T C E B TRIANGLE COALITION ELECTRONIC BULLETIN JANUARY 4, 2001 VOL. 7, NO. 1 _____________________________________________________ Published by the TRIANGLE COALITION FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION _____________________________________________________ THIS WEEK'S TOPICS: NEW TRIANGLE COALITION BOARD MEMBERS AND OFFICERS ELECTED SCHOOL ISSUE MAY BE LESSON FOR BUSH U.S. STUDENTS' SCORES DROP BY 8TH GRADE AS EDUCATION HEAD, PAIGE FACES BIG LEAP SCIENCE AND MATH STUDENT PRODIGIES COMPETE FOR $100,000 COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIP PRIZE NATIONAL DIGITAL LIBRARY GOAL BOOSTED BY NSF AWARDS ____________________________________________________ NEW TRIANGLE COALITION BOARD MEMBERS AND OFFICERS ELECTED We are pleased to announce the newly elected Board Members and Officers for the Triangle Coalition for 2001. Each of the new Board Members will serve a three-year term on the Board. Look for "Board Member Profiles" in upcoming issues of the TCEB. Newly-elected Board members: Phyllis Buchanan Manager, Education Initiatives E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Company Tom Ferrio Vice President, Educational & Productivity Solutions Educational Segment Business Manager Texas Instruments Inc. Thomas Gadsden, Jr. Associate Director for Collaboration Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Mathematics and Science Education Jon Pedersen Executive Secretary, Association for the Education of Teachers in Science Professor of Science Education, University of Oklahoma David Schutt Assistant Director American Chemical Society James Stith Director, Physics Resources Center American Institute of Physics Jim Thompson President & CEO Georgia Youth Science & Technology Centers, Inc. 2001 Officers: President: M. Blouke Carus Chairman & CEO Carus Corporation Vice President: M. Suzanne Mitchell Program Director Arkansas Department of Higher Education Secretary/Treasurer Peter Farnham Public Affairs Officer American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology We would also like to offer sincere thanks to the following retiring members of the Triangle Coalition Board: - Constantine Anagnostopoulos, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; Eastman Kodak Company - John W. Collette, E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Company - Richard J. Gowen, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; South Dakota School of Mines and Technology - Irma S. Jarcho, Teachers Clearinghouse for Science and Society Education, Inc. - Lucy Keith, Alcoa Foundation - Mike Peralta, JETS - John S. Rigden, American Institute of Physics A list of the Officers and the full Board with contact information can be found on the Triangle Coalition web site at www.trianglecoalition.org/off.htm. *********************************** SCHOOL ISSUE MAY BE LESSON FOR BUSH (Source: Los Angeles Times, Sunday, December 24, 2000) President-elect George W. Bush has chosen to top his agenda in Congress next year with education reform, an initiative that he hopes will spur the kind of bipartisanship seen as essential to the success of his presidency. But on Capitol Hill, bipartisanship on education reform may not be as easy as it looks. Both parties proclaim the need to improve the nation's schools. But in recent years, some of the most emotional, protracted fights in Congress have been fought over exactly how to do that. Vouchers. Testing. Religion in schools. Those are white-hot political issues that continually have split lawmakers. The bickering was so bad that Congress, in the session that just ended, failed for the first time in 35 years to enact a routine reauthorization of the main federal education law. When centrists offered a compromise between feuding Senate factions, only 13 people voted for it. Hoping to bridge those stubborn divisions, Bush invited a large, bipartisan group of Senators and House members to Texas in mid December for a meeting to discuss his education agenda. His main goals include giving states more flexibility in using federal education money, making schools more accountable for results, and stepping up early education and literacy programs. "There was a lot of agreement," Bush said after the meeting. "There is no better place to start to show [America] that our Congress and the president can cooperate for the best of the country than education." But lawmakers from both parties warned that, if Bush wants to begin with a quick victory in Congress--rather than a big fight--he would be wise to soft-pedal one of his most ambitious proposals: vouchers. A key element of his effort to make schools more accountable is a plan to allow the families of disadvantaged students in failing schools to convert federal aid into a voucher that they could use for private education. The education meeting provided a window into how Bush plans to build bridges to the Democratic Party--by aiming straight for its conservative wing. Almost all the Democrats at the meeting in Texas were moderate-to-conservative "new Democrats." Pointedly excluded was Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), the Senate's leading liberal voice on education issues. Kennedy did not comment on his exclusion. But his