Visual Literacy! (Students from Missouri, the SHOW ME State)

The Eye Generation Prefers Not to Read All About It

Students in Film Class a Microcosm of a Visually Oriented Culture

By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 6, 2007; C02


The breaking point for Perry Schwartz comes on Day 5 of the American Film Institute's three-week Summer Movie Production Workshop. Schwartz, a professor of theater and film at Montgomery College in Takoma Park and director of the AFI film course, is helping students envision the movie they are making together.

They sit in folding chairs in the college's Black Box Theatre and speak in strictly visual terms, citing specific actors and moments in cinema.

"He's more like Jack Black."

"That happens in 'Space Jam'!"

Of the 10 students, one is 40 years old; the rest are college age or younger.

Schwartz is describing how the two main characters in the student film will sit on a couch, simultaneously reach for popcorn and inadvertently touch hands, when Kit Reiner of Silver Spring and Max Simon of Potomac -- both 18 -- cry out, "Just like in 'Lady and the Tramp'!"

And Schwartz could take it no more. "Stop!" he yells.

"Try to think less about which movie scene you are reminded of and more about the way people really act in real life. Everything isn't related to a movie!"

Really?

To most of the workshop students, life has become totally visual. They are members of not so much the Me Generation as the Eye Generation.

"I really don't like reading a story. I like seeing it," says workshop student Craig Patterson, 17, of Grove City, Ohio. "I almost always prefer the movie version of a book. Movies can capture the beauty of an image more than books can."

Cecile Guillemin, a 17-year-old workshop participant who is in her last year at Lycee Rochambeau, the French International School, says, "I don't have time to read books. I am inspired by books to do movies."

* * *

Scene 1: Cut to Perry Schwartz, a bearded professorial type in his mid-60s, telling the students of his own background. He stands on a dark stage under bright lights. He has taught at Montgomery College since 1978. His focus has been live theater. He has made several short films, he says, including one based on "Our Little Trip," a play by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

When Schwartz mentions the beat poet, the camera closes in on students' faces. They are blank. Not one has heard of Ferlinghetti. Schwartz sighs.

* * *

It's no surprise that television, movies and video games have changed the way many absorb information. Now teachers are trying to harness that energy of the eye. This visually oriented generation "acquires much more of their knowledge -- some studies estimate that acquisition as 50 percent -- from visual texts" than from written sources, says Kathy Krauth, who is working on the Visualizing Cultures project at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology.

Therefore, she says, the Eye Generation "feels more comfortable expressing themselves in visual form."

Examples are endless. Vacation snapshots, collegians-gone-wild party pix and everything else go straight to a handycam or cellphone camera to the Internet. Today's job seekers post video résumés at Vault.com. In a Democratic debate this month and a September Republican debate, voters will be able to upload YouTube videos of themselves asking the candidates questions.

Through YouTubing, Facebooking, MySpacing and myriad other ways, people take in vast amounts of visual information. But do they always comprehend the meaning of what they see?

That's the problem, says Krauth, who lives in Tokyo and teaches at the American School in Japan. Students are taught how to read and how to react critically to literature, but not about visual images.

Because visual literacy is not required in schools, she says, "this generation's ability to assign meaning to the visual texts of others is passive and still needs a great deal more work. They are easily manipulated as students, consumers and citizens."

In other words, students today need to be taught, through images, how to think critically.

* * *

Scene 2: The students, sitting in a semicircle, are asked to name their favorite movies. They rattle off "Apocalypse Now" and "Psycho" and "Raging Bull."

"The Incredibles," says Kit Reiner.

"Pirates of the Caribbean," says Craig Patterson. "One."

* * *

In an e-mail, Krauth says the problem of visual illiteracy will be solved only "when being visually literate becomes central to current discussions and definitions of the literate individual in modern society."

Teachers must understand that students in the 21st century are receiving the bulk of their information through images, she says, and they must teach students how to be decisive and discerning about the images they see. "We should lean into the reality of this generation," she says, "and construct meaningful lessons using visuals."

And that's what Schwartz is trying to do: give meaningful literary lessons to his students using visuals. Over the nine or so years that he has been involved with the course, the students get younger and they come with more experience. This is the youngest class he has seen. Several have taken film classes at other schools.

