Private Tutor for Math & Science Success

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By DREW TOOP

There’s constant chatter among politicians about the “education problem,” school funding and a whole host of other “educational” issues.

There’s talk of our youngsters falling behind China’s youngsters in math, science and other left-brain fields, just as there was quick breathing over Japan two decades ago, and as there always has been about Western Europe. And there should be.

Study after study, survey after survey, we are shamed again and again by the utter witlessness of our nation’s students. The ignorance is astounding.

A National Geographic survey for 2006-2007 found only 37 percent of 18- to 24-year-old American students could locate Iraq on a world map. The Trends in International Math and Science Study, or TIMSS, found American students rank behind Belgium, Hungary, Japan, Korea, Estonia, China (Taipei and Hong Kong), Japan, the Netherlands and Singapore in math and science. The list goes on.

And what of practical knowledge? The sheer number of bad decisions — financial, sexual and others — are staggering. Forty-five percent of college students are in significant credit card debt, according to the Young Americans Center for Financial Education. American girls have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrialized world, despite having less sex than girls in other countries. Then, there’s the worrisome trend of intentional prescription drug abuse, among other things.

Math: It’s everywhere | TheNewsTribune.com | Tacoma, WA

Math: It’s everywhere

At a Clover Park Technical College conference, middle schoolers learn that virtually all professions demand a mastery of math.

KAREN HUCKS; The News Tribune
Published: May 9th, 2007 01:00 AM

Builders use math when they measure wood to make houses. Chefs use math when they multiply a recipe to serve four people. Cops use math when they reconstruct accident scenes.

Those were just three examples of real-world math that middle school students heard Tuesday at Clover Park Technical College. More than 600 seventh- and eighth-graders from Tacoma, Bethel and Clover Park school districts roamed the Lakewood campus for the technical college’s second annual “Math to Careers” middle school conference.

The event attacked the same nasty problem everyone in education is talking about. To make it in the world economy, Washington students need better math skills, the experts say.

Part of the answer is showing younger kids how math can figure into their lives, said Clover Park Technical College President John Walstrum.

“It’s getting to them early enough so we can help them make the most of their years in high school,” Walstrum said. “Before you go to high school, here’s a real legitimate reason to hone your math skills.”

It’s because you might want to be a police officer, an architect, a home-builder, a baker, a cosmetologist, a firefighter, a photographer, an engineer, a floral designer an electrician, a mechanic or practically anything else.

They all need math.

High School Students Lose Ground In Math, English – News Story – WDSU New Orleans

BATON ROUGE, La. — State education officials said Louisiana’s public high-school students lost ground in both math and English on the state graduation exam, but fourth- and eighth-graders remain stable in math and improved in English, science and social studies.

Linda Johnson, president of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, said the drop in high-school English is alarming.

Students must score at least “approaching basic” — next to the bottom of five levels — in both English and Math, and one of the two other tests, to graduate.

Statewide, 83 percent of the high-school students tested reached that level this year, compared to 87 percent a year ago. And while 64 percent of the students taking the test last year were found to have at least basic knowledge of the subject, only 56 percent did so this year.

AP Wire – Washington | kgw.com | News for Oregon and SW Washington

05/09/2007

By DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP / Associated Press

Gov. Chris Gregoire on Tuesday delayed until 2013 a requirement that students pass the math and science portions of a high stakes exam in order to graduate from high school.

She also liberally applied her veto pen to four large sections of the bill overhauling the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) exam.

Gregoire said she would have preferred to delay the math and science WASL graduation requirement only until 2012.

Clarion University News

Clarion’s University’s “science and technology agenda” took another giant step Saturday afternoon with an official groundbreaking ceremony for its new $36.4 million Science and Technology Center.

“To all of the people in this community who believe…really believe…that Clarion can lead a science agenda in this region I say thank you,” said Clarion President Joseph Grunenwald who also served as master of ceremonies. “I say thank you for not only those of us here today, but thank you for the students that will be here 20 and 40 years from now, taking the ideas that you saw today in the rotunda and advancing them to next steps, either to commercialization or to the next level of research required to move forward. Science for the good of all.”

The groundbreaking was the second during the 2006-07 academic year, joining last fall’s groundbreaking for the Clarion University Biotechnology Business Development Center. The facility is designed to establish and grow high technology, family-sustaining jobs in the region. The incubator facility of the CUBBDC will be a catalyst for the formation of local biotech start-ups and form a unique partnership with Clarion’s Science and Technology Center.

News-Sentinel | 05/08/2007 | Purdue taps first woman president

WEST LAFAYETTE — Internationally recognized astrophysicist France A. Cordova will become Purdue University’s 11th president — and the first woman to hold the post — after a unanimous vote by the school’s Board of Trustees on Monday.

Cordova, now the chancellor of the University of California-Riverside, will replace Martin Jischke, who will retire June 30 after seven years as president. Cordova said she planned to join Purdue by the start of the 2007-08 school year.

Cordova said she will consider herself to be just one of the hundreds of staff people who serve the 69,000-student university, including about 39,000 in West Lafayette.

allAfrica.com: Namibia: Girls Sacrifice Holidays for Learning (Page 1 of 1)

New Era (Windhoek)

May 2, 2007

Wezi Tjaronda
Windhoek

Sixty girls from five secondary schools in the Khomas Region are participating in a mathematics and science holiday school programme to improve their performance in the subjects.

The programme is in response to the poor perfor-mance of particularly girls in science and mathematics and was organised by the Forum for African Women Educationalists Namibia (FAWENA) and sponsored by Project Lilie, which is funded by the German-speaking community in Namibia.
Africa 2007

Among others, Namibia’s chapter of the organisation that operates in 32 African countries aims to increase access to education, advance the quality of education of girls in Africa and promote science and mathematics subjects, among girls.

For this 11-year-old, maths is a passion and a business venture

Priyanka Bhosale

Pune, May 2: Cubes, long divisions and complex equations may create a scare for most 11-year-olds. But not Mumbai-based Nischal Narayanam, who rattles off answers in seconds to ‘mind mathematics’ problems that others would spend painstaking minutes over.

Feted by the Guinness Book of World Records as a record-holder in the ‘Most Random Objects Memorised’ category with 225 objects memorised, Narayanam on Tuesday released the DVD of a learning system aimed at tackling the all-too common phobia of mathematics. Having developed the kit in 2006—it comprises Napier Bones for multiplication tables, measuring jars that explain the concept of litres and millilitres, a volume of six books scripted by Nischal and his mother Dr Padmavathy Rao, among other learning aids, the Hyderabad-based Narayanam released the DVD in conjunction with Global Learning Systems, a marketing firm.

seMissourian.com: Story: Cape teachers win nation’s top math and science teaching awards

Wednesday, May 2, 2007
By Mark Bliss ~ Southeast Missourian

Cape Girardeau elementary school teachers Becky Hicks and Barb Egbert will receive the 2006 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, the nation’s top award for science and math teachers.

Hicks is a second-grade teacher at Blanchard Elementary School. Egbert is a kindergarten teacher at Franklin Elementary School.

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The National Science Foundation selects only two teachers from each state for the awards. It’s the first time that the Cape Girardeau School District has had both award winners representing the state of Missouri in a single year, school officials said.