Sharing What Works: Success & Opportunity: NASSMC 2007 Annual Coalition Directors' Meeting Held April 12-13

Representatives from more than 40 coalitions participated in the 2007 NASSMC Annual Coalition Directors' Meeting held in Arlington, VA. In addition, representatives from NASA, the National Governors Association, the Federal Aviation Administration, the US Department of Energy, the Semiconductor Industry Association, the Biotechnology Institute, and others were on hand to discuss recent national developments, initiatives, and programs impacting STEM education for the 2007 ACDM. Jacqueline Henson, NASSMC attorney, participated in a Q&A session on nonprofit legal issues.

In an expanded Directors' forum, the coalitions—specifically Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas, Wisconsin—shared some of the work they are doing. Presentation topics included improving student achievement, influencing public policy, public outreach and communication programs, growing coalition activities and influence, closing the achievement gap, working throughout the Pre-K/20 community, working with state agencies and departments, working with federal government activities, and after school and supplemental STEM programs.

The ACDM agenda is available here, and copies of presentations and handouts are available for download here.

DC Coalition Attains State Affiliation with District and Secures Funding in the District's FY08 Budget

The Washington DC Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Partnership (WDC STEM) has secured a $100,000 grant to support the sustainability of a coalition of leaders in education, public policy, sciences, civic, business and parent organizations working together to elevate and enhance the effectiveness of STEM education citywide in Washington DC.

More information about the DC coalition, including its goals for 2007, can be found here.

Resources, Reports, & Events

SCHOOL DISTRICT GRADUATION RATES MAPPING TOOL
The EPE Research Center has launched EdWeek Maps—a powerful online mapping tool that will for the first time make comparable, reliable data on high school graduation rates for every school district in the United States available to anyone with access to the Internet.

Using the most recent data available, the site features graduation rates calculated using the Research Center's widely-cited Cumulative Promotion Index, which estimates the percent of students in the 9th-grade who complete high school on time with a regular diploma. The site also allows users to download special reports for any district in the country with detailed information on its graduation rate, an analysis of where students are lost during the high school pipeline, historical trends, and comparisons with state and national figures.

REFRAMING THE DEBATE ABOUT EDUCATION STRATEGY
On April 16-17, Education|Evolving, The William and Flora Hewitt Foundation, and The Johnson Foundation sponsored Reframing the Debate about Education Strategy: From Ordering Improvement to Ensuring Response. The goals were to make the case that solutions framed within the current system are not working and show no indications that they will work, and open the national dialog to solutions outside the system.

Other areas of the discussion were the impact and change potential of technology and the pressures of the changing economy. This work was toward the goal of creating an open sector in education—What could we do if we have the latitude to do anything we want?—where innovation can flourish outside the regulations imposed on schools by the current system. NASSMC Executive Director Jim McMurtray participated in the conferece and addressed the group.

EDUCATION LEADERSHIP POLICY TOOLKIT
This Toolkit is the product of a two-year effort by Education Commission of the States (ECS), underwritten by the MetLife Foundation, to enlarge awareness and understanding of the policies, practices and processes that serve to strengthen leadership for reform and improvement in schools and districts. Included are models, audio clips, and links drawing on what has been learned and accomplished in Boston, Memphis and National City (CA). More information is available here.

ACT NATIONAL CURRICULUM SURVEY: GAP BETWEEN U.S. HIGH SCHOOL CURRICULUM AND COLLEGE EXPECTATIONS
A new study by ACT points to a gap between what U.S. high schools are teaching in their core college preparatory courses and what colleges want incoming students to know in order for them to succeed in first-year courses. The findings of the study--a national curriculum survey completed by thousands of high school and college instructors across the country--suggest that colleges generally want all incoming students to attain in-depth understanding of a selected number of fundamental skills and knowledge in their high school courses, while high schools tend to provide less in-depth instruction of a broader range of skills and topics. The full report is available here.