In Schwartz's class, everyone comes up with an idea for a movie. Then they vote on the best one. This time, the only suggestion with a clear beginning, middle and end comes from the 40-year-old, David Hevey, who teaches middle school in Singapore. He suggests a story about a man with halitosis. After the plot is established, each student writes and directs one scene of the collaborative movie. They take turns performing other sundry tasks -- assisting with the camera, monitoring the sound, holding the boom microphone, making sure everybody is fed and watered.

For the major jobs, Schwartz brings in a couple of pros. Aerial Longmire, who handles the camera, is a star graduate of Schwartz's film courses. She works at Retirement Living Television Network in Columbia. Abba Shapiro, who helps the students with scripts and editing, trains people to use Apple's digital editing software.

Working sometimes 10 hours a day, students -- who paid $2,000 for the course -- write the movie, cast it, shoot it, edit it and gather to watch it at the end of the class; the film will be shown, free to the public, on Monday at 5 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring.

* * *

Scene 3: Schwartz hunches over a box of photographs -- publicity pictures of actors being considered by the class for the four main characters in its movie, "Scent of Love." This is the way the casting process begins. Schwartz faces the students and flashes about 200 pictures of professional actors. He waves each picture in front of the class, pausing only a few seconds. Amazingly, the students seem to remember every face that blurs past.

"We've already seen him," somebody says, after whizzing through scores and scores of portraits.

"We said no to her," says someone else.

* * *

Loanne Snavely, a librarian at Penn State, was on a panel at this summer's gathering of the American Library Association in Washington titled: "Eye to I: Visual Literacy Meets Information Literacy." She and other librarians discussed "the connections between visual and information literacies." They exhorted colleagues to get "beyond traditional literacy; you know, reading and writing."

Like Kathy Krauth, Snavely believes that visual education should be expanded and enhanced. Textual information, Snavely says, has been the primary focus of libraries in the past, but with "so much graphical communication integrated into the huge wave of social networking our culture is experiencing, we need to broaden our focus to include images of all kinds." * * *

Scene 4: Schwartz leaves the moviemaking students alone in the classroom for a while. They talk about "Lord of the Flies" as they wait for the teacher's return.

"Piggy died," says Max Simon.

"Spoiler alert," Kit says.

Now they don't have to read the book, someone says.

"It was a book?" asks someone else. Fade to black.

NGA STEM Center Grant RFP

NGA STEM Center Grant RFP

http://www.nga.org/Files/pdf/0702INNOVATIONSTEMRFP.PDF

NGA Awards $500,000 Grants to Six States to Improve STEM Education

Jul 2, 2007, News Report

Because the livelihood of today's workforce, as well as state economies across the country, rests on the ability to compete in today's global economy, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) today awarded Colorado, Hawaii, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia $500,000 grants to establish science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education centers in their states.

A new workforce of problem-solvers, innovators, and inventors who are self-reliant and able to think logically is one of the critical foundations that drive a state economy's innovation capacity. The grants will allow states to create new STEM centers, support the development of a network of STEM centers or repurpose existing STEM Centers. The centers will serve as the foundation for an improved workforce through:

• Aligning K-12 STEM education requirements with postsecondary and workplace expectations;
• Improving the quantity and quality of STEM teachers;
• Benchmarking state K-12 STEM standards, assessments and curricula to top performing nations in STEM education achievement and attainment;
• Garnering public will for change to implement a better aligned system; and
• Identifying best practices in STEM education and bringing them to scale.

"Governors recognize the links between a rigorous STEM education program and our leadership in the global economy," said Raymond C. Scheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association. "These grants will strengthen the economic competitiveness of the United States by improving our capacity for innovation."

STEM centers will help state K-12 education systems ensure all students graduate from high school with essential competencies in science, technology, engineering and math. These competencies are integral to improving overall high school graduation and college readiness rates and supporting a state economy's innovation capacity related to the businesses that operate within their leading economic clusters.

The STEM center grants are being awarded as part of NGA Chair Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano's Innovation America initiative. An independent national selection committee comprised of leading innovation and education experts selected the six states from submitted proposals. All states and U.S. territories were invited to apply for the grant and 24 applications were received.

The grants are made possible with the generous support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Intel Foundation.

AIM Program "Primer on Pedagogy"

The Knowledge Building Paradigm: A Model of Learning for Net Generation Students
http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=368

21st CENTURY ASSESSMENT: FRAMES our MISSION!

