Highly trained physical science teachers needed to educate students for high-tech economy

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In an increasingly high-tech economy, we cannot continue to handicap students and neglect the workforce needs of our nation. And that is why it is high time the nation addresses the severe shortage of physical science teachers. Far too often, the teacher in a physics or chemistry classroom has neither the content knowledge nor the focused pedagogical education necessary to effectively teach the subject. Only 47 percent of physics and 46 percent of chemistry classrooms are taught by teachers with a degree in the subject. Physics and chemistry top the list of hardest teaching positions to fill year after year.

As a result, students go to college underprepared for demanding courses and unmotivated to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) courses of study. The situation is unfortunate because STEM disciplines hold great employment opportunities: Overall there are 3.6 unemployed people for every job posting, but in STEM fields, for every unemployed person there are 1.9 job postings. Shortages of STEM workers are particularly acute in the physical sciences where 1 in 4 workers are foreign born.
 
It is shocking that, despite repeated calls for action stretching over more than 100 years, the situation has improved very little, if at all. Things may soon change. President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2014 budget, released April 10, contains the beginning of a national strategy to address teacher shortages in STEM.
 
The nation needs a coordinated strategy to ensure that all teachers in the physical sciences are well prepared, not just a small fraction. The Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP), which recently completed a four-year study, found that “the national landscape of professional preparation of physics teachers shows a system that is largely inefficient, mostly incoherent, and completely unprepared to deal with the current and future needs of the nation’s students.”
 
The good news is we know what works. T-TEP identified several exemplary programs that could serve as models for a more systematic national effort. For instance, Rutgers University runs one of the most active physics and physical science teacher preparation programs in the nation; the program supplies a large number of highly effective teachers to northern New Jersey. School districts express a high degree of satisfaction with these graduates, who receive rigorous preparation, including five courses on physics pedagogy closely integrated with teaching experiences. A national strategy is needed to expand these and similar successes, so they become the norm rather than the exception.
 
Mr. Obama’s budget contains $265 million in new initiatives for K-12 STEM education, including STEM Innovation Networks that partner school districts with universities and other entities to improve STEM instruction. It is encouraging that this plan is aligned with the central recommendation of the T-TEP report, which is to establish a network of university-based regional centers for educating teachers in physics. However, some critical improvements are needed if STEM Innovation Networks are to become the basis for a successful national program to address the nation’s need for effective teachers in the physical sciences.
 
One thing we must take into consideration is that not all STEM fields have the same needs. Programs with the label “STEM” tend to neglect physics, partly due to the relatively small numbers of teachers compared to biology. Yet the need is arguably greater. In contrast to the severe shortage of teachers in physics and chemistry, teacher shortages in biology are much less common and a high percentage of biology teachers (73 percent) have a degree in the subject. Teacher shortages in the physical sciences will not be resolved without a concentrated effort specifically in these disciplines. The UTeach program, which has a goal of graduating more STEM teachers, has had great success in math and biology but little impact on physics. By comparison, the Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC), which concentrates specifically on physics teachers, has shown dramatic increases in program graduates.
 
In addition, it is critical to prioritize the education of new teachers. Most of the federal funds are directed toward professional development for practicing teachers, and while professional development is important, this approach is unlikely to solve the shortage of effective teachers in the long run. Practicing teachers who are underprepared to teach physics typically do not have the extensive time required to develop content knowledge and pedagogical skill at a deep enough level. A more robust solution must give top priority to building high quality programs for educating new teachers, so they supply effective teachers in sufficient numbers to meet the national need.
 
We must make sure our students are ready to compete in a high-tech economy, and that means making sure that every physics and chemistry classroom has a well prepared teacher. With a president who strongly supports STEM education, we have an important opportunity to transform teacher education through establishing regional centers and solving these longstanding teacher shortages.  But without getting the details right, we risk continuing the long-established trend of mediocrity.
 
Vokos is professor of Physics at Seattle Pacific University and is chairman of the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP).

