Science Education & Policy

One day while shopping in your local supermarket in the next few years it's likely you'll run across a loaf of Arnold brand 100% Whole Wheat Bread with a label saying something like “Produced with Genetic Engineering.” Multiple states are passing or debating laws that would require most packaged foods to declare whether genetic modification was used in their production, including Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Oregon and Colorado. Some of the details that vary from state to state could cause headaches for the food industry. But the proponents of labeling claim to be more concerned with you, the…

The current government in Washington, D.C. may be dysfunctional but they still get together on some things. H.R. 5183, the Value-Based Insurance Design (VBID) for Better Care Act of 2014,could improve the health of patients with chronic illness while reducing what they spend on the medicines and tests they need most. The bill, introduced last week by U.S. Reps. Diane Black and Earl Blumenauer would allow Medicare Advantage plans to use innovative "value-based" insurance designs that could save both the federal government and patients money. For instance, Pitney Bowes, a Fortune 500…

Everyone says the 21st century is a high-technology one and so government agencies have spent billions pushing Science, Technology, Engineering and Math degrees in college, which has led to a glut among academics, while the government has pushed more math and science education in high schools, which is leading to...more dropouts. Writing in Educational Researcher, scholars at Washington University in St. Louis have found that more rigorous academics drive more students to drop out.  Studying census data going back to 1990, the authors that the U.S. dropout rate rose to a high of 11.…

Teach For America is a group that recruits recent college graduates to teach in poorer public schools for two years, the idea being that they would be better than substitute teachers in those districts. Education unions dislike the organization and call them 'scabs' - because they are non-union labor. Now, Teach for America is setting its sights on capturing school board seats across the nation. They are never going to win over an education union that wants to protect tenure and jobs, but if they win the school board, their goal of reforming education may succeed Rebecca Jacobsen, associate…

Beginning in 1969, a court decision, motivated by a lack of racial integration in schools, led to students being shipped to schools in other neighborhoods. As part of a political campaign against Richard Nixon, his political opposition latched onto this forced busing and school desegregation to show they cared about minorities more. The trade-off was that kids were no longer in their own neighborhoods and felt like pawns in a culture war. In some areas, this forced busing did not end until 2001 but it was commonly regarded as a disaster and ended quickly in most districts - parents who had…

A new National Academy of Sciences (NAS) assessment examining the causes of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident affirms the culture of safety adhered to by the U.S. nuclear industry. Core findings from the NAS study, “Lessons Learned from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident for Improving the Safety of U.S. Nuclear Plants,” validate the actions that the nuclear industry has initiated in recent years to be ready to manage plants if extreme natural events occur that may exceed a plant’s design basis. “The U.S. nuclear energy industry began taking steps within days of the Fukushima Daiichi…

Vouchers to buy fresh fruits and vegetables at farmers markets increase the amount of produce in the diets of some families on welfare, according to a new paper in research in Food Policy which suggests that farmers market vouchers can be useful tools in improving access to healthy food.  Perhaps. Half of the people dropped out of the test even though they got more money to shop for produce at farmer's markets. The analysis was designed to validates a new provision in the Agricultural Act of 2014 that seeks to get low-income families buying produce at farmers markets rather than…

A new paper by the Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC) has identified two factors that characterize sustainable university and college programs designed to increase the production of highly qualified physics teachers. Specifically, one or more faculty members who choose to champion physics teacher education in combination with institutional motivation and commitment can ensure that such initiatives remain viable. Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) teacher shortages are especially acute in physics, and the study points the way for institutions seeking to increase the…

Activists unable to get the U.S.federal government to enact any law regarding labeling of genetically modified foods have successfully pushed for their own versions in a handful of states. But the resulting patchwork may create bigger headaches for the food industry. Oregon’s Secretary of State certified a petition Wednesday to put GMO labeling on the November ballot. A similar effort is also underway in Colorado. Connecticut, Maine and Vermont have all passed GMO labeling laws over the last two years. Connecticut's and Maine's statutes have“trigger” clauses that prevent them from going into…

Teaching remains more art than science and a popular conjecture that has caught the attention of the education business has been that fourth grade is when students stop learning to read and start reading to learn.  People love to swap terms around that way. But is it accurate? A new paper in Developmental Science says there is nothing special about fourth grade at all, there is no change in automatic word processing, a crucial component of that reading shift conjecture. Instead, some types of word processing become automatic before fourth grade, while others don't switch until…