Change the Equation's blog

If you have two extra minutes, listen to Frank Kovac’s moving, personal account (recorded for StoryCorps and aired today on NPR’s Morning Edition) about how, from the first time he used a telescope as a boy, he knew he wanted to be an astrophysicist. But Frank shelved that career aspiration because he said he was “always terrible at math.” He instead grew up to work as a storeroom clerk for a local paper mill. Until the day he decided to build his own planetarium. In his own backyard.

Frank’s neighbors asked how he could possibly build a planetarium given that he had no background in engineering. His answer? “I said, 'Well, I just have an idea. In my mind I can envision this before I even [build] it.'"

How many Frank Kovacs exist in our K-12 schools today? Kids who have the desire to create something amazing, even before they fully understand the science, technology, engineering or math skills required to make it? But who may not have the confidence to pursue their dream because they think “I’m not good at math or science”.

Kudos to Frank Kovac for following his dream, and for now serving as a powerful example to countless numbers of students (in communities well beyond his local one) of the awesome power of STEM in engaging curious minds and innovative thinkers.

Any way you slice us, we in the US are still falling behind in math.

That's the major message of a new report (PDF) out of Harvard. Even our best students aren't on top. Students in our highest-performing state, Massachusetts, are still running behind students in eight other countries that took part in a major international test. If we could gather all of our students who have at least one parent with a bachelor's degree into a single country, that country would be in 16th place.

If we don't cherry pick our students, things of course look grimmer. Our students do significantly worse than students in 22 other countries.

There are some silver linings to consider. We have improved our students' math performance over the past two decades. And while Massachusetts scores behind 8 other countries, it does outperform 22. We do know that real progress is possible.

But we have so much more to do. When even our best students can't compete with the world's best, we're in trouble. And when our lowest-performing states fall to the bottom of the international pile, we can be sure that millions of kids in our country won't have a fighting chance in the global economy.

Hat tip: Huffington Post.

My brother lives on a road that winds its way up the side of a mountain. I can always tell when I’m approaching the turnoff road that leads me to his house when I see the majestic, imposing blades of the wind turbines that rise from their place atop the mountain.

“How do they work, Mommy?” is a question my five-year-old daughter often asks me when she sees them. Unfortunately, that’s a level of scientific detail that even this avid storyteller cannot try to bluster her way through.

What my daughter and countless other girls (and boys too!) like her needs is the opportunity to engage in hands-on STEM learning opportunities to answer her own questions about renewal wind power. Like the upcoming National 4-H Council 2011 National Science Experiment,Wired for Wind.

On October 5^th, kids across the country will become scientists for the day during 4-H National Youth Science Day. In this year's experiment, Wired for Wind, kids will enhance their engineering skills by designing, building and testing two different wind turbine models.

Those of us who work in STEM education, advocacy and/or the workforce talk so much about the need to make STEM learning more relevant to children’s lives so that they can better relate to the subject matter. This year’s National Science Experiment does that by having participating youth relate their scientific experiences back to their own lives by determining the best location for a wind farm in their state or community.

Developed by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Nebraska Cooperative Extensionprogram, this three-tiered experiment will help 4-H young people to enhance their science, engineering, technology and applied math skills by allowing them to:

•  Design, build and test two different wind turbine models
•  Experiment with variables by examining three different blade pitch angles to determine the effect of pitch on rotor speed
•  Relate their scientific experiences back to their own lives by determining how their communities can harness the power of wind and create a more sustainable and clean energy system 
•  Determine the best location for a wind farm in their state or local area by calculating wind power and studying wind data and maps
   

Did you know that 4-H has been at the forefront of teaching kids about science, engineering and technology? 4-H National Youth Science Day, according to information on the organization’s website, is an important annual part of 4-H’s bold goal of attracting one million new youth to science, engineering and technology programs by the year 2013.

Currently, more than five million young people across the nation participate in 4-H science, engineering and technology programming in topics as varied as robotics, rocketry, wind power, GPS mapping, agricultural science, water quality and biofuels.

October 5^th could spark untapped excitement and engagement for STEM learning in the minds of countless kids around the country. Who knows what the fifth grader today who participates in National Youth Science Day will grow up to invent, solve, reengineer in another 20 years?

I don’t ever remember participating in cool STEM learning opportunities like this when I was a kid. I’m glad I get to live vicariously through my five-year-old.

For more information about 4-H National Youth Science Day, visit www.4-H.org/NYSD.