Published Online: May 18, 2007

Published in Print: May 23, 2007

Commentary

Assessment in the Age of Innovation

By Charles Fadel, Margaret Honey, & Shelley Pasnik

Within the past 50 years, we’ve seen our country move from an industrial economy to an information-based economy. Now, early in the 21st century, it appears we are shifting to an innovation-based economy, one that requires what the psychologist Robert J. Sternberg calls “successful intelligence,” a three-point foundation of analytical, practical, and creative skills. In other words, the measure of success in today’s economy is not just what you know, but how you use that to imagine new ways to get work done, solve problems, or create new knowledge. This innovation-based environment calls for substantially new forms of assessment, and therein lies a major hurdle for schools, especially American schools, trying to prepare students for this new century.

— Steven Braden

American students today are largely evaluated based on their factual knowledge. A recent study by Robert C. Pianta and his colleagues at the University of Virginia’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning found that the average 5th grader received five times as much instruction in basic skills as instruction focused on problem-solving or reasoning. Our existing assessment system tends to reinforce rote instructional practices emphasizing the drilling of facts likely to be on a test, rather than problem-solving and reasoning strategies difficult to capture in multiple-choice test items.

If we look at the effectiveness of such practices, and benchmark our success against international competitors, the results are not promising. Test scores from the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which surveys 15-year-old schoolchildren in industrialized countries worldwide, show that, on average, U.S. students lag behind those in Europe and Asia in problem-solving skills in mathematics and science. Schools in Europe and Asia generally teach students how to apply knowledge to novel situations more successfully than do schools in the United States.

If we are to help students succeed in a 21st-century economy and society, we must find ways to measure their ability to apply knowledge to complex and challenging tasks, and to behave in other ways that predict successful engagement in the world as it is now. Because the most salient features of today’s world seem to be change, and the accelerating rate of that change, a major part of a person’s skill set must be the ability to adapt to new conditions and imagine new solutions.

Twenty-first century learning is about the process of integrating and using knowledge, not just the acquisition of facts and procedures.

With the reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind Act under way, the time is right to engage the nation’s policymakers in thinking about what 21st-century assessment should be. Assessing student performance in an innovation-based economy will require a transformation—from a sole focus on traditional subject-matter mastery to a new definition of educational excellence that encompasses the skills and understandings required by the new economy. The challenge we face as a nation in building a world-class education system is not only to educate toward rigorous standards benchmarked against the best systems in the world, but also to design an education system that puts a premium on the full complement of content and skills that will enable students to succeed in this ever-changing environment.

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What are the essential elements of such learning? The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a leading advocacy organization in this area, identifies them as core academic content that is infused with subject-matter themes such as global awareness; financial, economic, business, and entrepreneurial literacy; and civic and health literacy, as well as learning skills that stress creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem-solving, and communication and collaboration, along with information, media, and technology skills, and life and career skills. To prepare students to succeed as citizens, thinkers, and workers in the new century, and to enable teachers and school administrators to educate students for a future in which such skills are the markers of success, we must embrace a more comprehensive view of what constitutes learning.

Many of our high-achieving competitors are pushing for exactly this sort of innovation in education. A recent report by Singapore’s Ministry of Education, for example, opens with this statement: “Education is about preparing our people for the future. To thrive in the world in 2015, Singaporeans need strong analytical, communication, and interpersonal skills. They have to be more risk-taking, entrepreneurial, and able to tolerate greater ambiguity. Most importantly, they need to continuously learn, unlearn, and relearn to remain relevant in a dynamic environment.”

Assessments designed to gauge how well students master these more complex objectives of 21st-century learning will have to use a range of strategies, constructed-response items, essays, and other real-world and virtual performance measures that can help us evaluate how effectively students apply knowledge to problem-solving situations. Twenty-first century learning is about the process of integrating and using knowledge, not just the acquisition of facts and procedures. Hence, educators need to build assessments for learning, rather than solely of learning.

The new assessments will have to do the following:

• Be largely performance-based. We need to know how students apply content knowledge to critical-thinking, problem-solving, and analytical tasks throughout their education, so that we can help them hone this ability and come to understand that successful learning is as much about the process as it is about facts and figures.

• Make students’ thinking visible. The assessments should reveal the kinds of conceptual strategies a student uses to solve a problem.

