FCAT Science

Florida is fac­ing a crit­i­cal short­age of math and sci­ence teach­ers at the mid­dle and high school level. Florida plans on using Race to The Top funds to spur the edu­ca­tion of more of these  crit­i­cal instruc­tors, accord­ing to the Florida Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion. I’m hop­ing that the Florida Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion seeks out qual­ity edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ences and long-term pro­fes­sional staff devel­op­ment for the math and sci­ence teach­ers that will be head­ing into Florida’s mid­dle and high school sci­ence class­rooms. Also, of impor­tance is the need for teach­ers trained in STEM edu­ca­tion prac­tices. To read Leslie Postal’s arti­cle in Novem­ber 28th, 2011 Orlando Sen­tinel see the fol­low­ing link.

Florida Gov­er­nor Rick Scott wants to spend more dol­lars on Sci­ence, Tech­nol­ogy, Engi­neer­ing, and Math (STEM) majors at the uni­ver­sity level. “If a stu­dent wants to obtain a degree in Anthro­pol­ogy they bet­ter look else­where.” The state of Florida will begin to shift fund­ing away from cer­tain lib­eral arts majors at state uni­ver­si­ties to pro­mote STEM dis­ci­plines. Read fur­ther details in the Octo­ber 13th, 2011 US News Report by Jason Koe­bler. I have not agreed with all of Rick Scott’s ideas, but in this case the gov­er­nor is “spot-on” to pro­mote fund­ing STEM disciplines.

Bio­med­ical Sci­ence Class is being offered at Mariner School in Lee County, Florida. The Bio­med­ical Class is part of the the first Project Lead the Way (PLTW)  Bio­med­ical Sci­encePro­gram. It’s the first PLTW class that Lee County has offered. Project Lead the Way is a nationally-approved method of increas­ing Sci­ence, Tech­nol­ogy, Engi­neer­ing, and Math (STEM) con­cepts and explo­rations within schools. STEM edu­ca­tion classes help to achieve the goals set forth in the Race to the Top grant pro­gram. Michelle Hell­man is the instruc­tor for the Bio­med­ical Sci­ence class at Mariner School. She com­pleted two weeks of inten­sive train­ing pro­vided by PLTW this past sum­mer to become cer­ti­fied to teach the class. Hell­man states that “she is more of a facil­i­ta­tor, she hardly lec­tures.” Stu­dents are in charge of most of their own research and labs. Project Lead the Way phi­los­o­phy and cur­ricu­lum encour­ages the devel­op­ment of problem-solving skills, crit­i­cal think­ing, cre­ative and inno­v­a­tive rea­son­ing, and a love for learn­ing. To read more about the Bio­med­ical Sci­ence class at Mariner check out the fol­low­ing arti­cle in News-Press.com  by Mae Yousif-Bashi. To find out more about Project Lead the Way pro­grams and teacher train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties check out the Project Lead the Way web­site.

May­port Mid­dle School has added a coastal sci­ences mag­net pro­gram to its cur­ricu­lum. The addi­tion of the Coastal Sci­ences mag­net pro­gram has helped to increase stu­dent  enroll­ment at May­port Mid­dle School by nearly 100 stu­dents. The Coastal Sci­ences mag­net pro­gram is the the first of its kind in Duval county, and the first mid­dle –school mag­net in the Beaches and intra­coastal area. The school’s enroll­ment had declined in recent years due to the depar­ture of the air­craft car­rier USS John F. Kennedy from May­port and the clos­ing of numer­ous mobile home parks and apart­ment com­plexes in the sur­round­ing area. In addi­tion to tak­ing the tra­di­tional sixth-grade sci­ence class. Stu­dents enrolled in the Coastal Sci­ences mag­net pro­gram take another sci­ence class divided into four nine-week areas: micro­bi­ol­ogy, oceanog­ra­phy, marine envi­ron­ments, and liv­ing coastal zones. Stu­dents con­duct hands-on labs such as using dip nets to col­lect marine spec­i­mens within a pond located on the cam­pus. Addi­tion­ally, May­port Mid­dle School has a new lab, out­fit­ted with lap­tops, aquar­i­ums, micro­scopes, and other equip­ment. The new lab was paid for with a fed­eral grant. Per­haps other Florida school dis­tricts fac­ing a decline in stu­dent enroll­ment should con­sider revamp­ing schools with declin­ing enroll­ment with sci­ence and/or STEM mag­net pro­grams. Check out The Florida Times-Union arti­cle Marine Biol­o­gists: The Next Gen­er­a­tion by Mary Kelli Palka.

The num­ber of Florida stu­dents tak­ing Advanced Place­ment tests hit a record high in 2009, how­ever the num­ber of stu­dents who fail the exams is ris­ing, par­tic­u­larly in the South. No longer are AP classes for an elite group of stu­dents, there has been a major push in the state of Florida to get more stu­dents enrolled in Advanced Place­ment classes. The new Florida high school grade sys­tem will take into account par­tic­i­pa­tion and per­for­mance on the AP exams, adding another incen­tive for schools to encour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion in AP classes. Florida was fifth in the list of states with the great­est per­cent­age of high school seniors doing well on AP exams. In 2009 21.3 per­cent of Florida stu­dents did well on the AP exams, up from 16.3 per­cent in 2004. How­ever, data shows that Florida stu­dents did not do well when com­pared to their national coun­ter­parts on some AP exams, specif­i­cally those in math and sci­ence. On the AP Biol­ogy exam only 32 per­cent of Florida stu­dents did well, earn­ing at least a 3 on the five-level test, com­pared to about 49 per­cent nation­ally. Kris­ten Klopfen­stein, a senior researcher at the Texas Schools Project and a pro­fes­sor on leave from Texas Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­sity, who con­ducts research on AP has found that stu­dents who take AP often do well in col­lege. How­ever, Klopfenstein’s research shows that it’s other rig­or­ous courses, espe­cially in math and sci­ence that lead to that suc­cess. To see view­points of par­ents and admin­is­tra­tors in regards to the push to take AP courses see the fol­low­ing arti­cle by Leslie Postal in Orlando Sen­tinel on Feb­ru­ary 10, 2010.

