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| SPECIAL EDITION ***BACK TO SCHOOL WITH NSF*** Thousands of teachers and students across the United States are teaching and learning more exciting and meaningful math and science lessons as they return to school with support from the National Science Foundation. From "systemic reform" of entire state or urban school districts, to IMAX films that teach science informally to teacher preparation programs to fellowships that recognize individual excellence in advanced study, NSF funds an array of programs to improve the quality of science and math education for all Americans and to ensure the nation a steady supply of the world's best-educated scientists, mathematicians, and engineers. Roughly 20 percent of the NSF's $3.3 billion annual budget is allocated to its education and human resources directorate. Others of NSF's six research directorates also fund education programs. EHR will spend $90 million this year on systemic reform alone. NSF's investment represents one-third of all federal spending on math and science education. For more information on any of these, or related, story ideas, please call Peter West at (703) 292-8070, or pwest@nsf.gov. TECHNOLOGY TO SUPPORT LEARNINGMuseums and science centers often spark children's interest in science and math. Unfortunately, museum walls too often limit the reach of their programs. Through the Science Learning Network, a consortium of science museums, businesses, and schools, officials at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pa., hope to harness the Internet to improve the quality of teaching materials for students in grades K-8. Not only will the museums produce resources for science and math teachers that will be posted on the Internet, but individual schools will also help develop strategies for teaching and learning on-line. Institutions participating in the project include Boston's Museum of Science, San Francisco's Exploratorium, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, and the Science Museum of Minnesota. The SLN is just one of many research-based projects supported by NSF's Networking Infrastructure for Education program. DISABILITIES DON'T HANDICAP LEARNINGToo often disabled children are kept away from hands on science and math teaching because of mistaken beliefs that they cannot learn as other children do. Those problems often are even more acute among Native American children. An NSF-funded project at the University of North Dakota brought together approximately 30 disabled Indian children this summer for institutes in hands-on science. The project also allowed university science faculty, tribal councils, school districts, and special-education professionals to collaboratively develop special science curriculums for this population of students. An unexpected benefit of the program is that several parents whose children were enrolled in the program themselves were encouraged to finish their own high-school or college education. "Their interest in science literacy spilled over into a desire for more education," noted Lawrence Scadden, the senior program director for the NSF's Program for Persons with Disabilities. DISCOVERIES ON THE FRONTIERS OF SCIENCEBrown dwarf stars, relatively cool bodies of a size between the earth's sun and a planet, are astronomical objects that were first suspected to exist some 30 years ago, but whose existence proved devilishly difficult to confirm with the instruments available to science. That is until recently, when Ben R. Oppenheimer, an NSF graduate fellow in astronomy and one of a team of astronomers at the California Institute of Technology, helped to deduce -- with scientific validity -- that such bodies do indeed exist. Oppenheimer is one of 2,400 current NSF Graduate Fellows. Like most, he wholeheartedly endorses the program. "Thanks to the NSF, I feel that I have done some intriguing and exciting work this year," he says. TACKLING THE 'CIRCULAR PROBLEM' OF REFORMContrary to popular perception, not all the news about U.S. performance in math and science is discouraging. Although much remains to be done, by many measures, school system and individual student performance in these critical subjects has improved in recent years, according to an NSF report called The Learning Curve: What We Are Discovering About U.S. Science and Mathematics Education. But successfully reforming the nation's educational system is a circular problem; if students don't get good science and math education before they leave high school, they aren't likely to be interested in those subjects when they get to college. On the other hand, because few teachers learn how to teach science well, they can't spark that early interest. Arguments for the need to break that cycle, and strategies for doing it, are presented in a recently released report from NSF's Division of Undergraduate Education called Shaping the Future: New Expectations for Undergraduate Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology. A copy of the report is posted on the NSF's home page on the World Web Web at http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/EHR/DUE/EHRAC/start.htm. Copies of The Learning Curve and Shaping the Future are indispensable desk references for reporters and editors. For printed versions, contact Peter West in NSF's Office of Legislative and Public Affairs.
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