Monthly Archives: March 2015

When Sherman Dorn decided to leave Florida, he ended up in Arizona. But his decision-making isn’t always that bad. Sherman, who is now Director of the Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers’ … Continue reading →

Despite FSU’s success over the decades in nuclear physics, materials science, meteorology, chemistry and the life sciences, the university still trails Florida’s State University System in the production of bachelors’ degrees in science and engineering.  In 2012-13, FSU awarded 11.98% … Continue reading →

AICE Marine Science is all the rage in Palm Beach County, and as the Palm Beach Post reports “accelerated” AP, IB and AICE classes can make money for the schools themselves. But do these “accelerated” classes really help students progress toward bachelors’ … Continue reading →

The Orange County public school district may have won the Broad Prize, but last week’s announcement of the inaugural class for the district’s Hall of Fame shows that the district still has some growing to do. The class of six … Continue reading →

Update (4:45 pm, Friday 3/20):  An anonymous source assures me that Tallahassee Community College has been checking prerequisites in its student registration system for at least 15 years. ——————————————————————————————————– Courses like the first calculus-based introductory physics class taken by majors … Continue reading →

The Palm Beach Post reported that AICE course registrations are overtaking AP course registrations in Palm Beach County schools.  According to the Post, there are about 10,500 AICE registrations this year, compared to about 11,300 AP registrations. Of course, science is a fairly … Continue reading →

…via fivethirtyeight.com. I showed this figure to both students and parents during my visit with FSU President John Thrasher to Orlando Science Schools on Thursday.

Two Republican legislators – Senator Anitere Flores and Representative Jeannette Nunez – have filed bills (SB 1546 and HB 1275) proposing to partially reverse the recently legislated increases in minimum SAT and ACT scores for Bright Futures scholarships and instead raise minimum high … Continue reading →

Learning physics is critical for a wide range of careers, but both learning and teaching physics can be challenging and frustrating.  Fortunately, physics educators like myself can draw upon decades of tremendous research on how students learn physics and what … Continue reading →

The American Physical Society has published a list of colleges and universities that have graduated five or more new bachelor’s-level physics teachers in a single year sometime in the last three academic years.  You can see the list of individual … Continue reading →