Task Force on Education
Second Letter to the Secretary of Energy

September 3, 1998

The Honorable Bill Richardson
Secretary of Energy
U.S. Department of Energy
1000 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20585

Dear Secretary Richardson:

In January 1998, Secretary Peña directed the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board to form a Task Force on Education with the mandate of advising him on the Department of Energy's role in strengthening mathematics, science, technology and engineering education in the United States.

In June, the Task Force conveyed its initial findings by letter to Secretary Peña. It reported its judgment that the programs for undergraduate and post-graduates historically supported by the Department had made a significant contribution to training and to attracting promising young scientists to work in the national laboratories. The Task Force expressed concern about the elimination of funding in FY 1999 for some of the programs that had proved so successful and recommended that the Department take action to secure appropriation of funds to continue those efforts.

At the same time, the Task Force emphasized the importance of addressing problems in math, science, and technology education at the K-12 grade level and indicated that its next period of inquiry, evaluation, and discussion would focus on identifying appropriate roles for the Department in this category. Hence this letter addresses the Task Force's recommendations on how the Department might best contribute to K-12 math and science education.

While the Task Force supports the ongoing initiatives within the Department that directly assist K 12 students, it concludes that, in the end, the preparation of teachers constitutes the single most important determinant for the quality of math, science, and technology education and represents the single most critical area in which the Department can play a part. We are convinced that the essential way of making the greatest difference for the greatest number of students is to leverage resources and concentrate on programs that improve the quantity and quality of the Nation's 1.4 million teachers of math and science.

We take it as a given that the task of enhancing the capacity of math, science, and technology education in our nation is enormously complex and that it requires ultimately a strengthening of the Nation's educational standards as a whole together with the enhancement of the prestige of the teaching profession itself in order to attract and retain the very best educators. For its part, the Department should select carefully what it can do best and concentrate its efforts where it can contribute most, within the context of its own distinctive mission.
In the Task Force's view, the Department of Energy's niche in education is founded in the national laboratories. A great wealth of knowledge and capacity is embedded in the Department's extensive system of research facilities and in their cadre of scientists, engineers and technicians who are working at the forefront of the scientific enterprise. Through these institutions, the Department can offer unique experiences and unusual opportunities to seasoned teachers as well as teachers in training.

In the past, many of the Department's teacher programs focused on bringing teachers to its laboratories in order to enhance their scientific knowledge. Under the Teachers Research Associates (TRAC) program, teachers would spend one to three summers at DOE laboratories where they interacted with scientists and conducted research. Teachers who completed this program testified they had obtained a deeper understanding of science and of scientific research and that their teaching of math, science and technology had been very greatly improved as a result.

Along the same lines, the Department has been engaged in a five-year collaboration with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to enhance teacher education. The National Teacher's Enhancement Program (NTEP) has brought science teachers to the laboratories to work with scientists in solving real problems in science and technology. This program has provided teachers experience in how science is conducted, and has improved their science teaching skills. Although the grant for this particular program recently ended, the Task Force strongly encourages the Department to collaborate in these types of efforts.

The Task Force also has seen and heard ample evidence demonstrating that specific teacher education programs at individual DOE laboratories have made a significant impact in the communities they serve. We would like to point out that much of the funding for these programs comes from the laboratories' discretionary budgets. Many of the examples involve collaboration with non-DOE partners to leverage existing resources and to lessen the financial burden on any one participant. Several examples the Task Force would like to single out include:

• Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) runs a summer Plasma Camp, officially titled the Plasma Physics and Fusion Energy Institute, in which high school teachers design and run experiments, analyze data, and work in teams with PPPL scientists to integrate what they learn into their school curricula. In addition, PPPL has developed the Interactive Plasma Physics Experiment in which teachers and students work collaboratively with scientists over the Internet on an interactive virtual fusion reactor.
• Sandia National Laboratories runs a Leadership Academy for Science Education Reform (LASER), a collaborative effort in which Sandia provides technical expertise, and its partners provide teaching lessons. The teachers spend fifteen days during the summer, and eight days during the school year immersed in science and learning various technical scenarios such as characterizing sensors associated with the nuclear weapons dismantlement. The school districts provide the teachers who attend the program with four and a half days to instruct the other teachers in their districts. In all, the program affects about 150-200 teachers per year.
• The Leon Lederman Science Education Center at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) has been a crucial element in the DOE supported involvement in the Chicago Public Schools. Through Fermilab and Argonne National Laboratory, DOE initiated the Teachers Academy for Math and Science, which is now in 75 Chicago public schools, engaged with intensive in service retraining of over 3,000 primary school teachers in the Chicago area. Fermilab personnel spend approximately 120 hours a year of contact time with each teacher, supervising how they teach, and advising them how to be more effective teachers of science. The Task Force believes the cost of $3,000 a year per teacher is not prohibitive and is a good investment, given the fact that there is substantial evidence demonstrating that the Center's efforts have led to improved standardized test scores in many of the poorest schools in Chicago.
  

In addition, the Department has launched a collaborative effort with the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) to implement a mentoring program for teachers. The program aims to recruit 2,000 scientists from DOE's laboratories to be mentors for K-12 teachers. The program will be on-line and will allow each teacher to develop long-term relationships with a laboratory mentor. The information generated in the electronic communications between mentor and teacher will be collected and maintained on a database by subject area. In this way, other teachers will have access to the information, which will allow much greater dissemination and impact.

These are just a few of the many examples of how the Department's laboratories can make a difference in the quality of science, mathematics, and technology education in their surrounding communities. Undoubtedly there are many more, and we encourage the Department to allow the laboratories the flexibility to continue and expand their educational endeavors. However, the Task Force also believes that DOE headquarters should be responsible for evaluating the programs for effectiveness, tracking the overall impact of the programs, and communicating best practices among the laboratories and to the outside world. DOE headquarters should be particularly involved in collaborative programs which are national in scope in order to keep track of outcomes and to make any necessary improvements.

The Task Force recommends the Department move to reinstate programs such as these that support teacher enhancement. We would, however, suggest that these programs be open not only to teachers already in service but to teachers in training as well. We think also that participants should be required to serve as resources within their schools or school districts upon completion of the program, in order that more teachers and students be able to benefit.

The cost to DOE of such a program might be mitigated through collaboration with other organizations. For example, the Department of Energy laboratories could provide the facilities and the scientific and technical personnel while other organizations, such as the National Science Foundation, professional associations, and private foundations could provide funding for teachers to spend a summer or semester at a laboratory.

The Task Force believes that the Department's mission to "support American leadership in science and technology" gives it a vital, and indeed, urgent cause for investing in the future of math and science education. The Department's own interest and ability to carry out that mission rest on the capacity and creativity of well trained scientists and engineers. Advances in science and technology increasingly drive the larger economy and make possible the contribution that the Department of Energy can make to our national well-being.

The Task Force would again like to stress that the Department's role in education, to be effective, will depend above all on the strong support of the Secretary speaking to the importance of science education when he addresses laboratory personnel, Congress, and in many other opportunities. The Secretary's activism will surely buoy the efforts of thousands of scientists who work in and make use of the National Laboratories. We reiterate, too, that the Department's program in education, if it is to have lasting results, must strive for continuity and stability while always holding to rigorous standards and focused aims.

The final meeting of the Task Force is scheduled in Washington on September 18th. We expect shortly thereafter to submit to you our final recommendations for a well-defined program that will build on the specific strengths and goals of the Department and its laboratories.

Thank you for giving us this opportunity to share with you some of our interim findings. We look forward to providing you with our final recommendations and a potential roadmap for the Department's programs in education.

With best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Hanna H. Gray /s/
Task Force Chair

cc:

Dr. Walter Massey
Chairman, Secretary of Energy Advisory Board
Dr. Gerry Wheeler
Executive Director, National Science Teachers Association
Dr. Rita R. Colwell
Director, National Science Foundation