High standards for schools will not benefit California if the state lacks enough good teachers. Recent state efforts have cut the number of underqualified teachers in California classrooms. But the governor and Legislature still need to address the huge challenge of ensuring a sufficient supply of first-rate teachers. A report by the Center for the...
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (www.ucr.edu) -- UC Riverside Extension recently received a $1 million grant that will fund $30,000 professional development grants for teachers over a two-year period in Riverside, Orange, San Diego and Imperial counties. Groups of three to five elementary, middle and high school teachers at public, private and charter schools teaching in all subject...
Faculty and staff from the Graduate School of Education, ALPHA Center, and the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences recently honored the inaugural class of nine students taking part in a program that aims to prepare science and math majors for careers as teachers. The UC Riverside Noyce Scholarship Program, which started in 2009 and...
State officials surprised educators last week by requiring all eighth-graders to take algebra. Reaction against the plan was strong, with some predicting widespread failure and frustration. Schools will have a few years to implement the requirement, but some Inland school districts already require eighth-graders to take algebra. In Corona-Norco Unified, almost all eighth-graders are enrolled...
Using the latest technology, biology teacher Kristine Jennings created a glowing onion by bombarding it with genes from a glowing jellyfish. The lab project at UC Riverside was more than a novelty. It was a way to teach high-school and middle-school science teachers how to demonstrate to students the inner workings of an organism. "That...
A report that was slated for release this week foresees a vibrant, hands-on role for businesses in combating the much-publicized shortfall of math and science teachers in K-12 schools. Members of the Business-Higher Education Forum, an organization made up of Fortune 500 chiefs and higher education leaders, say the United States will need 280,000 new...
America needs a new national council to coordinate efforts to improve the teaching of science and mathematics in schools and colleges, and higher education should play a key role in that undertaking, says a draft report requested by Congress. The report also calls for new standards for training math and science teachers and an expansion...
American schools aren't exactly frozen in time, but considering the pace of change in other areas of life, our public schools tend to feel like throwbacks. Kids spend much of the day as their great-grandparents once did: sitting in rows, listening to teachers lecture, scribbling notes by hand, reading from textbooks that are out of...
Science is getting short shrift in many California classrooms. Elementary schools have been spending more time on math and reading lessons to prepare students for standardized tests, leaving less time for other subjects. That might be starting to change because children must learn about topics such as magnetism and molecules for new state science tests...
The quality of science laboratory experiences is poor for most US high school students, but educators can improve these experiences by following four key principles of effective instruction, says a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council.