• Generate data that can be acted upon. Teachers need to be able to understand what the assessment reveals about students’ thinking. And school administrators, policymakers, and teachers need to be able to use this assessment information to determine how to create better opportunities for students.

• Build capacity in both teachers and students. Assessments should provide frequent opportunity for feedback and revision, so that both teachers and students learn from the process.

• Be part of a comprehensive and well-aligned continuum. Assessment should be an ongoing process that is well-aligned to the target concepts, or core ideas, reflected in the standards.

---

Building new assessments is a complex and costly undertaking, and there is good reason to believe that innovation in this area will require novel funding strategies from both the public and private sectors.

In the United Kingdom, for example, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, a government body that maintains and develops the British national curriculum and its associated assessments, has invested the equivalent of $50 million in developing a new assessment system. In that system, test activities take place within a virtual city, and are designed to assess students’ information, communication, and technology, or ICT, skills, as well as their ability to use such skills to solve a set of complex problems involving research, communication, information management, and presentation.

The British assessment’s ambitious design reflects the country’s intention not only to set a new direction for the assessment of ICT skills, but also to generate an approach to computer-administered assessment that will ultimately be employed in other content areas. Interestingly, as early as 1992, the now-defunct U.S. Office of Technology Assessment published a report, “Testing in American Schools: Asking the Right Questions,” which noted that cutting-edge technologies could help push testing beyond conventional paper-and-pencil formats by structuring and presenting complex tasks, tracking students’ cognitive processes, and providing rapid feedback.

Another example of assessment innovation resides closer to home, in the National Science Foundation’s consortium of teachers, university-based researchers, and software developers designing formative mathematics assessments that run on hand-held computers. These assessments help teachers implement a form of research-based “clinical interview.” Based on the work of Jean Piaget, this assessment approach provides teachers with a window into children’s thinking. It helps them understand not only the mathematical knowledge of primary students, but also the strategies they use to solve math problems. The technology helps teachers keep track of students’ answers and reasoning strategies, and generates a performance profile at the end of an interview session. The kind of diagnostic data generated through such assessments gives teachers information they can act on instructionally.

Funding for developing such innovative assessments is admittedly a strategy for the longer term. What is important for the short term is that states realize they are in a position to exert tremendous influence over the kinds of assessments being developed for today’s students. Using the criteria cited here as a starting point, state departments of education can craft requests for proposals that specify exactly what they are looking for in a 21st-century assessment system.

Such requests are clearly going to have to break with existing conventions, however, and recognize that compelling, effective approaches to assessment are more likely to come from individuals and partnerships that are themselves focused on innovation, and not necessarily from traditional providers.

Charles Fadel is the global lead for education at Cisco Systems and a board member of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (www.21stcenturyskills.org), where he co-chairs the standards, assessment, and professional-development committee. Margaret Honey is the senior vice president for strategic initiatives and research at Wireless Generation, a data-reporting, assessment, and professional-services company. Shelley Pasnik is a research scientist at the Center for Children and Technology, part of the Education Development Center, in Newton, Mass. She serves as an education consultant to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Lansing town hall aims to create 'innovation economy'