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Amidst all the talk of college for every student, some employers are voicing very different concerns. A college education won’t amount to a hill of beans, they argue, if young people lack the common sense to come to work on time, dress appropriately, and interact with customers and colleagues in a professional way. These “soft skills” are at least as important as math and writing skills, they claim.

Lawmakers in Georgia have heard these employers' concerns loud and clear. A bill that has made it through the General Assembly would weave "soft skills" into the high school curriculum and create a certificate for students who master those skills.

Some Georgians are uneasy about this move. Schools have enough to worry about when so many of their students can't do basic math, they argue. Parents, and not schools, should be teaching common sense. Maureen Downey of The Atlanta Journal Constitution suggests that students would "learn those lessons on their own once they’re fired a few times for showing up late or baring their skull-head tattoos at work."

Yet employers in Georgia aren't content to wait for parents or teens to sort the problem out on their own. Are they right to push "soft skills" into the schools?

In his State of the Union address this year, President Obama earned some of loudest applause of the night when he made the following pitch for science: "We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair."

Last night, will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas joined FIRST Robotics founder Dean Kaman, a gaggle of celebrities and about 30 thousand budding engineers in an ABC special that aimed to do just what the President had called for. The special combined performances by the Black Eyed Peas and Willow with rousing scenes from the FIRST championship in St Louis earlier this year.

Some of the most powerful scenes focused on young people whose lives had been transformed by FIRST: The young man for whom FIRST is a ticket out of the gang culture in LA; the young daughter of immigrants who finds a pathway out of poverty.

Of course, Kaman and will.i.am don't have to convince us of anything. We already feature FIRST as an effective and inspiring initiative to get kids hooked on science and technology. will.i.am's bold ABC special last night brought FIRST to a much broader audience. What a brilliant move.

Piers Morgan put it well in his recent interview with will.i.am and Kaman: "The combination of your [Kaman's] geeky genius and his [will.i.am's] impresario brilliance is a winning formula."

You can watch the whole special here.

The other night I had a psychedelic dream. In that dream, celebrities came together for one hour, and rather than walking the red carpet or facing off in a reality dance competition, they shared their appreciation of science and technology, the forces that power the entertainment industry. The Black Eyed Peas were there, and Willow Smith was too.  Baby, I think Bieber even dropped by. Robots whizzed about this magical circus dream, syncopating their blinks and buzzes to hip hop beats.

But wait…this experience was not a figment, but rather…a flashback. A memory that will play itself out once more for all the world to see, on television this Sunday.

Last April I attended the 20th Annual FIRST Robotics Competition in St. Louis, Missouri. At the close of the competition, The Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am invited the 30,000 competition attendees — FIRST robotics teams, families, educators and industry leaders — to enjoy a live show celebrating science, technology and the talents of students in the FIRST program. The show included live performances from The Black Eyed Peas and Willow Smith, and special appearances from celebrities speaking out to support science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), including Justin Timberlake, Miley Cyrus, Bono, Justin Bieber and more.

This performance has been made into a groundbreaking, one-hour special that premieres SUNDAY, AUGUST 14 at 7PM ET on ABC. This electric show will give families an up close look at the FIRST Robotics competition, and celebrates the fusion of pop culture and STEM:

“As families across America are preparing to send their kids back to school, ‘i.am.FIRST – Science is Rock and Roll’ will entertain as well as get viewers excited about robots. Find out just how cool technology can be as the top robot teams face off in competition,” said Executive Producer/star will.i.am and FIRST founder Dean Kamen.

Whether you’re a self-proclaimed science geek, a diehard BEP fan or you’re just interested in knowing who Jack Black thinks is the “biggest rock star on the planet,”  this is a must-see TV experience.  Tune in this Sunday and, if you’re inspired by what you see, visit The Connectory on Time Warner Cable’s Connect a Million Minds, where you can browse kid-centric, hands-on STEM opportunities in your area, including over 500 robotics programs and events from CAMM national partner FIRST.

For more information on and videos from “i.am FIRST: Science is Rock and Roll,” visit iamfirst.dipdive.com.

What does "proficiency" mean? In many U.S. states, not much.

A new report confirms what we already knew: Many states set the bar in reading and math much, much lower than the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) does. In both 4th and 8th grade math, only one state--Massachusetts--set the bar for proficiency at or above "proficiency" as defined by NAEP. Nine states set the bar for "proficiency" in 4th grade math so low that it would rate as "below basic" on NAEP. Things look even worse in 8th grade math, where 11 states are aiming for "below basic." What most other states consider proficient would rate as "basic" on NAEP.