Gov­er­nor Char­lie Crist signed Florida’s appli­ca­tion for more than $700 mil­lion of the $4.35 bil­lion fed­eral dol­lars that will be avail­able through Race to the Top funds. Race to the Top is the largest-ever fed­eral com­pet­i­tive invest­ment in school reform. The U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion is review­ing the appli­ca­tions, win­ners will be announced for the first round of fund­ing by April.

If Florida is awarded the funds, half of the awarded funds will go to the 59 school dis­tricts, as well as three lab schools, and the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind that signed onto to become a part of the reform. The remain­der of the funds will go directly to the state (Tal­la­has­see) to sup­port state-level projects ben­e­fit­ing all school districts.

The fund­ing will be used in the fol­low­ing areas:

Cur­ricu­lum Standards

Assess­ments of Stu­dent Learning

Increased Use of Data (one-stop data crunch­ing for the entire state for use by teach­ers and dis­trict staff).

Teacher and Leader Qual­ity and

Assis­tance for Strug­gling Schools

For com­plete details on Florida’s Race to the Top Grant visit Florida’s Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion Amer­i­can Recov­ery and Rein­vest­ment Act  site.

A coali­tion of edu­ca­tors, sci­en­tists, engi­neers, and phil­an­thropies announced the launch­ing of National Lab Day. A new grass­roots ini­tia­tive designed to rein­vig­o­rate sci­ence and math edu­ca­tion in the nation’s schools and after-school pro­grams which will is hoped to ulti­mately lead to increased U.S. com­pet­i­tive­ness.
The goal of the ini­tia­tive is to improve the qual­ity of Sci­ence, tech­nol­ogy, engi­neer­ing, and math (STEM) edu­ca­tion in Amer­ica. A col­lab­o­ra­tion between the gov­ern­ment and more than 200 public-and pri­vate sec­tor orga­ni­za­tions, National Lab Day will con­nect stu­dents in grades 6–12 to hands-on learn­ing expe­ri­ences and pro­mote tin­ker­ing in lab­o­ra­tory set­tings. National Lab Day is a New York-based edu­ca­tion orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to improv­ing sci­ence and math edu­ca­tion nation­wide. National Lab Day wel­comes new part­ner­ships and can be reached at info@nationallabday.org. For fur­ther details on the National Lab Day ini­tia­tive please see the fol­low­ing link to the National Lab Day Orga­ni­za­tion web­site. http://www.nationallabday.org/

Pres­i­dent Obama announced a $250 mil­lion public-private com­bi­na­tion effort to improve sci­ence and math­e­mat­ics instruc­tion. The goal of the ini­tia­tive is to help the United States com­pete in sci­ence and engi­neer­ing fields with global eco­nomic com­peti­tors. The fund­ing will pre­pare more than 10,000 new math and sci­ence teach­ers teach­ers over the next five years, and pro­vide on-the-job train­ing for an addi­tional 100,000 teach­ers in STEM fields. I am hop­ing that the state of Florida ben­e­fits from this inia­tive via pro­vid­ing addi­tional and much needed qual­ity hands-on pro­fes­sional staff devel­op­ment for math and sci­ence teach­ers. For fur­ther details on the ini­tia­tive see the arti­cle by Nick Ander­son, Wash­ing­ton Post Staff Writer in the fol­low­ing link “>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/06/AR2010010602063.html”>

 Novem­ber 23rd, Pres­i­dent Obama launched the “Edu­cate to Inno­vate” cam­paign. The goal of the nation­wide effort is to move Amer­i­can stu­dents from the mid­dle to the top in sci­ence and math achieve­ment over the next decade, over $260 mil­lion in public-private invest­ments have been made to help achieve this goal. Big name pub­lic and pri­vate part­ner­ships have come on board to help achieve this goal includ­ing: Time Warner Cable, Dis­cov­ery Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Sesame Street’s Early STEM Lit­er­acy Ini­tia­tive, The MacArthur Foun­da­tion, Sony Com­puter Enter­tain­ment Amer­ica, and numer­ous other cor­po­ra­tions. States have begun sub­mit­ting qual­i­fy­ing paper­work to state their inter­est in apply­ing for  “Race to the Top” funds. States receiv­ing Race to the Top funds will have to dra­mat­i­cally improve their schools and stu­dent achieve­ment in sci­ence and math. A major por­tion of the funds are expected to be used for pro­fes­sional staff devel­op­ment. For fur­ther details on the “Edu­cate to Inno­vate” cam­paign see the offi­cial White House Press release below.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/president-obama-launches-educate-innovate-campaign-excellence-science-technology-en