticeship mapped out, day-by-day, activity-by-activity and minute-by-minute. Absolutely anyone can teach them! Teaching experience is also not required. Everyone in the course will be trained to be a Citizen Teacher and will be given ample support and guidance before, after and during their apprenticeships.

Sounds like a good opportunity for both groups of students – I’m as curious about how the experience will affect the Tufts students as the middle schoolers. Citizen Schools has a good track record of training their volunteers so that it’s a positive experience for them.

Publication to bookmark: preparing STEM teachers

I try to keep a fairly robust collection of recent publications on STEM in my bookmarks – it’s particularly useful in preparing grant proposals.  Here’s one I’ve just come across from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. From the abstract:

Like many sectors in society, the teacher preparation community is working to address challenges the nation faces in relation to global competitiveness. This document highlights institutions around the country that are preparing tomorrow’s teachers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Well-known shortages of qualified math and science teachers continue to exist in most states and districts across the country. Thus unprepared teachers are assigned to teach math or science “out of field,” although research shows that students learn more from mathematics and science teachers who studied teaching methods in the subject they teach than from those who did not. In addition, the annual turnover rates of both math and science teachers of 16% are the highest of all fields. Schools, colleges, and departments of education are aware of these challenges and developing programs to produce more and better teachers in the STEM fields. This publication profiles a selection of STEM teacher preparation programs at American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) member institutions.

If you’re a Firefox user, I highly recommend Zotero as a way to keep track of all those bookmarks/publications (it’s free!). Zotero lets you group citations in various categories (for example, this one will probably go under “STEM teaching.” To get the most use out of Zotero, re-”find” your publication at scholar.google.com (if you don’t know this link, check it out – even if you’re not using Zotero – it’s great for finding research articles and the like). Then click on the EndNote link to import the formatted citation into Zotero.