Nearly 100 people gathered Friday at the Lansing Center for a town hall meeting of the Mid-Michigan Innovation Team. The MMIT is a $15 million, three-year initiative funded by the United State Department of Labor's Workforce Innovations in Regional Economic Development initiative. The WIRED initiative focuses on regions, within and across states -- communities willing to join forces for a critical mass of assets and institutions to make economic transformation possible. In the MMIT's case, that means a 13-county region that includes the metropolitan areas of Lansing, Flint, Bay City, Midland, Saginaw and Michigan's Thumb region. Organizers say the region is big enough to have major assets, such as international airports and universities, and diverse enough to include manufacturing, technology, agriculture and tourism economies. But it's linked in many cases by an intensely local, small-town focus -- small towns that under the grant will be encouraged to align resources and commitments for regional benefit. Your humble narrator played a role in the festivities, speaking about some of the innovative companies he visited during the recent Great Lakes IT Report Spring Tech Tour, and offering a few unsolicited opinions on the state of innovation in mid-Michigan. But the real meat of the program came from Randall Kempner, vice presidnt for regional innovation at the Council on Competitiveness in Washington, D.C. Kempner presented the results of a Mid-Michigan Regional Innovation Assessment, a survey of the region's current capacity for economic innovation. The survey showed entrepreneurial strengths in transportation infrastructure -- good highways, low commute times, three good airports. Also, regional leaders said the region's universities and community colleges were really good at working with employers. And the cost of doing business isn't out of line -- it's 97 percent of the national average in Flint and Lansing, 99 percent in Saginaw and 101 percent in Bay City. Also, Michigan public school students beat the national averages in ACT and SAT testing, and all but three of teh 13 counties involved have high school graduation rates above the national average. The challenges -- and we've heard 'em before! -- are workforce educational development, a lack of an entrepreneurial culture and a lack of risk capital. In short, it's a big company mentality. It's been common across the country in many places, Kempner said -- from Rochester, N.Y. where everyone used to work for Kodak, and Wilmington, Del., where everyone used to work for DuPont. "Without intervention, it will take at least a generation to change this (big company) mentality," Kempner said. "So your challenge is -- intervene! You have to keep telling kids their future is in IT, not a lifetime job in an auto plant. And the auto plant jobs that will remain are not dark, dirty and dumb -- they are it jobs too." Kempner said he did see hopeful signs, like angel investor groups springing up, entrepreneurship training programs emerging and a new culture in K-12 education. And he said there also needs to be more regional cooperation. The little three-county regions of which the MMIT is comprised -- the three counties around Lansing, the three counties around Midland, Bay City and Saginaw, the three counties of the Thumb -- "are not big enough to win in the global economy. You don’t have enough assets on your own," Kempner said. The town hall concluded with breakout sessions on the four economic areas identified in the MMIT implementation plan -- advanced manufacturing, the bio-economy, health care and entrepreneurship -- and a presentation on automotive information from David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor. More at http://www.midmiinnovationteam.org/.

NSF ITEST Grant (Leverage Opportunity)

(January photo by MANDI WRIGHT/Detroit Free Press)

Gov. Jennifer Granholm says the National Governors Association conference in July will give the state a chance to showcase itself. But it won't be as lavish as when Michigan hosted the annual event 20 years ago

State scales back governors conference

Nation's governors to gather near Traverse City in a low-key affair

May 20, 2007

BY KATHLEEN GRAY

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

The nation's governors plan to meet near Traverse City this summer, but their July 20-23 conference will bear little resemblance to the razzle-dazzle that greeted the chief executives 20 years ago.

In 1987, the state's economy had emerged from the recession of the early 1980s. It was Michigan's 150th birthday and then-Gov. Jim Blanchard was determined to show the nation's governors a good time.

Back then, the state paid $500,000 to put on the National Governors Association conference. There were parades, concerts at Interlochen, fireworks, a tall ships regatta and a Motown revue.

A little-known Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton, who was chairman of the group, showed his musical chops, joining the Four Tops with a riff on his tenor saxophone.

Twenty years later, Michigan's economy is skidding and there's no state money to promote gala events. There will be parties and plenty of chances to show off Michigan's splendor, but the money will come from private donations raised by the state's NGA host committee, said Liz Boyd, spokeswoman for Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Last year, Charleston, S.C., raised $1.2 million in private money to host the annual meeting.

Even with Michigan's economic travails, Granholm will be propelled into the national spotlight as the host of the event.

"Hosting this year's NGA annual meeting in Traverse City is a terrific chance for us to use a national spotlight to showcase Michigan and all we have to offer -- from our new economy, high-tech businesses to our spectacular natural environment," Granholm said. "The state is feeling some challenges, but it's the perfect time to highlight the work we are doing to implement our economic plan."

While Blanchard whisked his Democratic colleagues and Democratic candidates for president to the governor's sweet summer digs on Mackinac Island for a meeting after the official event, Granholm has no such plans."We're going to promote Michigan, but it's a different time and we're approaching it as a business meeting," Boyd said. "It's not a time for lavish parties."

The NGA host committee is lining up corporate sponsors to pay for the parties and the security needed to keep the 35-40 governors expected to attend the conference safe. That's appropriate, given the economic times, Blanchard said.

"We were trying to show people a Michigan they had never seen, so we used it to promote tourism and manufacturing in Michigan," he said of the 1987 conference. "It's a great way to show off the state's assets."

The tentative schedules of both the NGA and the state host committee will be released later this week, but there are plans for social events for the 1,200 people expected to attend the conference on Friday and Saturday. And the Chateau Chantal winery on the picturesque Old Mission Peninsula is planning a corporate-sponsored party and dinner for the governors on Sunday evening, featuring a strolling dinner and wines of the region.

