It May Be a Sputnik Moment, but Science Fairs Are Lagging

From Wikipedia: "The United States Department of Education, also referred to as ED or the ED for (the) Education Department, is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. Created by the Department of Education Organization Act (Public Law 96-88) and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on October 17, 1979, it began operating on May 16, 1980."

... and science education in this country has been going downhill for about 30 years.

Anyone familiar with the principles of science and logic would know your statement is a fallacy of correlation without causation.

Care to support your statement with some relevant facts?

here's references

References

1. ^ ^{a b} FY2011 Federal Budget
2. ^ http://www2.ed.gov/about/what-we-do.html
3. ^ http://www2.ed.gov/programs/gtep/gtep.pdf
4. ^ http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/focus/what.html
5. ^ "Online Backgrounders: The Department of Education". PBS. Fall 1996. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/backgrounders/department_of_education.html. Retrieved 2005-07-26.
6. ^ ^{a b c d} "Elimination Lost: What happened to abolishing the Department of Education?". Cato Institute. 2004-02-11. http://www.cato.org/research/articles/gryphon-040211.html. Retrieved 2005-07-26.
7. ^ ^{a b} "Department of Education must be abolished". World Net Daily. 2004-12-07. http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41802. Retrieved 2005-07-26.
8. ^ "Education". 2007. http://workingcalifornians.com/2008_presidential_issues/education. Retrieved 2007-09-14.
9. ^ Stossel, John (2007-12-10). "Ron Paul Unplugged". ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=3970818. Retrieved 2008-01-30.
10. ^ "IPEDS Glossary". http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/glossary/index.asp?charindex=F. Retrieved 2007-04-07.

Help yourself

Regretably I can't read them all at the moment (workplace filter). But the ones I did read seemed to be politcallly-Conservative statements advocating the abolishment of the ED based only around right-wing opinions against "big governement". Articles consisting entirely of "Politician X says disband the US ED" are not especially informative.

Again, specific, factual examples of precisely how the US ED has damaged science education would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise, I'm afraid correlation without causation still holds.

Yes, you are absolutely correct. It's a correlation; I have not established causation.

I'm sure it just an amazing coincidence. Of course, there is that matter of the billions of dollars spent on the Department of Education that have produced no measurable (positive) results -- billions that could simply have been left in the hands of the states and spent for science education.

Coincidentally, here's a link:

http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/15827/Bill-Nye-on-America-s-Horrible-Science-Education

You say the ED has "produced no measurable positive results". Again, have you actually established this is correct? Or are you merely assuming it based on others' opinion-based rhetoric? By that standard one just might as easily speculate that were it not for the ED, our education system would be far worse. Or that the Loch Ness monster has been eating our kids' homework.

I see nothing supporting the assertion that the "billions" supposedly wasted by the ED would have otherwise been remitted to the states and furthermore have been spent on education, much less science education.

Please understand that I'm not attacking you. Rather I'm trying to challenge you to support your position with facts. This is, after all, what science is actually about.

Guest,

You should register so that we have a name to pin to you. Registration is easy.

I am not sure that I would agree with your argument, but I am impressed with anyone that knows the rules of the road in that regard.

Frankly, you look like you would be an excellent contributing member here and we would welcome your contributions.

Thanks!

Guest you're correct.

Often when a problem is identified a corresponding solution is attempted. If the solution doesn't work (or work sufficiently) it can look like the solution is the cause.

My hair is falling out, I went to the doctor about it, my hair is still falling out, ergo going bald is caused by going to the doctor.

This argument is very versatile. The economy was destroyed by cynical greedy bankers, the Govt tried to do something to reduce the problem, but the problems are still there therefore the Govt caused the problem.

Ffej

The following are all from general media sources, none that have any particular political axe to grind. Just going back 12 years, the theme remains the same in every new study: the US levels of education in reading, math and science fall compared to previous studies.

First, from ezinearticles.com:

http://ezinearticles.com/?US-Still-Behind-in-World-Education-Rankings&id=5598941

"A global study that tests and compares 15-year old students' science, math and reading literacy in developed and developing countries confirms that the United States is still falling behind. The evaluative study entitled Program for International Student Assessment, was first administered in 2000 and was performed again in 2003, 2006 and most recently, in 2009....The U.S. has reason to worry. Despite the very modest gains that were made, U.S. students have continued to score significantly lower than students in a number of other nations since the test's implementation in 2000."

In 1999: http://nces.ed.gov/timss/results99_1.asp [Us ranked 18th/19th in science & math]

In 2005: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/13/national/main838207.shtml

In 2008: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/11/19/US-slipping-in-education-rankings/UPI-90221227104776/

In 2010: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/07/us-falls-in-world-education-rankings_n_793185.htm

The Department of Education budget in 1980 was $15.5B; by 2009 it was $68 billion.

