K-12 Education Partnerships
URC education faculty, working with other universities across the state, helped develop new standardized tests and curricula that will give the state some of the nation’s highest education standard by 2011. Michigan this year became one of only three states in the nation requiring nearly all-11th graders to take the ACT, which boosted the number of students taking the test by more than 40 percent.
The U-M School of Education’s many Detroit related activities include efforts to put Education students into teaching roles with the Detroit Public Schools as well as the Highly Interactive Classrooms/Curricula/Computing in Education, known as the Hi- Ce program. For more than 10 years, this research group has conducted curricular design experiments and explored facets of science, social studies, and literacy education reform in collaboration with Detroit middle school teachers and administrators. For more details, visit: www.hi-ce.org
More than 2,000 Detroit Public School students each year participate in BioKIDS, the University of Michigan School of Education and Museum of Zoology program that uses technology and hands-on learning methods to help middle school students ask questions the way scientists do.
The National Science Foundation has awarded $11 million in grants for researchers at U-M, MSU, Northwestern University and Project 2061 to take their efforts to reform elementary and middle school science education to the next level. The goal: Maintain U.S. competitiveness by re-tooling science education to keep kids interested in science and improving scientific literacy for all students with some winding up in vital science and technology careers. Building upon past success in Detroit and Chicago, the researchers now are aiming to take their model curriculum to other middle schools across the nation to sites including Washington, D.C. and Tucson, Ariz.
U-M School of Education Professor Ed Silver, who has been spearheading efforts to help displaced Pfizer employees earn education degrees, last fall received a $356,000 grant from Saginaw Valley State University to start a project entitled, “The Michigan Math and Science Partnership Teacher Leadership Network.