"I know what they're hoping to do is give people a flavor of what Up North Michigan is really like. People have a very industrialized image of Michigan," said Liz Berger, operations manager for the winery. "But we're rather idyllic and pastoral."

The event is to take place about sunset and the governors will then be bused to the tip of the peninsula for a bonfire "and maybe some marshmallows," Berger said.

Governors, their staff, and representatives from the federal and state governments, White House, think tanks and the news media covering the event will encounter a newly renovated Grand Traverse Resort and Spa, with $12 million in upgrades done in the last four years."The renovations would have been done regardless of the convention," said J. Michael DeAgostino, spokesman for the resort, which is owned by the Grand Traverse band of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. "But we'll turn over the entire facility to the NGA."

Traverse City also is a different place than it was 20 years ago, when the NGA conference was one of the biggest events hosted in the city to date.

Now the hotels are filled most of the summer and big events are commonplace. Running the same time as the NGA is the three-week Horse Show by the Bay, a national equestrian event that is expected to attract 750 horses and 1,500 spectators.

"It's July in Traverse City and I'm right on the beach. We would be full without the NGA conference," said Chris Gorence, general manager of the Sugar Beach and Grand Beach Resort hotels. "The positive effect it will have on us is that it will drive people to come here on other weekends in the summer."

The four-day event, however, isn't all fun. The governors will get down to the business of electing new leadership. Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican of Minnesota, will take over as chairman from Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat of Arizona. And they will focus on the theme "Innovation America."

"It's a good fit for Michigan," said Jodi Omear, spokeswoman for the NGA. "It's all about revitalizing the economy with things like alternative energy."

The star power among governors isn't high, unless you're talking about former movie star and current California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and his attendance isn't a sure bet.

While the NGA likes to keep the conference nonpartisan and won't host any presidential forums, wherever a group of elected officials gather, politics is sure to follow. When the meeting was held in Charleston last year, there were four sitting governors considering a run for the White House -- Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, George Pataki of New York, Tom Vilsack of Iowa and Bill Richardson of New Mexico. Political events were as plentiful as policy discussions.

Richardson is the only sitting governor still in the race, though Romney, also still in the race, could attend as a former governor.

"We discourage them from doing anything during the meeting," Omear said. "But I'm sure there will be things before and after the conference."

Contact KATHLEEN GRAY at 313-223-4407 or gray@freepress.com.

Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.

Reassurance!

Published Online: April 27, 2007

Published in Print: May 2, 2007

Math-Science Bills Advance in Congress

Separate measures aimed at boosting competitiveness.

By David J. Hoff and Sean Cavanagh

Improving K-12 instruction and student achievement in mathematics and science is at the heart of separate bills intended to bolster America’s economic standing that won overwhelming approval in both houses of Congress last week.

The omnibus bills include efforts to increase the content knowledge of prospective math and science teachers, provide professional development for teachers in those subjects, and define what students should know to do well in college and the workplace in all subjects.

“We can only succeed in the international global economy if we are competitive and if we innovate,” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said during the House’s debate on the three bills that made up its competitiveness package. “We cannot innovate without the investment in education, the investment in science and technology.”

As part of that package, the House on April 24 approved the 10,000 Teachers, 10 Million Minds Science and Math Scholarship Act by a vote of 389-22. The House also approved a science and technology bill that day, and a bill to provide loans to small technology businesses the next day. Both those bills passed by large margins.

The Senate passed its bill, 88-8, on April 25.

“The American Competes Act is the best way to keep more of the jobs of the 21st century right here in America and the best way to ensure that our children have the skills to keep America at the forefront of innovations and discovery,” Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the Senate minority leader.

A White House statement expressed concern about the number of new programs proposed in the Senate bill, but it did not threaten a veto. The two chambers’ bills would have to be reconciled before Congress could send a measure to President Bush.

Supporters of the bill said that the Senate took a comprehensive approach to solving the problem because the stakes are high.

“We are at risk of losing our brainpower advantage,” Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., a co-author of the bill, said. “If we lose our brainpower advantage, we lose … our standard of living.”

“Federal investment in the basic sciences and research has long been a critical component of America’s competitive dominance globally,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Last week’s action followed more than two years of bipartisan work in both houses that responded to a 2005 report from a panel of business leaders convened by the National Academies. In “Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future,” the panel warned that the United States’ economy would suffer if it failed to improve the scientific and technological skills of its workforce. ("Panel Urges U.S. Push to Raise Math, Science Achievement," Oct. 19, 2005.)

