National Defense Education Act

Do 'sputnik moments' spur educational reform? A rhetoric scholar weighs in

Retrieved on:

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

From the publication of the landmark A Nation at Risk report on education in 1983 to the polarizing election of Donald Trump, one moment after another has been compared to the sputnik episode.

Key Points:

From the publication of the landmark A Nation at Risk report on education in 1983 to the polarizing election of Donald Trump, one moment after another has been compared to the sputnik episode.
As a professor who studies the rhetoric of education reform, I know that what politicians and others call sputnik moments do not always live up to that name.
Some sputnik moments spark enduring public debates, while others are easily forgotten.

American education called into question

In the spring of 1958, Life magazine ran a series of articles entitled: “Crisis in Education.” One Life article compared the rigor of U.S. education unfavorably with that of the Soviets.
Another Life article referred to American education as a “carnival.” President Dwight Eisenhower read the Life articles and began advocating for what would become the National Defense Education Act of 1958.
It was a first-of-its-kind intervention in education policy and funding.
Ever since, pivotal events for education in the U.S. have been called sputnik moments.

Reagan and a flailing education system

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education published A Nation at Risk.
We responded by making math, science, and engineering education a priority.” Reagan cited NASA’s space shuttle program as evidence that the nation had succeeded.
But like sputnik, it spurred decades of discussion about the rigor of public education in the U.S.

Obama on competition with China

Obama needed to sell his proposal to the nation and to the House of Representatives, which the Republicans had taken control of in the 2010 midterm elections.
It also did not result in the creation of an Advanced Research Projects Agency for education.

Donald Trump’s election

Sure enough, Trump’s election did revitalize the national discussion of civic education.
There was also the Civic Learning for a Democracy in Crisis by the Hastings Center.
Even the Trump administration joined in the conversation with its 1776 report, which called for a patriotic form of civic education.

Why do we have sputnik moments?

Sputnik moments can be spontaneous or constructed through rhetoric after the fact, or they can fall somewhere in between.
In the late 1950s, critics of American education made the most of their moment by demanding a greater emphasis on math, science and language.
Because they capitalized on their moment, policymakers and education reformers have continued to be vigilant for more moments like sputnik ever since.

A solution to America's K-12 STEM teacher shortage: Endowed chairs

Retrieved on:

Thursday, September 28, 2023

In the 2017-2018 school year, approximately 100,000 teacher jobs in STEM – or science, technology, engineering and mathematics – went unfilled at the high school level.

Key Points:

In the 2017-2018 school year, approximately 100,000 teacher jobs in STEM – or science, technology, engineering and mathematics – went unfilled at the high school level.
At the middle school level, there were about 150,000 unfilled STEM educator jobs.
As a professor of education policy – and also as a former state secretary of education in Virginia – I have examined the STEM teacher shortage from multiple vantage points.
We think endowed chairs have the potential to retain and attract more STEM educators at the K-12 level, but it requires a willingness to rethink the ways that schools employ STEM educators.

What’s behind the gap?

There are fewer college students graduating with a bachelor’s degree in education that ever before.
Between 1959-1976, bachelor’s degrees in education were the most popular college major in the United States, and they accounted for about 20% of all degrees.
In 2021, K-12 teachers’ weekly salary was only $1,348 – about $660 less than the $2,009 earned weekly by other college graduates.

Prior efforts to close the gap

The Senate and House passed the National Defense Education Act of 1958, and Eisenhower signed it into law on Sept. 2, 1958.
This set in motion a national STEM education agenda for American colleges and K-12 schools for decades to come.
Fifty-three years later, President Barack Obama utilized his 2011 State of the Union address to advance the national STEM agenda.
But the goal of the 100,000 STEM teacher campaign was to narrow the gap, not end it.

The endowed chair as a potential solution

Traditionally, an endowed chair is a prestigious faculty position funded through annual spending from a university’s endowment fund.
The benefit of an endowed chair is that it will be paid for decades to come by the interest on investment.
An endowed chair could also provide funding for teachers and students to have access to state-of-the-art learning technology.
An endowed STEM chair salary may never outpace what educators could earn if they entered the private market.

Starved of funds and vision, struggling universities put NZ’s entire research strategy at risk

Retrieved on:

Monday, June 19, 2023

The crisis in Aotearoa New Zealand’s university and wider research sector did not happen overnight.

