This week in education news, a majority of Americans are familiar with the opt-out movement according to a new survey; the country’s teaching force is still predominantly white and female; only 39 percent of high school students in Illinois passed the new state science exam in 2016; former Michigan Congressman Vern Ehlers died; fears that students might damage their eyes viewing the solar eclipse have prompted schools to cancel classes; how science standards avoided the backlash of common core; and collaboration among teachers encourages creativity, professionalism, and student achievement.

Fewer Than 1 In 3 Americans Support Kids Opting Out Of Tests; About Half Confused On What ‘Opt Out’ Means

A majority of Americans are familiar with the opt-out movement — parents withdrawing their children from standardized tests — and nearly half of them oppose the practice, according to a new survey from Columbia University’s Teachers College. But even among the one-third who support opting out, many have misconceptions about the true goals behind it. Click here to read the article featured on The 74.

Peer Interest In Science Leads Students To STEM Jobs

A new report published in the journal Science Advances says more Mississippi students may want jobs in science, technology, engineering or math if they learn their friends are also interested in those subjects. Click here to listen to the segment featured on MPBonline.org.

The Nation’s Teaching Force Is Still Mostly White And Female

Teachers tend to be white, female, and have nearly a decade and a half of experience in the classroom, according to new data released Monday by the federal government. But there are signs that the nation’s teaching force is gradually growing more diverse. It is also more heterogeneous: The nation’s charter school teachers look significantly different from teachers in traditional public schools. Click here to read the article featured in Education Week.

New State Science Test Raises The Bar But Proficiency Drops

More than a year after students took a new state science exam but never got their scores, Illinois is providing at least a glimpse of how well kids did — and it’s sobering. Only about 39 percent of high school students passed the new science exam in 2016, meaning those kids were considered “proficient.” Close to 60 percent of grade school students passed, according to an analysis by the Illinois State Board of Education. Click here to read the article featured in the Chicago Tribune.

Crossing Boundaries: The Future of Science Education

The science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) industries are booming. In the U.S. the STEM industries account for more than half of the sustained economic expansion, while in the U.K., the tech industry grew 32 percent faster than any other industry. In a time when young people face an increasingly hostile and competitive job market, doesn’t it make sense to teach them the skills for the industries that have an excess of job opportunities? Unfortunately, science education is struggling to keep up with the fast developments happening in the world. Click here to read the article featured in Scientific American.

Former Michigan Congressman Vern Ehlers Dies At 83

Vern Ehlers, who championed the Great Lakes and scientific research and education while representing west Michigan during 17 years in Congress, died Tuesday night in Grand Rapids at age 83. Click here to read the article featured in The Detroit News.

Teachers: Schools’ Eclipse Fears Drive Kids Inside

Fears that children might permanently damage their eyes viewing Monday’s solar eclipse have prompted school districts in or near its path to cancel classes and, in some cases, prohibit students from venturing outside during Monday’s once-in-a-lifetime celestial event. Such fears are driving science teachers nuts. Click here to read the article featured in USA Today.

How New Science Standards Avoided The Backlash Of Common Core

After the Common Core standards in reading and math ran into backlash from critics claiming federal overreach, the supporters of new science standards decided to take a different tack. They explicitly asked the Obama administration to sit out the promotion of the science guidelines. They also encouraged states to take time to get local buy-in. The strategy appears to have paid off. Click here to read the article featured in The Wall Street Journal.

Op-Ed: Is The Investment In STEM Education Paying Off?

For more than two decades there has been a hefty investment in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education in the United States. There is no question that this investment has, at the very least, brought the positives derived from better STEM education practices into the national conversation. Click here to read the article featured in U.S. News & World Report.

Balancing Teacher Autonomy and Collaboration

Good teachers are growing practitioners. They know their students, their content, and their standards—but they are not satisfied with the status quo. Like all successful professionals, good teachers strive to grow their knowledge and adapt to changes in the landscape of their work. Good teachers know their own expertise is critical in the classroom; they also know the input of colleagues strengthens that expertise. While it can be difficult to find the right balance between personal skill and combined efforts in the classroom, it is worth the effort. Click here to read the article featured in Education Week TEACHER.

