NSTA - Education News

Tweeting in Class
Nov 6 2009 - Inside Higher Ed
Do Twitter skeptics really believe the popular microblogging service offers no educational value, or are they just afraid of it?

Seven Cities Launch Collaborative Efforts to Improve
Nov 6 2009 - EducationNews.org
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced $4 million in grants to the National League of Cities’ Institute for Youth, Education, and Families, and seven cities to boost college graduation rates by better coordinating the services that colleges, schools, and communities provide to students.

Minority Students Earned Greater Number of Academic Degrees in Fiscal Year 2006
Nov 6 2009 - National Science Foundation
A new National Science Foundation report shows an increase in the number of academic degrees awarded to minority students since 2004, the last time such data were published.

Guest Column: DeadWeight an Example of Innovative Education
Nov 5 2009 - West Branch Times Online
During the same week the 2009 Nobel Prizes in science were announced, three Iowa 13-year-olds met with the Obama administration's top education and science officials to receive recognition for their own extraordinary scientific achievement.

Election Offers Varied Impact for Education
Nov 5 2009 - Education Week (requires registration)
The results from Tuesday's state and local elections around the country offer some potentially significant implications for K-12 education, as voters sent two big-city mayors with authority over their school systems back for another term and replaced Democrats with Republicans in two governors' mansions.

Why Johnny Can't Hypothesize: A Discussion about Math and Science Education
Nov 5 2009 - Scientific American
A panel of experts, moderated by The Wall Street Journal's managing editor gathered recently to discuss some of the challenges behind improving K-12 math and science education across the country.

At Top Schools, More Than Half the Profs Have Industry Ties
Nov 4 2009 - The Wall Street Journal
A survey conducted in 2006-07 and published this week in the journal Health Affairs found that 53% of academic research faculty in the life sciences at top schools reported financial ties to industry.

Race to the Top Education Grant Propels Reforms
Nov 4 2009 - USA Today
It's relatively small by Washington standards, but the Obama administration's $4.35 billion carrot for schools is already leading states to adopt a handful of key reforms.

Advanced Math, Science Mandatory
Nov 4 2009 - ArgusLeader.com
Despite criticism that they are setting the bar too high, the South Dakota Board of Education passed a new set of high school graduation rules Monday that make upper- level math and science classes mandatory.

Former Apple Executive to Lead U.S. Ed-Tech Office
Nov 4 2009 - Education Week (requires registration)
After months of anticipation about who would head educational technology initiatives at the U.S. Department of Education , ed-tech advocates praised the appointment of Karen Cator, saying the former educator and Apple executive brings to the job a passion for the potential of technology to improve teaching and learning.

ARL Student Receives National Honor
Nov 3 2009 - Aggie Town Square
USU graduate student Mark Towner, a science teacher at Granite Park Middle School in Salt Lake City, was chosen from hundreds of applications nationwide to participate as an Amgen-National Science Teachers Association Fellow in the 2009 NSTA New Science Teacher Academy.

Barberton Science Teacher Selected for Fellowship Program
Nov 3 2009 - The Suburbanite
Four out of the 185 science teachers chosen as Fellows in the 2009 NSTA New Science Teacher Academy are from Ohio.

First Lady Launches White House Mentoring Program
Nov 3 2009 - The Boston Globe
First lady Michelle Obama launched a mentoring rogram Monday to give local high school girls access to women at the White House.

The New Myths of Gifted Education
Nov 3 2009 - ScienceDaily
More than 25 years after myths about gifted education were first explored, they are all still with us and new ones have been added, according to new research.

TV Linked to More Child Aggression
Nov 3 2009 - WebMD
A new study shows that children who watch more television—and even those who are exposed to the television while other people in the home are watching—are more likely to be aggressive.

Socrates in the Boardroom
Nov 3 2009 - Inside Higher Ed
A new book says that research universities are best led by presidents who have had distinguished careers doing real research.

Which States Have the Highest Standards for Students?
Nov 2 2009 - The Christian Science Monitor
Each state comes up with its own standards for student achievement. A new study from the National Center on Education Statistics compares them. Here are the top and bottom five.

Parents: Focus More on 21st-Century Skills
Oct 30 2009 - eSchool News
Although parents, K-12 students, and educators agree that using technology is essential to learning and student success, parents are largely dissatisfied with the technology skills their children are learning in schools, according to a new analysis of survey data.

