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Does anyone know if ASTC has taken a position on this and notified 
members of Congress?

On 6/5/2013 2:17 PM, Martin Weiss wrote:
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
> *****************************************************************************
>
> http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/
>
> 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

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