High‐School Physics: Progress and Continuing Challenge

DEC 01, 1985

Local, state and national initiatives may have helped to improve precollege teaching and to make the career of science teacher more attractive, but a survey shows that much remains to be done.

DOI: 10.1063/1.880996

Robert Beck Clark

In September 1983, PHYSICS TODAY devoted a special issue to the crisis in US high‐school physics education. That issue was prepared in the wake of a series of well‐publicized reports from a number of prominent national commissions and committees that documented the severity of the crisis. Of particular interest to the physics community was the shortage of qualified high‐school physics instructors across the nation and the low level of high‐school physics enrollment.

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References

1. See for example A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, DOE (1983);
or R. Brown, National Assessment Findings and Educational Policy Questions, Education Commission for the States, SY‐CA‐50 (1982).
2. PHYSICS TODAY, January 1985, p. 55;
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 30 January 1985, p. 1.
3. J. M. Wilson, AAPT Announcer 15, 72 (1985).
4. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 3 July 1985, p. 17.
5. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 30 January 1985, p. 24.
6. Excellence: A Fifty State Survey, Education Week, 6 February 1985, p. 11.
7. NEA Estimates of School Statistics 1984–85, NEA (1985).
8. Update: Connecticut’s Challenge, Connecticut State Board of Education (1984), p. 11.
9. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 13 March 1985, p. 1.
10. D. Hunt, Houston Chronicle, 10 July 1985, p. 19.
11. Education Week, 19 June 1985, p. 6;
Education Week, 5 June 1985, p. 24.

More about the authors

Robert Beck Clark, A&M University.