Letters: Science Education for All

Re “Learning What Works” (Sept. 3): While bringing more students to STEM fields is important, it cannot and should not be the major goal. All students benefit from learning science, especially science as process rather than rote memorization. Understanding and employing the critical thinking skills involved in the scientific method can help inform anyone’s life.

Furthermore, we are all consumers of science. We use medicines, we vote for legislators who decide which scientific endeavors get government funding. We face issues like climate change, antibiotic resistance and genetically modified organisms. Don’t all of us deserve to really understand what we are debating?

Jennifer Zinman

Glen Ridge, N.J.

TO THE EDITOR:

I heartily agree with Salman Khan’s desire to position creativity and invention as the foci of STEM courses. To begin to address how we can do this, there are several critical success factors to consider. The most important of these is failure, since it is critical to figuring things out about the natural world or to creating a new design. Repeatedly reiterating the process used while making small changes, approaching the problem from multiple perspectives, or working backwards from the desired outcome — these are examples of strategies that we use in a wide variety of contexts, including STEM exploration.

Our assessment of students needs to reward thoughtful detours and dead-ends if we want to encourage a culture of creativity and innovation in STEM classrooms.

Koshi Dhingra

Dallas

The writer is the former assistant director of the Science and Engineering Education Center at the University of Texas, Dallas.

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Letters: Examining the Studies

Re “Guesses and Hype Give Way to Data” (Sept. 3): The quality of conclusions drawn from data depends upon the study that produces it. The study of Upward Bound conducted by Mathematica is a case in point.

Its conclusion that Upward Bound has “no effect” has been repudiated by much of the educational opportunity community, including a statistician at the Department of Education who argued against its publication. Yet this article presents it as the first major achievement in the use of randomized studies in the field of education.

I have directed an Upward Bound program since 1990 and have seen it do wonders. Randomized studies make sense when it is feasible to limit the impact of diverse variables. When attempting to assess programs that impact a wide range of intellectual and social abilities over time, this method must invariably fall short.

Dan Gordon

Eliot, Me.

TO THE EDITOR:

Educational research uses all sorts of approaches to get at the complex issues involved in education and schooling, and “crunching numbers to evaluate impact” is but one of them. A cursory glance at the materials produced by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) would reveal this fact.

It is true that much of educational research is not as rigorous as it needs to become, but rigor is not the same thing as crunching numbers. AERA has been working to integrate all approaches to educational research by both honoring their validity and demanding their integrity.

Meanwhile, we have a real-life story in the transformation of Finnish schools, based on increasing teachers’ knowledge and understanding of their subject matters. In this case, history and historical method reveal something that the studies in the article did not.

Timothy Leonard

Cincinnati

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Letters: A Teacher’s Lament

More restaurants are eliminating salt shakers. Room for Debate asks: What message are the chefs sending?

A half-hearted intervention will not stop Assad’s barbarism.

The inauguration of a new president offers some hope for a troubled country.

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