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Head Start Teachers Name Obamacare As Biggest Problem

Head Start teachers and administrators told The Daily Caller that their most pressing concern is not budget impacts from sequestration but changes coming from President Barack Obama’s health-care law.

In 2014, the impact of 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act “is probably going to be a 9 percent [cost] increase, and significantly more the next year,” said Nancy Nordyk, director of the Head Start program in southern Oregon.

Rising healthcare costs will likely force Oregon to reduce some Head Start workers’ hours so they’re not eligible for the medical program, said Nordyk, who spoke to TheDC during a national Head Start conference held just outside D.C. in Maryland.

In one conference session on the pending healthcare bill, “some of the [managers for regional Head Start] organizations [said] ‘We don’t know what to do,’” said Elizabeth Steinberg, the CEO of Community Action Partnership in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

The worried managers come from “all over the country,” said Steinberg, whose Head Start program has 387 children.

The growing worry about Obamacare’s impact on Head Start has been obscured by the White House’s periodic efforts to portray the program as the victim of Republicans’ recent approval of sequestration, a slight reduction in the rate of federal spending growth that is erroneously described as a spending cut.

Administration officials announced April 29 that the Head Start funding would face a 5.27 percent budget cut in 2014.

“I know that there hasn’t been a lot of coverage of the [sequester] impacts on real people, on the families who had to be engaged in lotteries to see whether their child, on a Friday, was still going to be in Head Start on Monday,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a press conference in April.

However, in multiple interviews during a reception Thursday at the ritzy Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, Head Start teachers and administrators told TheDC they’re coping with the cuts.

Sandra Deveux, a teacher in Florida’s Brevard County, said her program trimmed $220,000 from its budget by cutting contracts and counseling. So far, she said, there been ”no cuts in employees, no cuts in services.”

“No layoffs yet,” said Shelvy Deskins, a teacher from southern Virginia’s Buchanan county. “Everything for the children, we have to keep,” she said.

Theresa Baker, a parent on a Head Start unit at Jefferson County, Kentucky, said her district may close some classrooms just before the end of the financial year in August. “Everything is under a microscope… we’ve become very very frugal,” she said, adding that her district will likely trim costs by scaling back home-visits to children enrolled in the program.

In Oregon, the Head Start region has scheduled a three-week “summer furlough,” will close one class 12 days early, and will delay opening the 2014 school-year for kids aged four and five, said Nordyk. Her head Start unit has 1,215 students and 300 staff.

However, many attendees at the National Head Start Association’s 40th annual conference said they’re coping with the sequester. “We’re going to make it,” said Weldon Beard, director of the Head Start program in Nacogdoches, Texas.

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South Dakota Now Permits Teachers To Carry Guns In Classroom

On Friday, South Dakota become the first state to enact legislation, in the aftermath of the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, explicitly authorizing teachers and staff in K-12 schools to carry firearms. The measure “leaves it up to school districts to decide whether to allow armed teachers” and requires those who wish to carry guns to “undergo training similar to what law enforcement officers receive.”

Still, the approach, championed by the National Rifle Association as a means to protect students in mass shootings, was widely opposed by school administrators and teachers themselves, who said the legislature missed an opportunity to engage in a broader discussion about gun violence and prevention. The educators don’t expect too many districts to take advantage of the new option:

Educators interviewed earlier this week remained unconvinced the legislation is needed.

Don Kirkegaard, superintendent of the Meade School District, said he has never been in favor of the bill and would have preferred a summer study session on school safety.

“We should be looking at the big picture and that may be part of the big picture, but it’s not something I’m going to promote,” he said.

Kirkegaard said a study session would have allowed educators to explore everything from facility designs to fire safety, all of which play a key role in safety. Such a session would have brought together “all of the players” for a more comprehensive safety plan, he said.

“I just wish … everybody would have talked a little bit together before we started passing legislation,” he said. “I don’t believe there will be very many districts, at least to begin with, who are going to jump at putting sentinels in a school until they’ve done a lot of research.”

