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Educating Our Children
The Record | The Challenge | The Plan | The Opportunity
THE RECORD
Examining America’s educational system -- the role, processes, and goals of schools and educators -- has been one of the National Academies’ most intensive endeavors. Over the past decade they have fostered efforts to develop and promote high standards for science, mathematics, and technology education for all Americans; developed strategies for improving childhood literacy; analyzed research on how children learn; piloted science curriculum materials; and introduced new approaches for the professional development of teachers. The range of the Academies’ education-related studies, reports, and programs includes these notable examples --
- Improving Student Learning: A Strategic Plan for Education Research and Its Utilization, which proposes an ambitious strategic education research program to enhance teacher effectiveness and student engagement.
- National Science Education Standards, which offers a coherent vision of what it means to be scientifically literate and asserts that all Americans have a role in improving science education.
- How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School, which brings together the latest scientific evidence on learning and examines its implications for what our schools teach, how they teach, and how they assess their students’ learning.
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THE EDUCATION CHALLENGE
Ours is increasingly an “information-based” society, but few people recognize or are prepared for the practical implications of this change for our education systems. Objective measures of elementary and secondary education in the United States suggest that our children are not being appropriately challenged by their studies nor adequately prepared for the complexities of a science- and technology-shaped society.
To maintain economic prosperity and guide society’s use of new technological capacities, each new generation must learn to use and advance the previous generation’s scientific discoveries and applications. At a minimum, general competencies in mathematics and science are required. These critical objectives can be accomplished only if the nation has clear education goals and provides students and teachers with the most effective tools for education.
- Starting Out Right: A Guide to Promoting Children’s Reading Success, which offers practical science-based guidance to help parents and teachers enable all children to succeed in reading.
- High Stakes: Testing for Tracking, Promotion, and Graduation, which reports on the effectiveness of the nation’s current tools for educational testing and educational accountability.
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THE PLAN
Programs based primarily in the National Academies’ Center for Education will focus on these key areas of work --
- Enhancing the scientific guidance of education and fostering the growth of a “science of education” -- notably focusing on methods used for student and teacher evaluations, for assessing the benefits of instructional reforms, and for setting standards of achievement.
- Helping educators more closely integrate policies for K–12 and post-secondary education -- particularly regarding teachers’ professional development, reforms in science and mathematics curricula, and the connection of education research with classroom instruction.
- Exploring opportunities for using new information on the cognitive and neurobiological foundations of learning to guide policies on educational organization, classroom teaching, teachers’ professional development, and institutional accountability. This work would extend to studying connections between learning capacity and physical health.
- Assessing how education reforms affect minority students, economically disadvantaged students, and students with disabilities -- while evaluating options for promoting greater racial and gender diversity among those pursuing college and graduate education in science, engineering, or health care disciplines.
- Guiding the recruitment and support of scientifically and technically gifted people -- including young PhDs -- as K–12 classroom teachers and helping develop strategies to replace the estimated 50 percent of the nation’s teachers who will retire or change fields by 2010.
- Enhancing elementary, middle, and high school students’ opportunities for learning by fostering the creation of high-quality, free Internet-based science, engineering, and health care teaching resources.
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THE OPPORTUNITY TO SHAPE THE FUTURE
The National Academies need your assistance to implement their plans for meeting the Education challenge. You might consider --
- Underwriting the cost of a senior scholar to lead studies that translate new discoveries in neurology, psychology, and educational processes into practical guidance for the nation’s teachers and education policymakers ($100,000 annually).
- Supporting fellowships that enable graduate students and junior university faculty to work on Academies’ projects analyzing the effectiveness of state and national education policies and programs ($75,000 annually).
As the defined needs change and our programs evolve, so too will your opportunities to help. To learn about more ways you can shape the future through the work of the National Academies, visit the Giving Opportunities page or contact us at giving@nationalacademies.org. We welcome your ideas, too.
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_______________ T h e . P l a n . f o r . t h e . F u t u r e _______________
Providing Information for a Free Society
Educating Our Children
Protecting the World's Resources
Promoting Quality Health Care for All
Prospering in the 21st-Century Economy
Securing a Safer World
Guiding Science, Engineering, and Medicine 
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