Source: http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/history/edhistory.pdf

Again, none of these articles point to the US ED being the cause or contributor of declining scores. Not one even specifically calls out a single failed policy or decision by that department.

By the logic you keep presenting:

1. Ships spend money on life preservers
2. People fall off ships and drown.
3. Therefore life preservers contribute to drowning and are a waste of money.

Perhaps this is in itself a sad indictment of our state of science education.

??? I think you've got it exactly backwards. The ED has spent billions of dollars on education for the past 30 years. Where's the proof that any of this has done any good?

An objective standard of accomplishment is a test; US national test scores have fallen. So what have we gotten for the money spent?

If the DOD spends a billion dollars on a new jet, you can point to the jet and look at its performance parameters to see if we have received value for the dollars spent. (We didn't get it with the A-12 back in the 80s which is why Cheney canceled the program.) Likewise for a ship, a rocket or a bridge.

Now, I realize that it may be harder to quantify the usefulness of a social program, but still -- you tell me, where are the positives for the roughly 1.5 trillion dollars spent by the ED for the past 30 years -- positives that are truly the result of an ED program, not the education spending done by the states. You explain to me how these falling test scores justifies spending one cent more on the ED.

And c'mon, even you can see how laughably flawed your life preserver analogy is. I'll fix your analogy for you:

1. Ships spend money on life preservers that don't work
   
2. People fall off ships and drown.
3. Buy more of those life preservers!

-another guest- Don't expect a real answer from people who have an agenda. The usual suspects always show up.

I read this citation, and to me it suggests the opposite of what you are arguing. As Mr. Nye points out, it is your cherished LOCAL school boards (in many parts of the country) who oppose teaching science, perhaps because it conflicts with their religious beliefs. This is one of the problems with local control that the ED was established to correct. Guest clearly pointed out the error in your logic (correlation/causation), so you respond with this? Bill Nye may be right or wrong in his analysis, but his argument appears to me to be at odds with yours.

As a personally who is generally agnostic, it concerns me that some school districts have fought against teaching evolution and have even promoted various forms of 'creation science'. I agree with Bill Nye that evolution ought to be taught in the schools.

You say this was one of the problems that the ED was established to correct. I'm not sure that this statement is true; but regardless the ED has done little to correct it. The ED has no 'enforcement arm' for ensuring the separation of church and state. All of the battles fought have been fought at the local level - and fortunately the pro-evolution forces have usually won. One task the ED could do -- and has been woefully poor in doing -- is pressuring the textbook companies to include more material about evolution.

The ED's own website offers little help. I did a search on its website for the following terms, and I show the number of 'hits' I got for each term. It's a sad list, in my opinion.

'Charles Darwin' ------- 8

'Evolution' --------- 3950 (which includes geology, astronomy, and many other terms)

'Darwin Evolution' ----- 6

'Global Warming' --- 1060

''Nutrition' --------- 2080

'Sports' ----------- 3800

'Climate Change' --- 6880

My dual parabolic dish on equatorial mount project is available for any science fair.

http://www.appropedia.org/Dual_Parabolic_Dishes_on_Equatorial_mount

It is new. I bet new stuff is not even allowed in many science fairs.

I have seen science projects here in Canada where they give kids exact instructions on how to make the things for the project. And all the kids made the same stuff!

Then they get graded on how close they got to the instructions.

So they can read and copy instructions from a book. I do not think they will learn much science from that. I think you have to give them some rope and just watch so they do not hang themselves. The fear that they will do something wrong or make a mistake seems to stifle everything. The whole beauty of experiments is that they go "wrong" and you do not get the results that you expect.

As a Science Fair tutor (All grades from Elementary to High School. Specializing in Physics), when a student's Hypothesis is dis-proven by the results of their experiment, I've seen many fear that they, themselves, had failed because the results didn't support the hypothesis. At all grades, though, one of the hallmarks we look for is the ability to analyze WHY the results didn't match, and analyze what the results really say (did I actually test what I intended to test, was my process or procedure flawed, did I miss a variable I could have controlled, etc.?), and that presumes that a failure can occur, and it does not mark down the student's work.

Unfortunately, and I've worked over the last 20 years with both public and private school students, as well as some home-schooled, most public school students DO get a failing grade when something does not go exactly according to plans. No private school students nor home-schoolers with whom I've worked, or whose work I've judged in competition, ever failed to earn a high score on that basis alone.

I suppose their is some causation assumable from this. There certainly is a correlation, in that the students who were privately or home-schooled all had at least one very involved and caring parent. I don't know about all, but many, possibly most, of the public school students either had parents who didn't care/weren't involved, or had teachers and administrators who overran the parents efforts to teach their kids that "failing" in a science experiment/project environment is how inventor learn what doesn't work (with apologies to Thomas Edison).