spokesman, Jim Manley, said that he did not believe the group Bush met with "represents all the interests that [will have] to be dealt with on the House and Senate floor." The course of this year's education debate will provide a clear test of whether Bush's administration can help break old partisan habits that have crippled an array of school reform initiatives. *********************************** U.S. STUDENTS' SCORES DROP BY 8TH GRADE (Source: Education Week, December 13, 2000) In 1995, the nation's 4th graders aced international mathematics and science tests. By the time they reached the 8th grade in 1999, though, they had become little better than C students on a global curve, according to the Third International Mathematics and Science Study-Repeat (TIMMS-R). The scores from the 38-nation testing project reinforce what many education researchers have said for a long time: American schoolchildren fail to sustain the achievement advantages they gain in elementary school. In 1995, U.S. 4th graders bested the international average in both mathematics and science, ranking in the upper tier of science achievement and near the top in math in the 29-nation survey. By the time the same group of students reached the 8th grade, its performance was mediocre. When U.S. 4th graders scored better than 8th and 12th graders on the 1995 tests, many speculated that curriculum changes made in the early 1990s were paying off for the nation's youngest students. Some policymakers and educators predicted that the achievement would be sustained as the students got older. But the TIMSS-R results undercut that theory. "Some people thought the 4th graders [in 1995] reflected a new trend," said William H. Schmidt, a professor of education at Michigan State University and the head of a project that compared the curricula of all countries that participated in the 1995 TIMSS project. "This says that's not true. We don't have a new cohort of high-performing kids." The data suggest specific places where American students lag. In mathematics, they perform below the international average in geometry and measurement, but score well in fractions and algebra. In science, they score the lowest on questions dealing with physics, chemistry, and earth science, but show well on environmental issues. In the United States, math and science curricula fail to introduce gradually new and more challenging topics and concepts, according to Mr. Schmidt. Instead, the curriculum typically reinforces skills learned in earlier grades. In 7th and 8th grades, most U.S. students are still reviewing arithmetic that children in other countries have mastered by the 5th grade, he said, and have moved on to study geometry and algebra. The results may suggest that students in the United States spend so much time practicing specific skills that they never understand the mathematical principles that underlie them. For more information, the report "Pursuing Excellence: Comparisons of International Eighth-Grade Mathematics and Science Achievement from a U.S. Perspective," is available from the National Center for Education Statistics at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2001028. *********************************** AS EDUCATION HEAD, PAIGE FACES BIG LEAP (Source: Houston Chronicle, December 31, 2000) If he is confirmed as U.S. education secretary, Rod Paige would have 83 percent fewer employees than he has as superintendent of the Houston Independent School District (HISD). But his budget would rise from $1.3 billion to $42.1 billion because of the 175 federal programs they administer -- many of them distributing money to local school systems, researchers, and students. Policy discussions may also be a bit testier in Congress than at the Paige-friendly HISD board of trustees. President-elect George W. Bush announced he would nominate Paige to be secretary of education. He must be confirmed by the Senate. Paige would be the first person to step directly from a local school system to the Cabinet-level post, created by President Carter in 1980. The previous secretaries were two governors, a college president, a chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a national education commissioner, and a federal judge. Paige also would have the distinction of leading the agency under the first Republican president or presidential candidate who has not vowed to kill the department as an unnecessary intrusion on local control of schools. Bush fought to keep the language out of the party platform last summer. Officials said the education secretary serves two purposes. He is a national advocate for the president's education positions, and he runs the department, which is the smallest of all Cabinet-level departments at 5,000 employees. *********************************** SCIENCE AND MATH STUDENT PRODIGIES COMPETE FOR $100,000 COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIP PRIZE The nation's capital turned its attention from presidential politics to the country's top high school science students at the national finals of the second annual Siemens Westinghouse Science & Technology Competition. The individual and team winners developed multi-discipline, original research projects to address two highly