Science Education & Policy
Despite claims by the United States Department of Agriculture and the Obama administration that gaining more control over school choices will lead to healthier kids, school-based schemes to encourage children to eat healthily and be active have little effect. England has had similar lack of effect.
Low levels of physical activity and of fruit and vegetable consumption in childhood are associated with adverse health outcomes. School based interventions have the potential to reach the vast majority of children, and evidence reviews have suggested some beneficial effect but the poor quality…
First Lady Michelle Obama may mean well, but overturning school lunch policy based on the beliefs of someone who was paid $300,000 per year to do community outreach for a university wasn't really helping the poor children for whom a school lunch may be their most meaningful meal of the day.
Mandating fruit, which is what the USDA required in 2012, is fine, except a lot of it goes in the garbage. Most decisions are based on fads and gimmicks rather than real data.
Vermont's Charlotte Central school cafeteria has basically a restaurant menu, with locally sourced ingredients, including herbs and…
There are growing inequalities in health and wealth among Americans, a gap between "haves" and "have-nots" that has become obvious as the American middle class has been decimated in the ongoing recession, but that gap is no different in academic science. More and more academic scientists are competing for a pool of money that is not growing as fast as the pool of PhDs who want to stay in academia is.
While scientists in academia are overwhelmingly liberal, when it comes to science funding they are fans of capitalism - the best researchers should receive the most money and if universities…
Hank |
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Writing instruction in U.S. classrooms is "abysmal" and the Common Core State Standards don't go far enough to address glaring gaps for students and teachers, a Michigan State University education scholar argues.
In a new study, Gary Troia calls for a fresh approach to professional development for teachers who must help students meet the new writing standards. His research, funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences, appears in the journal School Psychology Review.
"We need to re-orient the way we think about teacher professional…
Hank |
The advent of science blogging in the early- and mid-2000s meant people needed things to write about - and people generally want to live in important times. That meant exaggeration, hysteria and hyperbole.
Journalism, in general, and science journalism in particular, has long been overwhelmingly partisan - a whole chapter in Science Left Behind was devoted to the death of science journalism, highlighting the unwillingness to ask the awkward questions regarding policy topics they personally favored, an inability to be trusted guides for the public and a desire to be cheerleaders for science…
Hank |
Samuel Arbesman and K. Brad Wray, 'Demographics and the fate of the young scientist', Social Studies of Science April 2013 vol. 43 no. 2 282-286 doi: 10.1177/0306312712470218
Hank |
http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2013/01/08/science_has_always_b...
The mythology of the super-rational, completely impartial scientist is promoted by scientists - but it has probably done more harm than good.
Good science requires passion, it requires arguments and it requires a desire to beat out other people. The notion that scientists are instead modern-day versions of Spock from "Star Trek", dispassionately analyzing data and uncovering the secrets of nature, is in defiance of what we know about actual scientists who do breakthrough work.
It also leads to claims that…
Hank |
Science scores are up among students and two-thirds of students have a decent grasp of science. That sounds pretty good, right?
If you are in the 'education stinks so let's give it more money' business, though, higher scores are cause for alarm. “This is dreadful,” Gerry Wheeler, interim executive director of the National Science Teachers Association, told the Washington Post.
Well, better scores are indeed a bad thing if you are in the business of being a paid lobbyist to hire more teachers and you have to confront the uncomfortable truth that teacher hiring has far…
Hank |
Science is hard. Because it is hard, the people teaching it should not be determined by how long they have been in a union.
In 1980, the same percentage of teachers voted for Jimmy Carter as voted for Ronald Reagan. In the new millennium 95 percent of union donations go to Democratic candidates. Are Democrats simply more pro-education now? No, the No Child Left Behind program was created to fix the morass that public education had fallen into and it had terrific bipartisan support.
What changed was the real power in education. In 1979, President Carter…
Hank |
if you are reliant on government funding, you put yourself out of business
http://skirsch.com/politics/globalwarming/ifrQandA.htm
Why wouldn't this be valid? It is the exact same logic activists use about corporations, why would people be any different in another job?