Ivanka Trump Supports NASA Education While Her Father Seeks To Gut It
The irony in Ivanka Trump’s and Betsy DeVos’s push for STEM education , Washington Post
“In her introduction to the film, Ivanka Trump said that her father’s administration “has expanded NASA’s space exploration mission” though did not, unsurprisingly, mention that he actually proposed decreasing NASA funding and eliminating the education office. The Trump-DeVos event drew some sharp criticism from Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who said in a statement:
“Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Ivanka Trump are feigning an interest in STEM careers with a photo op at the National Air and Space Museum while eliminating all funding for NASA’s education programs. This takes chutzpah to a new level. If this administration was genuinely interested in promoting STEM programs, it would walk the walk, not just talk the talk. The next generation of astronauts, scientists, engineers and mathematicians need support, not budget cuts eliminating the very programs being promoted.”
There was also no mention of the 13.5 percent in cuts Trump has proposed to the Education Department, which include the reduction or elimination of grants for teacher training, after-school programs and aid to low-income and first-generation college students.”
What chutzpah!
Or just has a different approach that maybe more is effective.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/…
Remarks by President Trump at Signing of H.R. 321 and H.R. 255
From HR321
“Not later than 90 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the
Administrator shall submit to the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the House of Representatives and the Committee
on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate a plan for how NASA can best facilitate and support both current and retired
astronauts, scientists, engineers, and innovators, including early
career female astronauts, scientists, engineers, and innovators, to
engage with K-12 female STEM students and inspire the next generation of women to consider participating in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and to pursue careers in aerospace. This plan shall–
(1) report on existing activities with current and retired
NASA astronauts, scientists, engineers, and innovators;
(2) identify how NASA could best leverage existing
authorities to facilitate and support current and retired
astronaut, scientist, engineer, and innovator participation in
NASA outreach efforts;
(3) propose and describe a program specific to retired
astronauts, scientists, engineers, and innovators; and
(4) identify any additional authorities necessary to
institute such a program.
Approved February 28, 2017.
Given how NASA’s current efforts seem broken maybe a reboot is needed, one that leverages NASA’s ability to inspire. One difference between private industry and the government is that private industry will pull the plug on things that don’t work.
http://nasawatch.com/archiv…
NASA’s Education Programs Are Still Broken
Sigh…. human STEM inspiration, educational process, development and motivation at a crossroads. And the adults do not understand and cant get their acts together. I am seeing a lost generation of American students and loss of space leadership. Photo ops dont inspire children. Having an exciting, fruitful and growing space program does. And this administration has no vision or goal that would provide such an inspirational impetus.
Rather than gut its funding, they may ‘flip flop’ and introduce programs to help schools teaching kids to separate fact from fiction. On second thought, perhaps they can offer the training to parts of Congress in need of remedial training (climate change is not real, expensive Apollo redux, etc). 😉
NASA has quite an exciting future that will be well grounded in Earth Science to help guide critical economic paths forward for the planet, not to mention new bold space markets and discoveries for peaceful purposes. Sustained almost daily interaction with math and science if often necessary to ‘inspire’.
NASA invites people like Betsy DeVos and Ivanka Trump to speak at such events all the time. NASA loves PR and obviously so do Betsy and Ivanka. Maybe it helps- I don’t know. As a kid who loves science I didn’t pay much attention to events like this. As an adult optical Engineer, I still do not pay attention or get involved with events like this. All this bashing of Betsy and Ivanka is political. NASA, Betsy and Ivanka should not be ashamed of doing what they thinks helps just because budgets are tightening. From my perspective, I simply don’t think these event do as much good as the do- gooders think- even when NASA had bigger budgets. Maybe the shrinking budgets coupled with H.R. 321 and 255 will inspire a NASA to find more effective approaches.
You do understand that Trump wants to eliminate NASA’s Office of Education altogether – and cut a huge amount of money from the Department of Education right? And that is supporting education?
Yes. NASA scientists and Engineers are already involved with educational activities that are not sponsored by the office of education. I happen think many of these activities are actually supporting education much more than the NASA office of education. Many of the educational activities are funded by NASA programs and the office of education is just taking credit for some activity that would have occurred with or without that office anyway.
NASA scientists and engineers will continue to support education, without the office of education. I believe eliminating the office will show how truly ineffective the office actually is.
Centralized control over education is not working. Cutting the department of education at the federal level will indeed help education- just by getting them out of the way. I believe cutting funding and control is a necessary step. People already deeply care about education and will be able step up more effectively. More money with centralized control isn’t the solution.
Now THAT”S a great idea. Why not apply it more widely?
We could, for instance, get rid of the Department of Transportation, thereby helping our potholes fill themselves, just by getting the pesky DOT out of the way.
We could just lower taxes everywhere, too, getting the government out of the way and increasing net revenue.