Key Points:

The crisis in Aotearoa New Zealand’s university and wider research sector did not happen overnight.
While funding shortfalls and sweeping redundancies are now making headlines, the underlying problems have been evident for years.
As I wrote after last year’s budget, financial support for research across our universities and crown research institutes “is steadily eroding and has been doing so for some time”, given the impacts of inflation.
The lack of new funding for science and research in recent successive budgets might once have been explained by sector reform being a work in progress.

Challenge and capacity

The prime minister and minister of education refuse to interfere in what they see as operational matters, saying universities need to adapt to changing realities.
Read more:
University funding debates should be broadened to reflect their democratic purpose
But cutting staff undermines the sector’s capacity to deal with those challenges in the first place – because capacity lies at the heart of this issue.
As former prime minister Helen Clark said last week:
It has taken decades to build the current capacities of our universities.

A system at odds with itself

It’s easy to sympathise with this, and to hope those students return to tertiary education in future.
That research funding target of 2% of GDP – reiterated again in this year’s budget – has been with us since 2017.
The current [research, science and innovation] system is poorly placed to utilise increased funding to prepare us for [the] future.

Simple funding solutions

As has been pointed out elsewhere, money to cover projected higher student enrolments was originally budgeted for by the government.
The decision not to allocate that money due to lower than expected enrolments is really a question of funding priorities and structures.
A shift in the balance between baseline and per-student funding is not a dramatic structural change.

A coordinated national strategy

Perhaps a “supercouncil” composed of representatives of each university council could provide the forum for this.
It would help ensure individual university strategies were complementary, making the most of their distinctiveness and responsibilities to local communities.
But having national strategic thinking available to support those decisions could only be a good thing.

Information Update - Auro Pharma Inc. voluntarily recalls one lot of Auro-Irbesartan HCT tablets because of nitrosamine impurity

Retrieved on:

Thursday, April 18, 2019

Chemical compounds, Organic compounds, Chemistry, RTT, Functional groups, Nitrosamines, Angiotensin II receptor antagonists, Tetrazoles, N-Nitrosodiethylamine, Hydrochlorothiazide, HCT, National Defense Education Act

OTTAWA, April 18, 2019 /CNW/ -Health Canada is advising Canadians that Auro Pharma Inc. is voluntarily recalling one lot of Auro-Irbesartan/hydrochlorothiazide (HCT)combination tablets because of a nitrosamine impurity, N-nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA).

Key Points:

OTTAWA, April 18, 2019 /CNW/ -Health Canada is advising Canadians that Auro Pharma Inc. is voluntarily recalling one lot of Auro-Irbesartan/hydrochlorothiazide (HCT)combination tablets because of a nitrosamine impurity, N-nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA).
NDEA is classified as a probable human carcinogen, which means that long-term exposure could increase the potential risk of cancer.
Auro Pharma Inc. is conducting the recall after Health Canada's testing identified levels of NDEA above what is considered reasonably safe if the drug were taken over a lifetime.
Health Canada maintains a complete list of sartan drugs that have been recalled because of nitrosamine impurities on its website .

Information Update - Pro Doc Limitée voluntarily recalls two lots of irbesartan drugs because of nitrosamine impurity

Retrieved on:

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Chemistry, Physical sciences, Natural sciences, Functional groups, Nitrosamines, Hepatotoxins, N-Nitrosodiethylamine, Carcinogens, Garde manger, Nitroso, National Defense Education Act, Recall

OTTAWA, March 13, 2019 /CNW/ - Health Canada is advising Canadians that Pro Doc Limiteis voluntarily recalling two lots of irbesartan tablets because of a nitrosamine impurity, N-nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA).

Key Points:

OTTAWA, March 13, 2019 /CNW/ - Health Canada is advising Canadians that Pro Doc Limiteis voluntarily recalling two lots of irbesartan tablets because of a nitrosamine impurity, N-nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA).
NDEA is classified as a probable human carcinogen, which means that long-term exposure could increase the potential risk of cancer.
Pro Doc Limite is conducting the recall after testing identified levels of NDEA above what is considered reasonably safe if the drug were taken over a lifetime.
Health Canada maintains a complete list of sartan drugs that have been recalled because of nitrosamine impurities on its website .