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|  | Sputnik Revisited: Historical Perspectives on Science Reform
(continued) Science Reform in the 1990's. Today innovation in science education is again in full swing. How does the present movement differ from the Sputnik reforms? Will it run its course in a few more years, like the efforts of the fifties and sixties, or will it find fertile soil in the schools and take root more deeply than the earlier reforms? One difference between the new and the old science reform movements is their origin. Unlike the Sputnik reforms, that developed out of competition with the Soviet Union for technological and military supremacy, today's efforts have their roots in the global market place. In 1983, the celebrated "year of the reports", nearly fifty national studies totaling over six thousand pages signaled a new wave of national concern about the poor state of American Education. Among the most widely read of these documents was Action for Excellence: A Comprehensive Plan to Improve Our Nation's Schools, a study carried out by the Education Commission of the States. Chaired by James B. Hunt, Jr., the governor of North Carolina, the report stressed the relationship between a strong educational system and the country's economic well-being. The Commission pointed out that productivity in manufacturing was growing four times faster in Japan than in the United States, and proposed a partnership between government, business, labor, and the schools to bring about lasting educational change. Calling for higher levels of competence in reading, writing, mathematics, science, reasoning, and the use of computers to speed the pace of economic growth, the language of the report sounded like an economic call to arms: “There are few national efforts that can legitimately be called crucial to our national survival. Improving education in America -- improving it sufficiently and improving it now -- is such an effort."8 Another difference is found in their goals. Documents like Action for Excellence, and the widely-quoted report of Secretary of Education Terrel Bell entitled A Nation at Risk, published in the same year, set the agenda for the new reformers. They argued that educational challenge of the coming century was to prepare all children to compete successfully in the increasingly competitive job market of the post industrial society. No longer was the mission to recruit and prepare "the best and the brightest" to staff our university and corporate research laboratories. Now we needed a broad range of competencies among all students to keep the American economy growing and competing successfully with technologically sophisticated countries like Germany and Japan. This would require not only the participation of the cream of the academic world. Skilled people from all segments of society -- government, business, industry, and the local community -- must be brought together to participate in the new transformation of the schools. Significant change must come from collaborative efforts between a broad range of constituencies drawn from the schools, industry, and academia, together with grass roots efforts by parents and other concerned citizens. As New York State's former Commissioner of Education, Thomas Sobel, put it, changing schools requires “top down support for bottom up reform." One of the most persuasive champions of the new science education reform movement was Bassim Shakashiri, the energetic head of NSF's Education Directorate, who took over the ailing division in 1984. A chemistry professor from the University of Wisconsin, Shakashiri pinned a "Science is Fun" button on his lapel and dazzled Capitol Hill with compelling testimony about the inadequacy of the nation's investment in science and math education. Going beyond the committee room, Shakashiri courted congressmen and their families with Christmastime "Science Shows" at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum and pyrotechnic displays at the National Academy. With such flamboyant efforts he managed to increase the NSF education budget from $55.5 million in fiscal 1986 to over $200 million in 1990. By the fall of 1990 Shakashiri’s directorate had a $285 million budget request pending before Congress, and when asked by the legislators what he thought the Foundation's education budget should be by 1993 he boldly told them "$600 million."9 Pressed for details about how he accomplished so much so quickly, he replied, "Seven days a week, fourteen hours a day."10 Shakashiri's mission echoed the Sputnik reforms in some respects. In 1987 the NSF funded three multi-million dollar efforts designed to create a coherent program of science education for the elementary and secondary schools, the largest NSF grants for science education since 1975. There were several new elements, however. The grants required the participation of a publisher that would provide matching funds for testing, teacher training, and marketing. Perhaps even more significant, in announcing the grants, Shakashiri contrasted the goals of these new projects to the original NSF science curriculum projects developed in response to Sputnik I, which he said had been created to foster an academic elite. "Now we face a different problem," he remarked. "It is not just our 'best and brightest' who are inadequately prepared. We are failing to provide an adequate background, an adequate introduction, and an adequate level of science 'literacy' for the population as a whole."11 Unhappily Shakashiri's intensive politicking on behalf of his division did not endear him to his boss, Eric Bloch, and following a swiftly implemented reorganization plan that restructured his directorate, Shakashiri lost his job. Other advocates for the economic imperatives of the current science education reform movement include Harvard economist Richard Murnane, and MIT economist Richard Levy. In their recently published book, Teaching the New Basic Skills: Principles for Educating Children to Thrive in a Changing Economy, Murnane and Levy identify six skills that all high school graduates will need to acquire and hold a job that pays middle class income wages:
Using case studies drawn from Honda and Northwestern Mutual Life, they describe in impressive detail the job requirements now found in both the blue and white collar segments of our economy. Sighting the screening practices of Diamond-Star (a Mitsubishi -Chrysler joint venture) they conclude: "Close to half of all 17-year-olds cannot read or do math at the level needed to get a job in a modern automobile plant."13 Northwestern Mutual Life doesn't even bother with paper and pencil tests. They simply confine their recruiting to college campuses where they are more likely to find students who are competent in reading and math, and have the communication skills to handle customers professionally and work collaboratively with their fellow employees. Firms like Honda and Northwestern Mutual increasingly place more emphasis on the "soft skills" that cannot be measured on objective tests. Particularly important are the ability to improve performance through written and oral communication and group problem solving. Murnane and Levy cite statistics that show that the gap between the wages of high school and college graduates is wider now than any time since the 1930s. This gap narrows, however, when they control for the math scores of both groups. High school students who graduate with equivalent math scores to college-bound students do not appear to be losing ground in the salary sweepstakes. They conclude that the solution to the preservation of middle class wages is not to send everyone to college but to improve education at the pre-college level:
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