U.S. Chamber of Commerce to Begin Ranking State School Systems

Einstein Fellowship Application Deadline Extended Through January 16

NASA Explorer Institutes

Ten NASA Explorer Institute (NEI) proposals from seven different NASA field centers have been funded. Some of these may be in your state and may be of special interest to your coalition. The selected NEI projects collectively target large segments of the informal education community and extend across the country. The proposed content engages the American public in Earth and space science, lunar exploration, and/or space operations topics. All four of the categories are addressed by the selected NEI projects. The NASA centers involved will be disseminating information on these projects and would welcome contact from you.

For more information go to education.nasa.gov/home/index.html and click INFORMAL EDUCATION.

Tell Us About the Business Education Partnerships in Your State

In a meeting this week at the U.S. Department of Education, NASSMC was asked to poll the 41 member coalitions on business involvement with schools at the state level. For some time now, ED has been talking with national business and education organizations.   At the state and local level however, far less is known about business-sponsored programs in the schools.

There may be many highly effective business efforts at the state level that could be replicable and scalable. The Department of Education believes it is vital to know which of these programs are proving effective in: (1) improving the STEM pipeline, (2) advancing teacher quality in STEM content areas, and (3) improving the nation's high schools.   The business community has a strong and growing interest in improving STEM education. Across the country they have undertaken a wide variety of programs and projects designed to do this.   Some have been highly successful and will have had a measurable impact.

With this request we have an opportunity to demonstrate what coalitions can do, and how business, policy, and education can work together in the states to effect change. State mathematics, science and technology coalitions are in a unique position to assess the level and quality of business involvement in education. Please send us any information you have regarding business involvement with schools in your state.   At this point, a high level of detail is not necessary. We are interested in all such programs, particularly (but not limited to) those with connections to the state coalitions. We will also include the current activities of each of the state organizations in our report to the Department of Education

The results of this survey will drive our future discussions on how the U.S. Department of Education might work with state business/education/policy coalitions.

Please send your information to Jane George: jgeorge@nassmc.org.

Thanks to the coalitions who have already responded. Your information has been included in a preliminary report to the U.S. Department of Education.

2006 Annual Coalition Directors Meeting

The 2006 NASSMC Annual Coalition Directors Meeting will be held March 27-29 at the Hilton Mark Center in Alexandria, VA.

The event will feature presentations from the National Governor's Association, the U.S. Department of Education, the International Technology Education Association, the Business Round Table, and NASA.

The pimary focus of this year's meeting will be the facilitation of discussions among the coalitions. This has been an eventful and productive year for many of the member organizations and there is much to share.

This year's conference will overlap the Triangle Coalition's Capitol Hill Conference which will be held in the same hotel, March 29 through 31. Wednesday the 29th will be a joint session with the Triangle Coalition attendees.

NASSMC representatives may attend both conferences but must register separately for each. As in the past, NASSMC will cover travel expenses and lodging for the NASSMC Conference for one representative per coalition.

Look for detailed information to be posted online soon.

REQUEST: The Connecticut Coalition Needs Your Help

The Connecticut Coalition is working with the Connecticut State Department of Education to create a model mathematics curriculum for Grades PreK-6. They are looking for help/guidance from other NASSMC coalitions to identify best practices model mathematics curricula and/or teaching/ learning materials.

Please forward any recommendations directly to Richard Cole at the CT Academy for Education: rcole@ctacad.org

REMINDERS: 2006 NASSMC Solicitations & GrantSeeker Opportunities

SOLICITATIONS
Look for new program solicitations to be made available in 2006 for the Linking Leaders for Systemic Improvement Program, the NASA Explorer Schools (NES) Partnerships for Sustainability Program, and the NASSMC State Summits Implementation Program (NSSIP). Linking Leaders and NES Partnerships for Sustainability are funded in full by NASA; NSSIP is funded by both NASA and the U.S. Department of Education.

GRANTSEEKER
The GrantSeeker page has been updated with information about opportunities from:

• National Security Agency (NSA)
• Waksman Foundation for Microbiology
• John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
• American Association of University Women
• Mathematical Association of America
• The Fluor Foundation

Visit www.nassmc.org/grant_seeker/gsintro.html for details and deadlines.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce to Begin Ranking State School Systems

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce will begin ranking the performance of state - and some local - school systems. The Chamber is also working with business groups on efforts to double the number of math, science and engineering college graduates by the year 2015. Chamber President Tom Donohue said details about the school-ranking program will follow over the next six weeks.

"The bottom line is that this nation cannot rightfully expect to lead the 21st century's information and technology-driven global economy when we have upwards of 30 percent of our young people not even graduating from high school." - Tom Donohue, President, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Education Week's Quality Counts 2006 Issue: A Decade of Standards-Based Education

An original analysis conducted for Quality Counts at 10: A Decade of Standards-Based Education by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center finds that state efforts to devise standards, tests, and accountability systems in education are positively related with gains on NAEP reading and math tests in grades 4 and 8 from 1996 to 2005. But the report found a negative relationship between state implementation of policies related to teacher quality and gains in math and reading scores.

Grades on standards and accountability, efforts to improve teacher quality, school climate, and resource equity are available for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, along with student-achievement data and trends over time. Individual state highlights reports available for each state. The analyses highlight how each state’s improvement over the past decade compares with the performance of the nation as a whole. The report also takes a much closer look than previous studies at which states have made significant progress in closing achievement gaps between black and white, Hispanic and white, and poor and nonpoor students.