Perhaps most shocking is the extreme inconsistency among states. A student deemed "proficient" in Savannah could could fall far below that mark if she moved to Seattle. And yet math is math whether you're in Georgia or Washington. More important, the demand for math skills may soon be pretty much the same whether you live in Savannah, Seattle or Shanghai.

The push towards common standards and tests might remedy this situation. Time will tell. The challenge will be to set an appropriate bar and then stick with it. As it stands in too many states, good just isn't good enough.

It's become received wisdom that US schools have been in decline for years. We sure aren't stacking up very well on international tests. But are we really in such a rut? The answer to that question might surprise most Americans. Our schools have actually made some very big strides. True, we aren't moving fast enough, but we don't do ourselves any favors by ignoring these gains.

Mike Petrilli lays out some of the good news:

In both the “basic skills” of reading and math, and in the social studies subjects of history, civics, and now geography, African-American, Latino, and low-income fourth- and eighth-graders have posted huge gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) since the early 1990s. For instance, between 1990 and 2009, black fourth graders made 35 points of progress on the mathematics NAEP exam; black eighth-graders gained 24 points. The corresponding numbers for Latino children were 28 and 21 points respectively. In reading, black fourth-graders gained 13 points between 1992 and 2009; black eighth graders gained 9 points. In the just-released geography exam, black fourth-grade students gained 28 points between 1994 and 2010; Latino fourth-graders gained 21 points. Similar progress was seen in history and civics.

When you consider that a 10 point gain in NAEP is roughly equal to a grade level, these are numbers to celebrate. As Petrilli notes elsewhere, some US states can boast even larger gains.

As Jack Jennings writes in the Huffington Post, just about every group has made gains since the early '90s. The fact that low-income students, who typically post lower scores, now make up a larger share of the total than they did 20 years ago can make overall performance look stagnant.

So should we rest on our laurels? Of course not. Students in other countries have made faster gains than ours have. Students in places like Finland, South Korea and Shanghai continue to leave ours in the dust.

But we shouldn't ignore our successes either. It would be downright demoralizing to think that 20 years of reform have led us nowhere. It should be uplifting to realize that we can, after all, move the needle. All the more reason, therefore, to redouble our efforts.

You’ve heard this story before.  When the dot-com bubble burst, young people thought jobs were scarce, so they stopped pursuing IT careers.  After rising between 1998 and 2004, the number of IT bachelor’s and master’s degrees fell sharply.

But is this story of scarce jobs true? The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that more than 688,000 new IT jobs were created between 1999 and 2008, an increase of 26%.  And between 2008 and 2018, network systems and data communications analysts—a category in the computer specialist occupational group—is projected to be thesecond-fastest-growing occupation in the economy.  Each new generation of technology requires more expertise for technological upgrades and the development of new applications. Although the current recession may temper projected growth, demand for new technology won't let up.

It is true that more IT jobs are going offshore to places like India and Eastern Europe–134,000 in the first decade of the 21^st century. But there is also a caveat: Many of these are routine programming jobs, which aren’t the best-paid or most stimulating IT jobs.

Moral of story:  as our economy becomes increasingly dependent on IT, the number of jobs will probably grow.  Be sure to share this moral with every young person you know.

It has become common to lament that we're educating students for an industrial age that lies far behind us. Our schools, with their bells ringing every hour and their desks arrayed in rows, hearken back to a time when when "machines suddenly needed to run on time. Individual workers needed to willingly perform discrete operations as opposed to whole jobs," writes Virginia Heffernan in yesterday's New York Times.

Yet Heffernan puts an interesting spin on that argument. In a review of "Now You See It," a new book by Cathy N. Davidson, she suggests that the digital age may actually return us to pre-industrial modes of learning. "What [Davidson] recommends," Heffernan writes, "looks much more like a classical education than it does the industrial-era holdover system that still informs our unrenovated classrooms." And that might not be a bad thing:

Ms. Davidson cites the elite Socratic system of questions and answers, the agrarian method of problem-solving and the apprenticeship program of imitating a master. It’s possible that any of these educational approaches would be more appropriate to the digital era than the one we have now.

Perhaps our bold digital future--where "65 percent of today’s grade-school kids may end up doing work that hasn’t been invented yet"--requires us to look to our past. Traditionalists, take heart!