sophisticated issues in science: nano-science and astrophysics. The national winners of the Siemens Westinghouse Science & Technology Competition were Mariangela Lisanti in the individual category and Charles Olbert, Christopher Clearfield, and Nikolas Williams in the team category. The individual and team winners each received $100,000 scholarships from the Siemens Foundation. Runners-up received $20,000 scholarships. Individual winner Mariangela Lisanti, (age 17) developed a prize-winning original research project entitled, "Conductance Quantization in Au Nanocontacts." Her project involved the development of a novel technique for measuring conductance quantization in metallic nanowires. Conductance quantization was also observed for higher multiples of the conductance quantum - something that has never been seen before. The understanding of quantum phenomena is crucial in leading to the next generation of electronics where single atoms or molecules will be used to fabricate minute electronic devices. Future applications of this discovery will, for example, create faster and more efficient computers, medical implants that interact with the body, and tiny robotic systems for space exploration. Miss Lisanti is also a member of her school's math team, National Honor Society, and is founder and captain of the JETS National Engineering Design Challenge Team. Charles Olbert, Christopher Clearfield, and Nikolas Williams, all seniors at the North Carolina School of Science and Math in Durham, NC, won the team competition with their project entitled "Discovery of a Pulsar Bow-Shock Nebula in a Nearby Supernova Remnant." They analyzed the observations on one of the closest Galactic supernova remnants, the core of an exploded star in the Gemini constellation, using the new NASA Chandra X-ray telescope. The trio challenged the scientific explanation, held by their project mentor, that an unidentified region of high-energy within the supernova was a dense cloud of gas. The Siemens Westinghouse Science & Technology Competition was created by the Siemens Foundation to promote and advance math and science education in America. The competition is open to individuals and teams of high school students who develop independent research projects in the physical or biological sciences, or mathematics. The competition recognizes student projects for originality, creativity, academic rigor, and clarity of communication. For more information visit www.siemens-foundation.org. *********************************** NATIONAL DIGITAL LIBRARY GOAL BOOSTED BY NSF AWARDS A national online digital library, considered a key step toward addressing the digital divide, moved closer to reality recently with 29 awards totaling some $13.5 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The awards aim to create, organize, and install high-quality education resources onto the Internet. The awards from NSF's National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Education Digital Library (NSDL) program may strongly affect K-12 and undergraduate education by providing anytime, anywhere access to a rich array of authoritative and reliable interactive materials and environments, according to Lee Zia, NSDL program officer at NSF. The awards range in size from $160,000 to $840,000 over two years. Some of the newly funded projects focus on gathering and organizing content in areas such as geosciences, life sciences, engineering, and mathematics. Others will develop the processes to manage and coordinate that content in the library's core collections, and develop services for users and collection providers. For more information visit www.ehr.nsf.gov/ehr/due/programs/nsdl. _____________________________________________________ This TCEB is made possible by a grant from E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. Please visit their web site at www.dupont.com for more information about their educational support programs. The TCEB is a newsletter provided to members of the Triangle Coalition. Members may forward individual articles or the issue in its entirety providing that credit is given to the Triangle Coalition, and all of the following contact information is included in any republication. For TCEB subscription or membership information, contact: Triangle Coalition for Science and Technology Education 1201 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20005 phone: 800-582-0115 fax: 202-289-1303 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.triangle-coalition.org To submit information for possible inclusion in TCEB, contact: Joanne Van Voorhis, Target Marketing, Editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************ THE MISSION OF THE TRIANGLE COALITION IS TO FOSTER COLLABORATION AMONG LEADERS IN EDUCATION, BUSINESS, AND GOVERNMENT TO IMPROVE SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, AND TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION. The Triangle Coalition membership includes business, labor, education, science, mathematics, technology and engineering organizations, and community and state-based alliances. ************************************ -- This is the ISTA-talk mailing list. 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