The results in mathematics are particularly encouraging. Nationally, NAEP scores in 4th grade math have
increased by 18.5 points on a 500-point scale, or nearly two grade levels, since 1992, near the start of the
standards movement. Grade 8 math performance improved by 10.7 points.

The scores for black, Hispanic, and low-income youngsters in 4th grade reading increased at nearly triple the national average, or about two-thirds of a grade level.

The mathematics gains for black and Hispanic 4th graders over the past decade—27.7 points and 24.2 points, respectively—are particularly heartening. One way to think about those gains is that if the scores for white students had not also improved, the advances would have been enough to shrink the black-white achievement gap that existed in 1992 by 80 percent, and the Hispanic-white gap by 94 percent, virtually closing the gap between those two groups in 4th grade math. Nationally, the achievement gap narrowed significantly between black and white students in math in both grades 4 and 8, and between Hispanic and white students in grade 4. The largest gap-closing on NAEP, nearly 9 points, was found between black and white students in 4th grade math.

Quality Counts 2006 includes state report cards, indepth analysis of state data, and case studies. The entire document is available online for free until February 4. Click here to register.

The deadline for teachers to apply for an Einstein Fellowship has been extended - teachers have through midnight, Monday January 16, 2006 to complete an application.

The Einstein Fellowship program - managed by the Triangle Coalition for Science and Technology Education - brings outstanding mathematics, science, and technology education teachers to Washington, DC to spend a school year working on Capitol Hill or in one of several participating Federal agencies. The purpose of the program, as stated in the Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Act of 1994, is to provide outstanding educators with an opportunity to serve in the public policy arena and to bring the expertise, unique insights, and know-how of classroom teachers to the Congress and appropriate branches of the Federal government.

Please encourage qualified teachers to apply for an Einstein Fellowship. Their participation can make a difference on a national scale.  

Link to application: https://applicationlink.labworks.org/applicationlink  

For more information: www.scied.science.doe.gov/scied/Einstein/about.htm  

Learn about the current fellows at: www.trianglecoalition.org/fellows/einprof.htm

Of Interest...

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/S. Stolovy (SSC/Caltech)

+ NASA Spitzer Telescope: Our Milky Way is a dusty place. So dusty, in fact, that we cannot see the center of the galaxy in visible light. But when NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope set its infrared eyes on the galactic center, it captured this spectacular view. Taken with just one of Spitzer's cameras (at a wavelength of 8 microns), the image highlights the region's exceptionally bright and dusty clouds, lit up by young massive stars. Individual stars can also be seen as tiny dots scattered throughout the dust. The top mosaic shows a portion of the galactic center that stretches across a distance of 760 light-years. Thanks to Spitzer's excellent resolution, the dusty features within the galactic center are seen in unprecedented detail. http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2006-02/release.shtml

+ Sound of Silence: Scientists believe they have shown the brain remains in listening mode even when the only sound is silence. French researchers showed parts of the brain related to hearing were activated in subjects listening out for a sound. They hope the study, in the Journal of Neuroscience, may aid work on attention deficit disorders, which are linked to problems in the same part of the brain. They also hope it could improve rehabilitation programs and treatments for such disorders. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4587778.stm

Credit: Douglas Altshuler and Jason Vance

+ How Bees Fly: Turns out bee flight mechanisms are more exotic than thought. Scientists have analyzed pictures from hours of filming bees and mimicked the movements using robots with sensors for measuring forces. The scientists said the findings could lead to a model for designing aircraft that could hover in place and carry loads for many purposes such as diaster surveillance after earthquakes and tsunamis. They are also pleased that a simple thing like bee flight can no longer be used as an example of science failing to explain a common phenomenon. www.livescience.com/animalworld/060110_bee_fight.html

+ Scientists Drill Possibly World's Smallest Holes: Using new machinery, researchers have drilled holes narrower than a human hair in stainless steel and other materials. They say the holes are likely the smallest ever made by humans. The effort is geared toward future uses in electronics and medicine. The holes are as small as 22 microns in diameter, or 0.022 millimeters. Human hairs range from 50 to 80 microns wide. Laser technology had previously made holes down to 150 microns. www.livescience.com/technology/060111_small_hole.html

+ Giant Magellan Telescope: The product of more than a century of astronomical research and telescope-building by some of the world’s leading research institutions is scheduled for completion around 2016. How giant? The GMT uses seven 8.4m diameter 18m focal-length borosilicate honeycomb mirrors to create a single telescope with the collecting area equivalent to a filled aperture 21.4 meters in diameter.
www.gmto.org/

+ JavaTech: JavaTech: an Introduction to Scientific and Technical Computing with Java can be used as a textbook for a course in Java for science and engineering students. It emphasizes the graphics and network programming capabilities of Java that make it particularly useful in today's technical computing environment. A supporting website offers extensive supporting materials including tutorials, exercises, programs and source codes.
javatechbook.com/

+ Meet the First Transoceanic Shark: Nicole, a female great white shark, swam from South Africa to Australia and back in nine months, setting records for the first known roundtrip swim of an individual shark across an ocean as well as for the fastest back-and-forth swim across an ocean for any sea creature. Moreover, Nicole's transoceanic journey is the first documented link between two large populations of sharks traditionally considered homebodies.
www.discover.com/web-exclusives/transoceanic-shark/