Many States Set Low Bar on Student Proficiency
Oct 30 2009 - The Boston Globe
Many states declare students to have grade-level mastery of reading and math when they do not, the Education Department reported yesterday.

Wash. Report: Health and Grades Related
Oct 29 2009 - The Seattle Times
A report based on data from a health survey of Washington state's young people has found a direct connection between healthy living and good grades.

After Complaints, Gates Foundation Opens Education Aid Offer to All States
Oct 29 2009 - The New York Times (requires free registration)
Some officials complained that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was trying to handpick the winners of the Department of Education's $4 billion grant competition, known as Race to the Top. After some reflection, the foundation last month broadened its offer to include all states that are competing for the money and can prove they share the foundation's views about education reform by signing an eight-point checklist.

STEM Defection Seen to Occur After High School
Oct 28 2009 - Education Week
Despite popular opinion, the flow of qualified math and science students through the American education pipeline is strong—except among high-achievers, who appear to be defecting to other college majors and fields.

Forensics Courses Becoming Classroom Fixture
Oct 28 2009 - Education Week (requires registration)
Over the past decade, forensic science has carved out a sizable niche in the science curriculum. Once found almost exclusively on college campuses, increasingly sophisticated forensics lessons—typically focused on crime-solving techniques—have become entrenched in many high schools and even some middle schools as electives or sections of core science classes.

Report Urges Colleges to Emphasize Math, Science, and International Studies
Oct 28 2009 - The Chronicle of Higher Education
Americans ages 25 to 34 are less educated, on average, than their parents' generation, and are less likely than their predecessors to earn degrees in science, technology, and mathematics, according to a new report by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

Grand Ledger Teacher Honored
Oct 27 2009 - Lansing State Journal
Allison Webster, a second-year science teacher at Grand Ledge High School, was recently selected by the National Science Teachers Association as one of two Michigan science teachers chosen as Fellows in the 2009 NSTA New Science Teacher Academy.

Common-Standards Leaders, Experts Eye Adding Math, Science
Oct 27 2009 - Education Week (subscription required)
Leaders of an effort to establish common academic standards in math and language arts have held tentative discussions with advocates for science and social studies groups about expanding that work into those subjects.

PCAST Tackles Science Education
Oct 27 2009 - ScienceInsider
Does the United States need another high-powered panel recommending ways to improve how students learn science and math? The President's Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST) thinks the answer is yes.

Clean Tech: Schools Bet on the Next Big Thing
Oct 27 2009 - eSchool News
New programs aim to prepare students for an emerging field with the transformative potential of railroads, telephones, and the internet.

Duncan Scolds Hawaii on School Furloughs
Oct 27 2009 - The Wall Street Journal
Hawaii schools drew a stern rebuke from Washington on Friday, the first of 17 furlough days planned for the school year, amid concerns that billions of dollars in federal aid won't be enough to prevent further classroom cuts across the U.S.

Floating Science Teachers Inspire Students
Oct 26 2009 - AP Texas News
Northrop Grumman is just one among many companies—Exxon Mobile Corp., Honeywell International Inc., Merck & Co., and Lockheed Martin Corp. to name a few—and government entities, such as the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency, providing hands-on experiences for science teachers in elementary and secondary schools.

New Works of Science Nonfiction
Oct 26 2009 - The Washington Post (requires free registration)
Creating an original organism required no bolt of lightning for a team of University of Virginia students. But it did take buckets of ice, vials of bacteria, and a FedEx delivery.

Darwin Teaching 'Divides Opinion'
Oct 26 2009 - BBC News
More than half of adults in a survey of 10 countries thought school science lessons should teach evolutionary theories alongside creationism.

Science Students Do Better When Teachers Go Back to School
Oct 26 2009 - Voice of America News
New research indicates that high school science teachers who get actual, hands-on experience doing scientific research become better teachers as measured by their students' test results.

Courses Transform Students into CSIs
Oct 24 2009 - The Washington Post (requires free registration)
Forensics classes have flourished across the country in the past several years. Science educators praise the courses for drawing together strands of chemistry, biology, physics, and more, and they say that the lab work is a practical introduction to solving problems using scientific methods.