MAP OF FUTURE FORCES AFFECTING EDUCATION
What will shape the future of education? It could be video games. Bioengineering. Or health care. All of these forces and more are explored on the KnowledgeWorks Foundation and Institute for the Future 2006-2016 Map of Future Forces Affecting Education.

Both an interactive and downloadable versions of the Map are available online.

Barbarian Science

NASSMC has received a limited quantity of Executive Director Jim McMurtray 1999 book, Barbarian Science. These books will be sold with 100% of the proceeds going to NASSMC's general fund. The $20 cost includes shipping. Published by Town Square Books (the Jackson State University Press), Barbarian Science was originally written for marketing to universities offering courses in the literature of science through the English Departments. It later reached a secondary audience in colleges of education.

This short book (100 pages) is about science literacy in America and the need to make science accessible to the general population. The current national attention toward making science available to a larger population has made the book more timely now than when it was written. Barbarian Science has been used in universities across the country and is still sold in college book stores here and there.

To order Barbarian Science, please send your check, payable to NASSMC, at $20 per copy, to Deborah Jones, National Alliance of State Science and Mathematics Coalitions, 1840 Wilson Blvd., Suite 200, Arlington, VA 22201-3000.

Of Interest...

The diatoms appear as glass-like structures in the core.

+ Tiny fossils reveal ice history: Tiny they may be, but fossil diatoms discovered deep under the ocean floor are revealing new details about Antarctica's warmer past. The single-celled algae were pulled up by the Antarctic Geological Drilling (Andrill) Program, which has been operating from the Ross Ice Shelf. Some are new to science; others would normally only be expected in waters with higher temperatures than today.

+ 14 countries top U.S. in broadband penetration: The United States was in fourth place in broadband use per capita in 2001 among the 30 industrialized nations who make up the OECD. By the middle of last year the States had fallen to 12th. And the latest report saw the country fall another three rungs, to 15th. With 19.6 broadband connections per 100 people, America trails Denmark (the leader with 31.9 per 100), Holland, Iceland, Korea, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Canada, Belgium, England, Luxemburg, France, and Japan.

+ Opossum genome sequence reveals mammal secrets: Modern mammals, including humans, evolved not so much by inventing new genes, but by redeploying existing ones - with a surprising assist from genetic elements usually derided as mere junk. Genome biologists had speculated for several years that this was true, but now they know for sure, thanks to the grey, short-tailed opossum (Monodelphis domestica) - the latest in a growing list of organisms to have its genome completely sequenced.

+ New deep-sea hydrothermal vents, life form discovered: A new "black smoker"—an undersea mineral chimney emitting hot springs of iron-darkened water—has been discovered at 8,500-foot depths by an expedition funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to explore the Pacific Ocean floor off Costa Rica. Scientists from Duke University, the Universities of New Hampshire and South Carolina, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts have named their discovery the Medusa Hydrothermal Vent Field. The researchers chose that name to highlight the presence there of a unique pink form of the jellyfish order stauromedusae. The jellyfish resemble "the serpent-haired Medusa of Greek myth," said expedition leader Emily Klein, a geologist at Duke University.

+ Pre-Incan metallurgy discovered: Metals found in lake mud in the central Peruvian Andes have revealed the first evidence for pre-Colonial metalsmithing there. These findings illustrate a way that archaeologists can recreate the past even when looters have destroyed the valuable artifacts that would ordinarily be relied upon to reveal historical secrets. For instance, the new research hints at a tax imposed on local villages by ancient Inca rulers to force a switch from production of copper to silver.

