Resumen de The Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship: Bridging the Gap Between Policy and Practice
In an ideal world, education policy and practice would exist as parts of a coherent system. Effective practice would inform policy and that policy would, in turn, promote the tenets of effective practice at the local, state, and national levels. Policymakers and practitioners would collaborate and, by extension, have familiarity and respect for one another’s perspective. Unfortunately, our current education system is a far cry from the ideal, a fact that we as practitioners know all too well.
The system is fragmented, lacking bridges between practitioners and policymakers. Policymakers do not understand the demands of classroom teaching, which can result in policies that clash with what we know works best in our own classrooms. As the attention to and politicization of education becomes more intense (think of Common Core and the Opt-Out movement as symptoms of a larger public attention towards education as a political issue), it is critical to build connections between practitioners and policymakers. As K-12 physics educators, we would like to advocate for one solution to building such connections: The Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship.
Founded in 1990 by the Triangle Coalition for STEM Education, and authorized by Congress in 1994, this program places accomplished K-12 STEM educators into the federal government, working in either a federal agency (Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, or NASA) or in a congressional office. The premise of the Fellowship is simple: the federal government will create better policy when it includes educators as part of the process. Since 1990, over 270 STEM teachers have played a significant role in both crafting and implementing federal STEM initiatives. One Fellow even had the opportunity to work for then-Senator Obama; that Fellow followed President Obama to the White House, serving as a key education advisor.
We would like to share some stories about our experiences serving as Einstein Fellows, focusing on lessons we learned about federal policy and how the Fellowship empowered us to make meaningful contributions to federal STEM policy.