Duncan: 'Revolutionary Change' Needed in Teachers Colleges
Oct 23 2009 - USA Today
The Obama administration is calling for an overhaul of college programs that prepare teachers, saying they are cash cows that do a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the classroom.

Diagnosing ADHD: Teacher Input Overlooked?
Oct 23 2009 - Web MD
Pediatricians are most often involved in the diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children, but many do not get recommended input from teachers before rendering a diagnosis, Consumer Reports says in a parent survey about their children with ADHD.

Putnam County Teachers Chosen for New Science Teacher Academy
Oct 22 2009 - 13 News WOWK.com
Two Putnam County science teachers have been chosen as Fellows in the 2009 NSTA New Science Teacher Academy. Erika Klose of Winfield Middle School and Maureen Miller of Poca High School were among 185 middle and secondary science teachers selected from hundreds of applicants nationwide.

San Leandro Teacher Selected for National Science Fellowship
Oct 22 2009 - The Daily Review
Samantha Johnson, in her second year of teaching, is participating as a fellow in the National Science Teachers Association's New Science Teacher Academy, which links veteran science educators from throughout the nation to new teachers as resources.

Teaching the Teachers
Oct 21 2009 - National Science Foundation
When science teachers do research in university labs, their students ultimately benefit—and it shows in their state assessments.

Experts, Public to Weigh In on Common Tests
Oct 21 2009 - Education Week
As 48 states charge ahead with plans to adopt common academic standards, the U.S. Department of Education will enlist experts and the public to help design a $350 million competition for the next step: the development of common tests.

Science, Tech Initiative Targeting Mass. 6th-Graders
Oct 20 2009 - The Boston Globe
A new nonprofit initiative will dispatch professionals from the worlds of science, engineering, and technology to sixth-grade classrooms around Massachusetts. The volunteer visitors' goal: to persuade students to consider careers in the fields.

School Meals Need to Get Healthier: Report
Oct 20 2009 - Healthday.com
New guidelines are needed to improve the diets of U.S. school children, finds a new government report that would set maximum calorie counts for school breakfasts and lunches.

Mesquite School Turns Trail into Pathway to Learning
Oct 20 2009 - The Dallas Morning News
As a science teacher at Mesquite's Gentry Elementary School, Beverly Murray-Ferrell made good use of the woods just outside her classroom, going out to collect leaves, bugs, and spiders to use in her lessons. Then, she said, it hit her: "Why am I bringing my bugs inside?" The students should be going outside.

Science Teacher Picked for Program
Oct 19 2009 - Deseret News
Salt Lake City middle school teacher Mark Towner has been chosen by the National Science Teachers Association to participate in a yearlong professional development program. Towner is in his second year teaching biology at Granite Park Junior High in Salt Lake City.

Method Challenges some Education Myths
Oct 19 2009 - The Los Angeles Times
Districts and states that use the "value-added" approach have had some surprising results: Class size, student background and schools' funding appear to be less critical than has long been believed.

Student's Research: Energy Drinks Are Bunk
Oct 19 2009 - CBS News
Energy drinks are a growing industry, but some question how much energy beverages actually generate. As Russ Mitchell reports, a young researcher finds that high energy drinks are running on empty.

Officials: 250,000 Teaching Jobs Aided by Stimulus
Oct 19 2009 - The Boston Globe
The Obama administration says spending aimed at boosting the economy has created or saved 250,000 teaching or other education jobs this year.

Boyd Teacher Enrolls in National Academy
Oct 16 2009 - McKinney Community News & Voices
McKinney Boyd teacher Frederick Wiatrowski is back on the enrollment list. Now he not only spends his days at school teaching class, but takes instruction himself through a program developed by the National Science Teacher Association. His name was checked for pronunciation and off the list alongside 185 others from around the nation when the organization’s 2009 New Teacher Science Academy began.

Homepage
Oct 16 2009 - Palo Alto Daily News
Palo Alto resident Craig Young was recently selected as an Agilent Foundation-NSTA Fellow in the New Science Teacher Academy. Young, a science teacher at Wilcox High School in Santa Clara, was chosen from hundreds of applicants from across the country to participate in NSTA’s year-long professional development fellowship program.

