Majority Statement

• Ted Stevens

  Senator
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  Majority Statement

  Ted Stevens

   

  Opening Statement:

   

  Thank you Madam Chairman. I too welcome each of you from the Foundation and from the Board. As Senator Hutchison has said I have been quite moved by the Augustine Report, and I think most of us have been. I don’t take that report to be critical of either of you or the entities you chair. I think it really is critical of the system as a whole and our failure to understand the changes that have come about, particularly from the increased challenges from India and China in terms of science and technology, engineering and really the total impact of the movement of so many of our industries to those areas has really changed the dynamics of our stimulus for our young people, the jobs available to them, and the future. I really have tried very hard to get the Congress as a whole to treat this problem similar to the way we treated the atomic energy problem and create a joint committee on this report and to work with you and your organizations to fashion a way to rekindle the interest of our total U.S. community in taking the initiatives that must be started, must be fostered, really, to stimulate our young people and provide incentives to them to once again make science and technology a priority as far as our education system is concerned. We’re still trying to work on that in this Committee and the hearings that Senator Hutchinson is holding will be very helpful and the hearings that Senator Enzi is holding. We hope we can get the Senate together in one body to move forward with the suggestions that will help reach some of the targets that were set by the Augustine Report. I look forward to hearing your testimony. It does seem to me that we have to light a fire and nothing short of a fire is going really to give us the intensity of consideration that these issues require. I am pleased to be with you today and I look forward to staying with you as long as I can.

   

   

  Panel I Q & A:

   

  Senator Stevens: Dr. Washington, we’re all familiar with the Augustine Report that has been mentioned here. I found very interesting the comment that you made in your long statement that I assume will be printed in full in the record. And let me read this: “Nearly a quarter of a century ago the National Science Board’s Commission on Pre-College  Education, Mathematics, Science and Technology assessed the stated U.S. pre-college education in the subject fields and found it wanting. In the intervening years we have failed to raise the achievement of U.S. students commensurate with the goal articulated by that commission that the U.S. pre-college achievement should be the best in the world by 1995.” That’s the end of the quote. And many countries have surpassed us. Not only are they not first but by the time they reach their senior year even the most advanced U.S. students performed at or near the bottom on international assessments. There is now an even more pressing need to build a new foundation. I think that’s really what I call the Augustine Report was aimed at and I know both your entities cooperated extensively with them. But tell me, out there in the part of the community you intersect with, what’s the feeling about that report? Is there a feeling of necessity that some of us up here feel about changing the way we do business?

   

  Dr. Washington: Yes, I would say so. In fact, the Board has published a number of studies and has most recently designated science and education indicators, which came out in January, essentially showed that those trends we have seen in the past are still operating the same way. We’re not doing a good job. In fact on this Commission I mentioned earlier is actually supposed to come up with an action plan that we can present to the President and to Congress for what needs to be done. And it should be a very prescriptive document that will actually lay out all the way from kindergarten through K-16, which is undergraduate, is to lay out what needs to be done to improve in the science and engineering technology education aspects of our society and we’re not doing a good job. I think you can read in the newspaper almost everyday that we’re following behind certain other countries and I think it is going to hurt us in the long run.

   

  Senator Stevens: Well its back in the last century, but I remember my high school experience and the fact that the teachers of science and mathematics made the subjects come alive. Today as a father of six I was surprised to see the comment that most high school students would rather take out the trash or clean their bedroom or wash dishes than study math or science. Now what’s caused the change of attitude in the teaching profession or approach that’s taken out the spark in our basic education?

   

  Dr. Washington: I think I had the same experience as you did. I was turned on by a high school chemistry teacher. She was just very fantastic at making science exciting and interesting. And that’s what really got the spark going in me to actually go into science. I think we need teachers of the type, but we need to support our teachers and we need to train them better and give them more opportunities to get in-service training so they can be more effective in the classrooms. So there is no simple, single bullet that will solve this problem. It’s going to require a lot of different things happening to turn things around.

   

  Senator Stevens: I know my time’s running out, but I don’t know if you have any comment, Dr. Bement, but my kids tell me that the difference is that we had to look up things in books. They just press buttons on a computer and out comes the answers and they don’t have to think about what gave them those answers. They get them automatically. Are we straying away from, because of the new systems we use to teach, are we straying away from the personal contacts that have to be achieved between teachers and students to give them that incentive to excel and to explore? What do you think Dr. Bement?

   

  Dr. Bement: Yes Senator. I think you’ve put your finger on several key issues. We’ve focused pretty much on encouraging inquiry-based learning where students take an interest in asking questions and pursuing knowledge around math and science, discovery-based knowledge, where they have the opportunity to do some hands on activities so they can learn as they discover, and also to develop a stronger base of conceptual knowledge. Now that takes a teacher that has not just pedagogical knowledge, but has content knowledge and knows how to integrate the two and motivate and deal with the various cognitive skills of the students. In other words, she has to address all of the students in the class and not just a small fraction. Those are the kind of advances that we’re trying to support through our education initiatives in K through 12 and as an important element of that we’re also be investing and trying to improve undergraduate training of teachers, especially in the skill fields where they do that math content and science content not in the schools of education but in the schools of arts and science where they take a much more rigorous preparation. We also have scholarships and some of which have identified in the Alexander-Bingaman bill. One of them is for the Royce Scholarship where we provided scholarship support for students in undergraduate education who are taking stem preparation and will also add to that preparation two years of education and then get certified and then bring that content knowledge into the classroom. Through our math and science partnership program just last year we increased the number of stem-prepared teachers in math and science by over 400. That’s a small increment. We need to build that increment across the nation and that will take additional resources. But at least we know it and we have measurements and we have data that indicate that that really does have a positive impact.

