Federal Program Pushes Science Education

"U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham this week announced the Scientists Teaching and Reaching Students program, which is intended to support and foster interest in math and science programs among the country's middle and high school students. According to the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, U.S. students, who are among the top-performing students in the world in math and science at the 4th-grade level, fall nearly to the bottom of the list by 12th grade. The new program will award scholarships for math and science teachers to study at the nation's labs, including Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia National Laboratories. In addition, those labs will host 2,000 5th- and 8th-grade students for at least one day a year. For a number of years, U.S. colleges and universities have seen steadily declining numbers of students in science programs, and the effect of the new program on this trend is not clear. Countries such as India, China, and Russia currently graduate significantly more science and engineering students than the United States."