+ Ediacarans: the "long fuse" of the Cambrian explosion?: When the Ediacarans were first described, palaeontologists thought they could slot them comfortably into known animal groups. They were interpreted as primitive ancestors of the creatures of the Cambrian explosion: worms, corals, arthropods, jellyfish and the like. However, as more fossils were found, more and more peculiarities came to light, and doubts mounted. It became clear that the majority of Ediacarans were oddballs of uncertain affinity. In the mid-1980s, Adolf Seilacher of the University of Tübingen in Germany tore up the rulebook. He argued that even though Ediacarans resembled known animals, they were, in fact, a hitherto unrecognised and extinct kingdom of life - a dead-end experiment in evolution that disappeared at the end of the Precambrian.

+ Astronomers map out planetary danger zone: Astronomers have laid down the cosmic equivalent of yellow "caution" tape around super hot stars, marking the zones where cooler stars are in danger of having their developing planets blasted away. In a new study from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists report the first maps of so-called planetary "danger zones." These are areas where winds and radiation from super hot stars can strip other young, cooler stars like our sun of their planet-forming materials. The results show that cooler stars are safe as long as they lie beyond about 1.6 light-years, or nearly 10 trillion miles, of any hot stars. But cooler stars inside the zone are likely to see their potential planets boiled off into space.

+ Euler's beautiful equation: Sunday, April 15, was the 300th birthday of Leonhard Euler (pronounced "oiler"), one of the most important mathematicians ever to have lived. His works help form the foundation of nearly all areas of mathematics, including calculus, number theory, geometry, and applied math. One of the many discoveries for which he is famous is the equation e^ip = –1 . In a 1988 poll, readers of the journal Mathematical Intelligencer chose this equation as the single most beautiful equation in all of mathematics. The equation weaves together four seemingly unrelated mathematical numbers, e, p, i, and –1, in an astonishingly simple way.

+ Money given to save genetics of food: Funds have been announced to save 165,000 varieties of 21 food crops, from wheat to potatoes, some of which form the staple diet of people living in developing countries. The effort, carried out by the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the United Nations Foundation, aims to pool genetic information about the crops, as well as store and maintain live seeds and root-vegetable samples.

+ 'Kryptonite' discovered in mine: A new mineral matching its unique chemistry - as described in the film Superman Returns - has been identified in a mine in Serbia. According to movie and comic-book storylines, kryptonite is supposed to sap Superman's powers whenever he is exposed to its large green crystals. The real mineral is white and harmless, says Dr Chris Stanley, a mineralogist at London's Natural History Museum.

Genus Wattieza was a fern-like plant which formed earth's first known forests. This is a reconstruction line drawing. Image: Frank Mannolini/New York State Museum.

+ Fossilised trees mystery solved: A Cardiff fossil expert has identified a pair of 385-million-year-old trees, thought to be among the world's oldest. American researchers found fossilised remains in New York state two years ago, but their identity was unknown. They called in Dr Christopher Berry from Cardiff University, who confirmed the remains are from the Genus Wattieza, a fern-like plant which formed earth's first known forests.

+ NASA data show earthquakes may quickly boost regional volcanoes: Scientists using NASA satellite data have found strong evidence that a major earthquake can lead to a nearly immediate increase in regional volcanic activity. The intensity of two ongoing volcanic eruptions on Indonesia’s Java Island increased sharply three days following a powerful, 6.4-magnitude earthquake on the island in May 2006. The increased volcanic activity persisted for about nine days.

+ Miniscule generators convert motion into nanoscale electricity source: In a breakthrough that could free nanomachines from the bulk of batteries, researchers have developed a novel nanogenerator—an array of tiny filaments that converts the smallest motions into electrical current. The nanowires are crafted from zinc oxide, a safe material that would allow the generator to be used in biomedical applications, and may eventually power nanomotors, tiny sensors, and if in large enough arrays, macroscale devices.

+ New 'super-Earth' found in space: Astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, a world which could have water running on its surface. The planet orbits the faint star Gliese 581, which is 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra. Scientists made the discovery using the Eso 3.6m Telescope in Chile. They say the benign temperatures on the planet mean any water there could exist in liquid form, and this raises the chances it could also harbour life.