Reform from the local to the global. High-school students in the US use inexpensive photometers to confirm NASA data on atmospheric aerosol levels—and help to demonstrate the effectiveness of taking science education beyond the classroom. say to them that you must do this particular curriculum or you must do that, but we say whatever you’re doing has to have a logic and has to get more kids involved in science and math.” The agency, which currently has a budget of more than $350 million dedicated to improving science education, can also assist grass-roots reform efforts once they have begun at the state or local level. Whatever political difficulties confront science education, the key to the solution—and part of the problem—clearly lies with science teachers themselves.

Recruiting and retaining good science teachers, though, is difficult.“The teaching salaries for science and math majors are not competitive with jobs in the private sector,” explains Jo Ellen Roseman, Acting Director of Project 2061, an educational reform effort at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS; Washington, DC, USA). Roseman adds that one obvious solution, offering higher salaries for math and science teachers than for other those in other areas, is “probably not something the unions would encourage.” Still, data collected by Project 2061 suggest that in affluent school districts, at least, a majority of high school science teachers have a degree in a scientific discipline. As is usually the case, poor districts do not fare as well. Other statistics from the project are less encouraging, including the finding that around half of all starting teachers will leave the profession within five years.“Some of our best teachers, I