One day after new test results showed that only 32 percent of U.S. 8th graders are proficient in science, a group of 26 states has helped draft a document that may bring about a major overhaul of science education in this country.  Known as the Next Generation Science Standards, the draft sets ambitious new expectations for [...]

“Charlotte’s Web,” the E.B. White childhood classic, ends with Wilbur the pig eagerly waiting for Charlotte’s baby spiders to emerge from their egg sac. When they finally crawl out, they do something that seems pretty amazing to anyone not familiar with how spiders travel long distances: they fly away. Here’s the passage from the last [...]

  Two graduate students from the City University of New York’s  NOAA-CREST program showed me this simple experiment, above, for young kids. The three of us volunteered at an Earth Day fair at a New York City elementary school on Friday, and kids were mesmerized by it. It illustrates the concepts of accretion — when [...]

Earlier this week The New York Times profiled the director of the M.I.T. Museum and founder of the Cambridge Science Festival, John Durant. The piece mentioned that science festivals have been multiplying across the country; last year there were more than 20. According to the Times: “A science festival has more in common with a film, [...]

Three high school seniors from Texas have designed an external pacemaker that may help reduce heart atrophy  in astronauts as they orbit the Earth. “After 180 days in space, astronauts’ muscles lose 40% of their capacity for physical work,” writes Camilo Ruiz, a senior at Cinco Ranch High School in Katy, Texas, who designed the [...]

Earlier this month, I watched groups of kids ages 9 to 16 present their own original ideas for solving major food safety problems. They were participating in the annual  First Lego League challenge, the robotics competition founded by inventor Dean Kamen and Lego. We heard ideas for better ways of monitoring the pH level of [...]

Earlier this week the Girl Scouts, which turns 100 this year, released an interesting report on teenage girls’ attitudes toward science and math. Some highlights: 74 percent of girls ages 14 to 17 report an interest in science, technology, engineering or math (known as STEM) Parents play a major role in getting their kids interested [...]

A new report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute paints a grim picture of state science standards across the United States. But it also reveals some intriguing details about exactly what’s going wrong with the way many American students are learning science. Standards are the foundation upon which educators build curricula, write textbooks and train [...]

In his State of the Union address last night, President Barack Obama spent less time than in years past discussing his ambitions to reform science education. He referred to his administration’s offer to let states opt out of  No Child Left Behind (” … grant schools flexibility to teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching [...]

Imagine walking through a science museum and, among the usual displays of dinosaur bones, butterflies, and amphibians you come upon a series of windows into state-of-the-art research labs. Inside, scientists from nearby universities and veterinary schools work on projects related to biodiversity, genetics, nanoparticles, and animal health and welfare.  In front of each window is [...]