The department of transportation doesn’t fill pot holes- it’s the state DOT that does that. Decentralization often works better. i’m not saying get rid of all government. Back in the 1970s in California my hometown got so fed up with the the city charging a home owners over $10,000 bill for fixing sidewalks in front of their home. The city claimed the work needed to be “certified” and that’s the cost and the city cuts were so deep…So a retired city guy, his company certified, offered to supervise the homeowners to mix cement and fix the sidewalks to city code. My hometown city flipped out at the revolt that ensued. My hometown city quickly backed down and fixed the sidwalks within their deeply cut budget. The city also suddenly found money to pick up trash too. The state suddenly found money to change street lights, stop lights, and fill pot holes within their cut budgets.
I do indeed believe shifting the education efforts lower, decentralizing it is better. The education efforts already being done at NASA outside of the office of education are already more effective. the HR resolutions offer NASA an opportunity to be even more effective.
yes, decentralization brings about the “wisdom of crowds” as you show, which always leads to better solutions.
Speaking of the wisdom of crowds, instead of focusing on Roman era cement, and always fixing potholes, America should leap into the future with solar roadways.
https://www.engadget.com/20…
“The tiles will be familiar if you’ve followed Solar Roadways before. Each one combines a solar cell with LED lighting, a heating element and tempered glass that’s strong enough to support the weight of a semi-trailer truck. If successful, the panels will feed the electrical grid (ideally paying for themselves) and make the roads safer by both lighting the way as well as keeping the roads free of rain and snow. They should be easier to repair than asphalt, too, since you don’t need to take out whole patches of road to fix small cracks.”
Hopefully this is how the President will rebuild the Interstate Highway System instead of using the primitive 20th Century technology it was built with.
I have to wonder where someone like Trump, or Obama before him, who reduced the NASA Education budget from about $350 million to $100 million, instigating Leland Melvin’s departure and transfer of education dollars to the Smithsonian, National Academies, and Department of Education (it never actually happened) really comes from the President and his Administration or is this initiated by a “recommendation” from the NASA management?
When I look at ISS, it was established in part to spur academia to develop scientific uses in space, and then the ISS management-one of whom has been the AA for Human Space Flight for the last decade-eliminated support for academia, creating a problem with getting new payloads on board. ISS kept the money but funneled it to aerospace contractors instead of to academia.
Disdain for education has been nearly continuous within NASA for the last decade. Prior to this time, O’Keefe was truly supportive of education. Griffith, not so much. Bolden said a lot of nice things about the importance of education, and then cut the education budget by 2/3. The support of education appears to have little relationship to the party of the Administration. Why would the Administration be concerned with such a relatively paltry sum anyway?
I suspect the responsibility-the blame-comes right back to the NASA management.
You must have missed all of my rants complaining about Obama’s cuts to NASA education.
No I didn’t miss them at all. I now wonder why both Obama and now Trump have tried to make the same sorts of changes. They have both said that NASA is important for education, but they are cutting back and now eliminating the budget for NASA education. They are not saving a lot of money. We are talking a minor overrun on most NASA programs that equate to they entire budget for education.
So I question is it really the Presidents who are choosing to make these cut backs or is it NASA managers who want to pirate the money to use for other things? And the Administration simply is not paying attention since its not enough money for them to worry about?
Gee, what an insightful comment. You must be an astronaut. Trump cut the NASA budget by less than 1%. Stop the whining.
And so does NASA. It was a mutually beneficial opportunity – just like occurred with other presidents.
Almost all of the NASA scientists and engineers are mostly ready and willing to support educational projects.
On the Science Mission side of the house, every project has contributed a portion of their budgets to educational activities. But the problem is and has been that every project operates independently and teachers and students widely complain that NASA’s resources are hit or miss-you cannot go to a single location to find the current and best information on a particular space-related subject. Instead every Mars project tells you a little about what their Mars spacecraft is or has done.
Much of the NASA efforts are wasted because of lack of coordination.
On the human space flight side not only is it not coordinated at all, educational content is largely nonexistent. ISS science is a good example. Lots of stuff has been developed about ISS science; if you can find it-NASA’s websites and resources frequently do not come up in internet searches.
But, apparently the ISS science office that must prepare these materials is so focused on their individual science areas, it is often not at all apparent what the science has to do with the ISS. They obviously put some effort and money into this, but once again the product is totally uncoordinated in terms of content and distribution.
And most of the NASA science materials are not comprehensive enough for use in the schools. Teachers need readings, history, worksheets, labs, assessments, interactive web content. Most students are seeing the material on cellphones and tablets-not on computers. The materials need to be optimized for small platforms.
All of this requires coordination. NASA has no mechanism for coordination. They are a bunch of feifdoms in different geographic locations and different projects and are totally uncoordinated.
The idea that Department of Education, or the National Sciences or the Smithsonian is gong to provide the space-related materials is a farce. None of those organization prepare, or are capable of providing such materials. NASA is perfectly capable but the effort is totally uncoordinated.
Yes, that is the real challenge, developing an effective coordinated approach. A new model is needed, one that would deliver STEAM from NASA directly to students independent of intermediates like local school districts using the latest media technology.
NASA does the most exciting things of any government agency, boldly going were no one has gone before, but by the time to gets to the students is boring, dull and static. That also needs to change if STEAM is ever going to be effective.
I question whether NASA does (maybe did) the most exciting things. DoD does a lot of exciting stuff (the Internet for one) and so do many other agencies like NOAA, DOE, etc etc etc.