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House Panel Questions Obama's Plan to Reorganize Science
Education<http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2013/06/house-panel-questions-obamas-pla.html>
MORE SHARING SERVICESSHARE <http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php>
by Jeffrey Mervis on 5 June 2013, 1:20 PM

House Panel Questions Obama's Plan to Reorganize Science Education

Democrats and Republicans on the House of Representatives science committee
agreed yesterday that the federal government needs to take a more
coordinated approach to improving science education. But that's about the
only aspect of the Obama administration's proposed reorganization of 226
programs at a dozen agencies that they liked.

The hearing<http://science.house.gov/hearing/full-committee-hearing-stem-education-administration%E2%80%99s-proposed-re-organization>
was
the first public vetting of a plan to reshuffle the government's current $3
billion investment in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics) education. The
proposal<http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/2014_R&Dbudget_STEM.pdf>,
part of the president's 2014 budget request to Congress, would cut the
total number of federal programs by half and concentrate resources at three
agencies—the Department of Education for elementary and secondary school
programs, the National Science Foundation (NSF) for undergraduate and
graduate programs, and the Smithsonian Institution for informal and public
science activities.

Legislators pressed the administration's witnesses on how programs were
selected for the chopping block, whether the lead agencies were capable of
taking on new responsibilities, and if the outside community was part of
the process. By and large, they weren't happy with the answers from
presidential science adviser John Holdren, who was joined by NSF's Joan
Ferrini-Mundy, and NASA's Leland Melvin, co-chairs of an interagency STEM
committee staffed by Holdren's Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Last week, that committee issued a long-delayed strategic plan for federal
STEM education<http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/stem_stratplan_2013.pdf>
that
lays out long-term goals to measure success in each of the four priority
areas.

Unlike most hearings at which the Republican-led House examines an
initiative from the Democratic White House, the legislators' comments and
questions were refreshingly nonpartisan. Unfortunately for the
administration, however, that comity resulted in a steady stream of
skepticism flowing from both sides of the aisle. Members were particularly
worried about the fate of informal science education programs at
agencies—including NASA, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the
Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration—whose STEM education budgets would be trimmed under the
president's plan.

"I believed that it was important to look at what the federal government
has been doing [in STEM education] and how we can improve our efforts,"
said the top Democrat on the panel, Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson of
Texas, in her opening statement. "But I have serious concerns with the
budget proposal itself. To be blunt, it seems to me it was not very well
thought out. … NASA seems to have taken the biggest hit, and this doesn't
make any sense to me."

Twenty minutes into the 2.5-hour hearing, which was interrupted by two
floor votes, Republican Representative Randy Hultgren of Illinois shared
similar sentiments. "Normally, I support efforts to reduce duplicative
programs," said Hultgren, who has championed basic science at DOE's
national laboratories. "But this reorganization seems rushed and poorly
planned. The president's proposal seems to be taking a number of successful
initiatives being done by high-quality groups at the local level and
running a majority of them through a federal bureaucracy in Washington."

Several legislators said that constituent groups have flooded their offices
with calls and e-mails objecting to the administration's plan. They are
especially upset by the proposed 33% cut in NASA's $150 million STEM
education budget, a 30% reduction in DOE programs, and termination of the
government's only health science education program as part of the
dismantling of NIH's Office of Science Education.

Lawmakers repeatedly asked Holdren how the White House chose which programs
to eliminate or consolidate. He acknowledged that agencies did not submit a
list of sacrificial lambs: "Ordinarily, if you ask people if they'd like
any of their programs to be cut, they'll say no," Holdren told
Representative Donna Edwards (D-MD), who wondered why NASA hadn't been
asked for its advice.

His answers also made clear that an impartial, outside assessment of a
program's successes and failures wasn't the determining factor. "We had to
take into account the inefficiency of trying to run rigorous evaluations on
very small programs," Holdren told Representative Larry Bucshon (R-IN),
chairman of the committee's research panel. "This is one of the reasons we
wanted to consolidate, to improve our capacity to evaluate."

Instead, Holdren said programs that fit into one of the administration's
four priority areas—"improving K-12 instruction, reforming undergrad
programs around evidence based practices, streamlining the graduate
fellowship process, and amplifying engagement activities"—received top
billing in the new lineup. Vocational education and job training skills
were not a major focus of the reorganization, Holdren told legislators,
although he said such efforts remain a top administration priority. And
programs to attract more minorities and women into STEM-related careers
were left untouched in this initial reshuffling, Holdren explained. "To the
extent that those programs need a closer look," Holdren told Representative
Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), "that will be done in collaboration with the
institutions that provide those programs."

The committee's chairman, Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), added his
voice to those questioning the plan. "I hope our witnesses can tell us what
was wrong with the programs the administration wants to cut or
consolidate," he said. And he wondered why the administration submitted a
budget plan to reorganize STEM education programs 6 weeks before releasing
its strategic vision for how to improve STEM education. Even so, Smith
complemented Holdren on the bottom line in the president's 2014 budget
request. "I am glad to see that the overall funding for STEM education is
increased by 6%. That's a good sign," Smith said.


Martin
-- 
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Martin Weiss, PhD
Senior Scientist
New York Hall of Science
mweiss at nyscience.org
cell   347-460-1858
desk 718 595 9516

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