States, Districts Feel Stimulus-Reporting Strain
Oct 15 2009 - Education Week
Faced with their first reporting deadlines for economic-stimulus aid to education, school districts are toiling over how every stimulus penny has been spent so far and how many jobs have been saved—numbers that will be scrutinized not just by the public, but by government auditors as well.

Kindle Lightens Textbook Load, But Flaws Remain
Oct 15 2009 - Yahoo! Tech
Amazon.com gave more than 200 college students its Kindle e-reading device this fall, loaded with digital versions of their textbooks. But some students are finding they miss the decidedly low-tech conveniences of paper.

Statewide Math, Science Conference to Be Held in Juneau for First Time
Oct 14 2009 - Juneau Empire
Hosted by the Alaska Science Teachers Association and the Alaska Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the sixth Alaska Statewide Math and Science Conference will take place Wednesday through Saturday at varying locations, mainly Juneau-Douglas High School and the Baranof Hotel.

NAEP Math Scores Idle at 4th Grade, Progress at 8th
Oct 14 2009 - Education Week
Stagnant elementary results for the first time in two decades are likely to spur policymakers to re-examine math instruction.

Plan Calls for Action on 21st-Century Skills
Oct 14 2009 - eSchool News
More than 200 schools, districts, universities, state education departments, businesses, and nonprofit organizations have expressed support for a "National Action Agenda" from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

Believing in God and Evolution
Oct 14 2009 - Inside Higher Ed
A new movement is encouraging Christian colleges to embrace the teaching of evolution—without giving up professors' or students' faith.

Achievements
Oct 13 2009 - The Register-Guard
Corrinn Bruce, a science teacher at Mohawk High School, is one of four Oregon teachers selected by the National Science Teachers Association to be a Fellow in the 2009 New Science Teacher Academy.

Teacher Selected for Science Fellowship
Oct 13 2009 - The Intelligencer Wheeling News-Register
Science teacher Jennifer Schwertfeger has been selected for a fellowship program in the National Science Teachers Association. She was selected from hundreds of applicants nationwide and was one of three selected from West Virginia out of 185 who applied to be an Amgen-NSTA Fellow.

Results From the Experiment: Middle Schoolers Pronounce Science "Cool" after Lab Visit
Oct 13 2009 - The Washington Post (requires free registration)
Montgomery County, Maryland, has hit on the formula for getting young people interested in science: Unleash 190 seventh-graders in a building full of robots, prosthetic limbs, microscopes, remote-controlled surgical arms and bacteria-filled flasks, and watch what happens.

State's Technical High Schools Working to Emphasize "Green" Skills
Oct 13 2009 - eSchool News
All ninth-graders in Connecticut's 16 technical high schools are learning about solar energy, renewable energy, and energy conservation—a first step in the schools' ongoing effort to prepare students for what is hoped to be a boom in "green technology" jobs, reports the Hartford Courant.

Teachers Benefit from Job-Saving Stimulus Spending
Oct 13 2009 - The Boston Globe
Teachers appear to have benefited most from the effort to save jobs with the $787 billion recovery package, which sent billions of dollars to states that were on the verge of ordering heavy layoffs in education.

Saipan Science Teacher Selected for NSTA Fellowship Program
Oct 9 2009 - Saipan Tribune
Michael Blasberg, a science teacher at Marianas High School in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, was chosen from hundreds of applications to participate as an Amgen-NSTA Fellow in the 2009 NSTA New Science Teacher Academy.

Study: 4-H Sparks Science Achievement in Children
Oct 8 2009 - Associated Press
American universities have an ally in their efforts to educate more students in science, technology, and engineering and keep the nation competitive in the global economy, a Tufts University study released Wednesday shows.

Two Local Teachers to Attend Science Academy
Oct 8 2009 - Lake Villa Review
Fifteen science teachers from Lake, Cook, Kane, McHenry, and Tazewell Counties will participate in the 2009 NSTA New Science Teacher Academy. Mendralla and Emmons School teacher Melonnie Hartl were two of those 15 teachers chosen to participate in the academy.

College Technology Catching Up with Students
Oct 8 2009 - USA Today
Today's college campuses incorporate iPhones and Kindle, classrooms are high-tech marvels, with overhead projectors and grease pencils replaced by document cameras, handheld clickers, and interactive white boards.