South Dakota is not alone in allowing teachers to bring guns into the classroom. Utah permits concealed carry in public schools and several school districts in Texas also allow firearms in the classroom. In the months following the Newtown tragedy, “legislatures in other states, including Georgia, New Hampshire and Kansas, are working on measures similar to South Dakota’s.”

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Duncan says he misspoke about ‘pink slips’ for teachers ahead of sequester

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Monday he misspoke when he recently claimed schools were already firing teachers in anticipation of sequester cuts taking effect.

"When I said 'pink slips' that was probably the wrong word," Duncan said to reporters, according to multiple reports. "Language matters, and I need to be very, very clear."

The $85 billion in across-the-board spending reductions took effect on Friday after the White House and congressional lawmakers were unable to reach a deal to avert the automatic cuts.

Duncan said last week that a number of school districts around the country had already begun laying off teachers in anticipation to the cuts.

He was one of a number of Cabinet officials, who joined President Obama, in warning of the dire consequences of the cuts taking effect. Republicans, though, countered that the administration was attempting to scare the public in an effort to tilt negotiations over a replacement bill.

Duncan had specifically mentioned the Kanawha County school district in West Virginia as an example of a school that had begun firing staff because of the sequester. 

According to the Washington Post, however, officials in Kanawha County disputed that claim. District administrators said that while the sequester cuts would hurt the country, they would have cut jobs whether or not the sequester was triggered. 

The sequester cuts are unlikely to touch most of the country's school districts. 

On Monday, Duncan walked back his warnings.

"Because I wasn't as clear, the spotlight was put on me and that's never ever my goal," Duncan said according to CNN. 

"My goal here is to have the spotlight be on children and families, so when I said 'pink slips' that was probably the wrong word,” he added. “I should've used 'job eliminations,' 'positions eliminated.'"

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New Hampshire Bill Would Give Parents Veto Power Over Their Kids’ Sex Ed Teachers

New Hampshire has the distinction of being one America’s best educated states, with stellar college graduation rates and students achieving the highest SAT and ACT scores in the country. But Granite State lawmakers may want to brush up on their knowledge about public health and sex education.

According to the Concord Monitor, State Rep. Ralph Boehm (R-NH) introduced a bill to the House Education Committee yesterday that would allow parents to pull their children out of health or sex ed lessons for any reason at all. While New Hampshire law already allows parents to object to certain lesson plans on religious grounds, the proposed HB 161's wording causes some lawmakers to worry it would give parents carte blanche over the crucial public health education their children receive, and veto power over the educators who provide it:

“In a lot of school districts, this is already the policy,” Boehm said yesterday. “And a lot of schools say it’s up to the parent. But the law says it must be a religious objection.”

Boehm has the support of Rep. Joe Pitre, a Rochester Republican, and Rep. Rick Ladd, a Grafton Republican who’s also a retired school principal. Although, Ladd said he’d like Boehm’s bill rewritten to require parents to give a “justifiable” reason for objecting.

“It can’t be, ‘I walk into the classroom and I don’t really like that teacher, so I’m just going to opt out,’ ” Ladd said.[...]

Rep. Judith Spang, a Durham Democrat on the committee, expressed similar concerns. She talked about the intersection of public health education and sex education and worried that students could be excused from health classes on preventing sexually transmitted diseases under the bill and existing law.

The fact is, sex education works. Multiple studies and real world examples have demonstrated that locales with strong sex education programs have lower rates of STIs and teen pregnancy.

But buoyed by the conservative religious right’s intensive lobbying, Republican state lawmakers have kept abstinence-only programs the norm and comprehensive sex education programs optional, making America more regressive on sex education policy than many Catholic countries. It should come as no surprise that American youth are woefully ignorant about sexual health and safety as a consequence.

Luckily, the trend may be limited. Recent surveys have shown that even Evangelical youth are moving away from an anti-contraception and anti-sex education mindset.

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