Vernon Ehlers: “I rise to address a particular problem with this amendment. We have, for some time, had activities within the National…”

“I rise to address a particular problem with this amendment. We have, for some time, had activities within the National Science Foundation aimed at teaching future teachers, teaching them how to teach math and science, and this generally fell into the rubric of a math-science partnership, because the Foundation itself did not teach the teachers but rather responded to grants submitted by professors at various institutions who were pleased to set up programs to teach these future teachers or existing teachers how better to teach math and science. These have been very successful programs and are commonly referred to as the math-science partnership. Recently, the Department of Education has developed programs involving professional development for teachers in elementary and secondary schools to try to bring them up to speed on the latest developments in math and science and how to teach them. They ended up calling it the math-science partnership. This has resulted in a problem because some in the administration decided to cut the budget of the National Science Foundation because they felt this was a duplication of programs. It is not. The National Science Foundation concentrates on doing research.…”