In the K-12 section of that report, the business leaders set goals of recruiting 10,000 of the nation’s best college students to teach mathematics and science; improving the math and science skills of the 250,000 teachers already teaching those subjects; and doubling the number of students taking Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses.

Congress’ attempt to address the K-12 goals, as well as the broader scientific and technological issues addressed in the report, faltered last year. While the bills passed last week by the House and the Senate share many goals, they take different approaches to meeting them.

The Senate bill would establish several new programs in various federal agencies, while the House legislation focuses more on expanding existing programs, mostly within the National Science Foundation.

Both the House and the Senate bills would do more to attract new teachers to the profession and provide more in-service training to veteran educators who need to improve their expertise in various science subjects, said Gerald F. Wheeler, the executive director of the 56,000-member National Science Teachers Association.

10,000 New Teachers

The House bill sets a goal of luring 10,000 new math and science teachers annually. One mechanism for doing so is an expansion of the existing Robert Noyce Scholarship Program, administered by the NSF, which provides $10,000 annual scholarships to college students who agree to become math and science teachers.

The bill would increase the number of years of scholarship funding students could receive from two to three years. Students would be expected to teach for up to six years to receive that maximum funding, but could reduce the commitment by agreeing to work in “high need” schools. Scholarships would be converted to loans for awardees who did not fulfill teaching commitments. The Noyce program awards funding to colleges and universities, which then select students for scholarships, according to an description from the NSF.

The increased monetary incentives would at least offer a carrot for students considering other, better-paying math- and science-related jobs, Mr. Wheeler said.

“We have a hard time competing with corporate America, but this will help get the attention of [prospective] teachers,” he said.

Mr. Wheeler also supports a provision in the House bill that would provide competitive financial awards to establish stronger links between universities’ academic departments in math and science and their teacher-training programs. Many math and science experts say too few students majoring in those subjects consider becoming teachers; too few aspiring teachers, meanwhile, take advantage of strong academic courses offered by math and science departments.

“Nowhere do those two conversations come together,” Mr. Wheeler said.

Some postsecondary institutions, however, such as the UTeach program at the University of Texas at Austin, have drawn praise from federal officials for bridging the faculty divide and producing math and science teachers with strong content knowledge. Mr. Wheeler believes the House legislation would allow more universities to make similar efforts.

Both chambers’ bills would establish new programs to encourage math and science teachers to pursue master’s degrees in those subjects, with the idea that advanced training would provide them with greater subject-matter expertise.

The Senate bill would create competitive grants for states to ensure their standards are linked to higher education and workforce skills.

In an April 23 statement, White House officials voiced numerous concerns about the Senate competitiveness proposal—particularly its creation of new programs at the U.S. departments of Commerce and Energy and at the NSF.

Administration officials estimate that the Senate bill would cost $61 billion over four years, which they say is $9 billion more than the four-year price tag for President Bush’s proposed American Competitiveness Initiative, also aimed at improving math and science education.

Scot Montrey, a spokesman for Sen. Alexander, put the legislation’s cost at $60 billion, but said the measure included only $16 billion in spending on new programs.

The Senate bill “expands many existing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education programs that have not been proven effective and creates new STEM education programs that overlap with existing federal programs,” the White House said in the statement.

A soon-to-be-released, congressionally mandated report, part of a review being led by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, will show that many federal math and science programs in teacher training and other areas have failed to produce results, the White House said.

‘Hard Part’ Ahead

The bills passed last week would create the new programs. The next big step, assuming a final version of the legislation is signed into law, would be for Congress to pass appropriations bills to pay for them.

With the budget for domestic spending austere, Congress will struggle to find the money to support the programs that eventually emerge in the competitiveness bill, Sen. McConnell said.

“The hard part, obviously, is going to be providing the funds to carry out the programs in this bill to meet these authorization targets we have set,” he said.

Still, advocates for the advancement of science and technology lauded Congress’ action as a good first step in addressing the needs in their fields.

“These bills are the best possible start to addressing the competitiveness challenge,” said James Brown, a co-chairman of the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Coalition, a Washington-based advocacy group. “It’s an excellent deal, when you consider all the constraints out there.”