History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
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Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Ignoring science: It’s not just The schools
- 10-25-2011
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Column by Peter Schrag/California Progress Report
Anyone looking for big news in the just released report on the teaching of science in California elementary schools may well file it under dog bites man. In a word, elementary school science teaching is lame – an average of a little over an hour a week – by teachers most of whom say they’re not well prepared to teach it and have few resources to work with. Some 77 percent of elementary principals say teaching science is essential but only 44 percent say “that a student would receive high-quality science instruction in his/her school.” Is anyone surprised? More pertinent, perhaps, is what the report, commissioned by the Center on the Future of Teaching and Learning, doesn’t discuss, and that’s the national environment of willful ignorance and proud denial of all intellectual discipline, science and economics particularly. Even the ablest teachers have a steep hill to climb. (more...)
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