What’s the best way to fix America’s education system? Conservatives push voucher programs and charter schools. Liberals want to fix schools with more money and reduced class sizes. But columnist Steve Chapman says research shows that neither side has the right answers.

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Tags: Education Policy, Research on Learning

A number of teachers think engineering helps boost K-12 math and science learning and stimulates student interest. If a congressional panel gets its way, soon there may be real data to back up the theory.

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Middle school science teachers in five New Hampshire and Vermont school districts will be getting some classroom help from STEM graduate students at Dartmouth College. The college recently received a five-year, $2.5 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to help bring about collaborations between the grad students and teachers. The grants should help the grad students “acquire value-added skills,” including the ability to communicate STEM subjects to both technical and nontechnical audiences and how best to enrich K-12 STEM learning and instruction.

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Tags: College, National Science Foundation

Senate Democrats are pushing for another bailout of recession-hit public schools. Iowa’s Tom Harkin, the Senate’s leading Democrat on education issues, has proposed a $23 billion package to help K-12 schools across the country avoid layoffs of teachers and staff. Last year, as part of the economic stimulus package, Washington gave nearly $100 billion to states to help them shore up schools hit by budget squeezes.

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Tags: Education Policy, Public Policy

How well do America’s future math teachers stack up against their counterparts around the world? Just so-so, according to a new Michigan State University study released last week. They earned an average C grade, and were well and truly aced by rivals from education-centric countries like Singapore and Taiwan.

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Tags: College, Math teachers, Mathematics, Research on Learning, Teacher Training

A recent event for high school inventors from across America at NASA’s Ames Research Center was not your average science fair. The 2010 Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award Summit handed out top prizes of $5,000 in grant money to winners of four categories — aerospace, renewable energy, green building and space nutrition — while finalists received $1,000. Students also got to talk to potential investors.

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Tags: Competitions for Students, Ideas & Inventions, NASA, Science Contest

Is dissection essential to a high school biology class? That’s a question lawmakers in Connecticut are grappling with, according to the Hartford Courant. A bill heading to the state senate floor would allow students to opt out of dissections if they raise conscientious objections. Critics have long argued the procedure is outmoded and inhumane, while biology teachers have countered that it remains the most effective way to teach kids anatomy.

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Tags: Biology, Education Policy, Public Policy, Science Education

Give kids a laptop and a wireless broadband connection and just watch them search, chat, and network. But that’s not good enough, says the Computer Science Teachers Association, which wants more schools teaching students how computers actually work.

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Tags: Computer Engineering, Computer Programming, Computer Science, Curriculum, Software

It’s not unusual to find an occasional error in a text book. But, a K-6 mathematics series recently purchased by two Sacramento, California, school districts is not only riddled with mistakes, some of them are real whoppers. For instance: informing kids that five times three equals five. Publisher Macmillan/McGraw-Hill said it was working with district officials to rectify the problems.

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Tags: Education Policy, Mathematics, Textbooks