   

  Senator Stevens: My time’s up. I have a lot more questions, but my time’s up. I really think that the problem is that the stimulus has to come from contact of the teaching profession and it’s not there today like it used to be.

   

  Dr. Bement: I agree.

   

   

  Panel II Q & A:

   

  Senator Stevens: Now I understand what you’re saying Dr. about the budget. In actual dollars these budgets are up, but we have not inflation-proofed science. We’ve not inflation-proofed defense, we certainly haven’t inflation-proofed the Senate but I don’t know how accurate or really fair the criticism is of this budget. This budget is up, I am told, 7.9 percent over 2006. That’s a pretty good increase for entity, but here’s my dichotomy: I look at this, for instance, and there is money in this for construction of the Alaska Region Research Vessel. This is a time, and I am called upon to support that I assume, this is a time when I would like to see more kids going to college. I’d like to see more emphasis on high school trying to attract students to be interested in pursuing science and mathematics in college and going to graduate school. Are you people, and I don’t want to be offensive, but are you people thinking about just those who are already trained and what they can do and projects for them? Or are we looking at how we can get more American students into college, get them more interested in high school? As a matter of fact I would like to get them interested even before they even go to grade school. I think we could. The more we interest when their very young in pursuing science and technology the better off we’ll be. What’s the balance here? You’re both talking about money for projects for people that have their Ph.D.s. I am talking about money to get people to attract children and students all the way up so we have an expanding process in the future. Now which is most important?

   

  Dr. Leshner: Both are most important.

   

  Sen. Stevens: Well you can’t have that luxury. You only have so much money.

   

  Dr. Leshner: Well my concern, and our concern we have expressed it that, in fact, your point is right, that is that need to make a substantial investment in young people, and the younger the better, and, in fact, that’s why we’re so concerned that, in fact, the proposed budget for science education at NSF is pretty meager.

   

  Senator Stevens: What about that Dr. Odom? What do you think?

   

  Dr. Odom: I personally think there is a pipeline problem. There are a lot of students here and by the time they get to the end of high school there aren’t that many. I think one of the things we need to look at our colleges of education, schools of education. We have recently at the University of South Carolina done away with an education major for middle schools and high schools. If you are going to teach biology or chemistry then you have to major in that area. We need in some way, as has been said previously, to generate teachers who excite students again, and that is not happening right now, and that has to do much with the preparation of the teachers that we have in science and mathematics.

   

  Sen. Stevens: Well you know I’ve heard my colleague, Senator Sununu, address some of the things that money has been sent for. If that had been something I had done on the floor it would have been called pork. It would have been called an earmark. How do we get to this process now? We want an emphasis on the future. We want to expand the interest of this country in training our young people in science and technology. We want to catch up with what’s happening in China and India and the rest of the world. And we want a generation to come along who when they come out of it they are not at the bottom of the rung as we heard before from Dr. Washington. What do we do to do that? How do we bring about the emphasis we want if we continue to give money to NSF and other science organizations and the money is spent for what the people involved think is an interest we should follow. With due respect Dr. Leshner, I don’t really care what’s going on in Hungary. I care what’s going on in grade schools in America. Now I think we need to find some way to constrain this down so you spend the money when we tell you it should be spent. Is that unfair?

   

  Dr. Leshner: I think that Congress, of course, has the right to set priorities. You were elected by us to do that. I think that your point is absolutely right, and I think that NSF is actually a wonderful example of a government agency that has devoted tremendous resources towards not only helping to develop future scientists and engineers, but to educate all young people and try to bring them into the possibility of being full productive citizens of the science and technology-heavy economy. And so that investing, in fact, in NSF science education, in fact, accomplishes exactly the kind of goal that you’re talking about, and frankly I think you’re totally right. I think it’s a major national need and I think the “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” spoke about it. The Summit on Competitiveness spoke about, and NSF has given great attention to it and you’re right.

   

  Senator Stevens: Thank you very much both of you.

Testimony

• Dr. Arden L. Bement Jr.

  Director

  National Science Foundation
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  Testimony

  Dr. Arden L. Bement Jr.

  Click here for a copy of Dr. Bement's testimony

• Dr. Warren M. Washington

  Chairmen

  National Science Board
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  Testimony

  Dr. Warren M. Washington

  Click here for a copy of Dr. Washington's testimony

Witness Panel 2

• Dr. Alan L. Leshner

  Chief Executive Officer

  American Associaiton for the Advancement of Science
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  Witness Panel 2

  Dr. Alan L. Leshner

  Click here for a copy of Dr. Leshner's testimony

• Dr. Jerome Odom

  Professor of Chemistry and Former Provost

  University of South Carolina
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  Witness Panel 2

  Dr. Jerome Odom

  Click here for a copy of Dr. Odom's testimony