No Child Left Without a Pony

Posted on by Chad Orzel

Yesterday’s Inside Higher Ed had a story about the latest group to report on science education. Like any good blue-ribbon commission, they have changes to suggest:

The panel’s members seemed agreed on several major goals. One is to align all components of education in science technology, engineering and math (STEM). The current system in the United States, they agreed, lacks any attempt at coordination either horizontally across school districts, or vertically from one level of education to another. Lack of a coherent system for STEM education means that students who move between states may miss fundamental concepts as they jump from school to school. […]

The second major goal is to improve the lot of STEM teachers. Many commission members emphasized that it is time to “professionalize” STEM teachers and make their jobs as prestigious and well-paying as their counterparts in industry. Approximately one quarter million math and science teaching positions will need to be filled by 2016. However, few people are qualified to take these jobs, and schools are having problems hiring for these positions.

This is accurate and sensible, and wouldn’t rate a link were it not for the final sentence of the article, which is a beautiful bit of understatement:

The commission has recommended an increase in pay for STEM teachers and the development of continued professional training as happens in the medical field. During the discussion, almost every commission member said that pay must increase for STEM teachers so that they do not leave the profession to enter industry. However, there appeared to be little clarity about how to finance these pay increases.

“[T]here appeared to be little clarity about how to finance these pay increases.” I love that. It makes it sound like the problem is that there are too many good options, and they couldn’t agree on just one.

I’m sure this could also be profitably deployed in other contexts: “There appeared to be little clarity about how to triple the funding for the NSF;” “There appeared to be little clarity about how to establish a stable government in Iraq;” “There appeared to be little clarity about how to provide every seven-year-old girl with a pony.”

Try it. It’s fun!

4 thoughts on “No Child Left Without a Pony”

  2. There appeared to be little clarity about how NASA could fund space science while dumping all of its money on an underfunded Mars shot.

    Or, some of my cheating students could use this. “There appeared to be little clarity about how this work represented the student’s honest effort.”

  3. There appeared to be little clarity about why I left a high-paying job in industry to become an adjunct professor of science, math, and engineering.

    Hmmmmm. Correcting for inflation, when I was a top engineer for Rockwell, in the Software Engineering department of the Space Shuttle Transportation Division, I earned $120,000 per year and benefits worth about half again of that. I kept saying: “You assigned me to this Safety issue; I say fix it or it’ll blow up and kill people.

    “They kept saying: “Shut up, kid. We’ve got a budget and a schedule.”

    We parted on less-than-friendly terms. I got my employment file by subpoena. It had 480 pages. It proved that they were afraid I’d be a whistleblower to the FBI or NASA Inspector General.

    Then the Shuttle blew up and killed people. I gave testimony to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, and the NASA Inspector General.

    Unemployable in aerospace, shifted to Internet business. Manager at EarthLink, VP for Software and R&D at a start-up. Helped it get acquired by the NASDAQ company LNUX for $7,750,000. On paper, I earned $800,000 per year for the part of the year I did that. Unfortunately, 90% was in stock of acquiring company. Then the dot com crash.

    So I retreated to teaching Astronomy and Math in two different colleges and universities.

    Salary much, much lower. I’d love to “leave the profession to enter industry.” But as viscious and frustrating and perverse as teaching can be, it is a garden of eden compared to the boom & bust & bottom-line coverups of those industries where I spent 25 years.

    Can I have my pony now, please?

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