July 27, 2019
High school physics, once the province of college-bound engineers and math majors, will be open to all students as a result of California’s new science standards and the state placing a greater emphasis on physics as a core part of the high school curriculum.
What will this mean for students, and how will districts find more physics instructors? We pose those and other questions this week to Shawna Metcalf, president of the California Science Teachers Association and a science specialist with the Glendale Unified School District.
We also explore the hidden reality that low-paid teachers and other staff in child care and preschools are, in effect, subsidizing California’s early education system to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. A new study out this week makes this provocative case, and a co-author of the study, Lea Austin, co-director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley, reviews the numbers with us.
For more, see the following articles:
- Plan to expose all students to physics missing one element — teachers
- Where to start? Inside one California district’s approach to redesign STEM education
- Funding, teacher training top educators’ wish lists for science education in 2018
- New report: “Breaking the silence on early child care and education costs”
- Teacher shortage, early education targeted in Gov. Newsom’s California budget revision