A congressionally chartered commission has been created at the National Science Board to recommend “bold new action” for improving the quality of U.S. mathematics and science education.
The 15-member panel, the Commission on 21st Century Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, will offer recommendations to Congress and President Bush, including suggestions for the future role of the National Science Foundation in improving education from kindergarten through college.
The science board governs the activities of the NSF, an independent federal agency based in Arlington, Va. A major focus of the commission’s work will be ways of improving teacher training, as well as strategies for encouraging K-12 students to consider math and science teaching and other careers in those subjects, said Bill Noxon, a spokesman for the panel.
The commission will hold several public hearings over the next year, Mr. Noxon said. Leon M. Lederman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and a resident scholar at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, and Shirley M. Malcom, the head of a directorate at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Washington, are co-chairing the panel.