Stay tuned for next week’s top education news stories.

The Communication, Legislative & Public Affairs (CLPA) team strives to keep NSTA members, teachers, science education leaders, and the general public informed about NSTA programs, products, and services and key science education issues and legislation. In the association’s role as the national voice for science education, its CLPA team actively promotes NSTA’s positions on science education issues and communicates key NSTA messages to essential audiences.

The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.

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Last month, the Royal Society decided to celebrate 30 years of its Science Books Prize by, in part, polling its readership on this question: What is the most inspiring science book of all time? The 1,309 responders didn’t overwhelmingly converge on any one book, but the winner, capturing 18 percent of the vote, was The Selfish Gene, the 1976 book by Richard Dawkins that, with its gene-centered view of evolution, startled and awed not just a lay audience, but scientists, too.

Dawkins invited readers to see evolution through, as it were, the eyes of genes, which produce beings like us as their vehicles, or “survival machines,” to reshuffle and ferry themselves into the next generation. The genes don’t create us for our sake but, in a sense, for their own. We are here, reproducing and struggling to survive, so that they might live on—potentially forever (Dawkins also entertained The Immortal Gene as a title). When I finished it nearly a decade ago—the book was required reading in my intro to human evolution course—I acquired a new perspective: I don’t have genes; genes have me. The book was, in other words, an exemplar of the “very best science writing,” according to the Royal Society: It inspires, moves, and compels readers as much as the writing in any other genre and, what’s more, it promotes the public’s science literacy—an understanding of how important science is to our everyday lives.

In a nutshell that is our aim at Nautilus—to showcase the very best science writing. Nautilus has built an audience numbering in the millions by re-connecting science to our lives, and telling its stories with style, substance, and imagination. Our society needs them. The value of science literacy in the modern world will only increase. That’s because new technologies, birthed by scientific progress, are changing our world—and our view of ourselves—faster than almost any other force. The best time to learn about science is at a young age, when the mind is labile, open to new ideas and ways of thinking.

But science classrooms, especially in the United States, are undergoing change. The Next Generation Science Standards that have been already adopted by 19 states, are being used as a model for science standards in many more. Their goals and methods mirror Nautilus’: science literacy and an increased interest in the science and technology that are so important to our lives. This means replacing the stand-alone silos of biology, chemistry, and physics with what the new standards call “crosscutting concepts” that link disciplines.  Just as Nautilus uses its multidisciplinary exploration across the sciences, math, culture, art, and society. 

Rather than just have students memorize, the new standards seek to teach them how to observe and ask questions. By having students understand scientific inquiry, the standards can instill ways of thinking that, as Nautilus would say, connects science to people’s everyday lives and the world of ideas. The standards’ focus on disciplinary core ideas, like natural selection in biology and plate tectonics in geology, and reinforces the rigors of science without compromising accessibility, one of the key ingredients to Nautilus’ success with its audience.

But perhaps the most important connection between Nautilus and the Next Gen Standards is the importance placed on narrative. Nothing communicates like stories. The demonstrated ability to narrate observation, experimentation, and discovery—the stories of science—is why so many teachers want to use Nautilus in the classroom. 

A new Nautilus Education Program will answer that desire, providing a year-long print subscription to a school library or science classroom. We’ll also give access to Nautilus Prime, our digital subscription service, to every student and teacher in the school. Nautilus is partnering with Rune to install their content annotation and sharing software within Nautilus; it’ll be adapted for teachers and students to share notes, comments, and highlighted content on Nautilus within a monitored, closed social network that can contain regional, state, and even district nodes. This will create a multifaceted, closed educational social network around Nautilus content that will be instrumental in integrating Nautilus into school curriculum. We plan to have the network(s) live by the start of the fall school year.

Nautilus Education will help students rediscover the magic of science and story. At a time when our scientific and educational institutions are being tested, it’s more important than ever to get today’s best science writing directly into the hands of our students.