Teaching about Earth Day on April 22 just got a little more exciting, because the scientific community has convened and decided to create a "March for Science" that day.

Inspired by the success of last month's Women's March, the scientific community will use the activity to raise awareness for their concerns that politics oftentimes undermine the validity of their work.

"How can a society survive without truth, without data and information, without diversity of people and their perspectives?" said Stanford professor of biology Elizabeth Hadly to Mercury News.

"It is imperative that scientists work to represent those that do not have a voice and critical that we maintain the role of science in society."

Marches are currently being planned in several major cities in the U.S., providing a great supplemental lesson to students who are learning about the science community's contributions on Earth Day. 

Study Receives Funding to Examine Link Between Reading and Math Comprehension

A new study being conducted by Vanderbilt University researchers is analyzing whether or not language comprehension has anything to do with how successful a student is on both reading comprehension and math comprehension problems.

This first-of-its-kind study linking reading and math comprehension just received a $2.5 million grant from National Institutes of Health's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to be used over the next four years.

The researchers hope their study will help them understand how to help students improve in both reading and math subjects while helping them hone one certain skill.

"We want to increase understanding about the specific ways that math problem-solving and reading comprehension are connected via language comprehension in order to see if work in one domain may simultaneously improve performance in the other domains," said co-principal investigator Lynn Fuchs on Vanderbilt's website.

Read the full story.

Which Countries Have the Most STEM Graduates?

According to an article recently published on Forbes.com, China leads the nation with the most STEM graduates. In 2016, China graduated 4.7 million STEM professionals; the country in second place, India, graduated 2.6 million, almost half.

The United States ranks in third place, graduating 568,000 STEM graduates in 2016, much more comparable to the fourth-ranking country, Russia, at 561,000.

See the full ranking here.

University of Texas at Austin Receives $5 Million to Expand Computer Science in State

The University of Texas at Austin has received $5 million in funding from the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to increase on-going initiatives that help train educators to teach computer science.

Specifically, the funding will go towards the university's WeTeach_CS program.

"The program provides intensive and sustained K-12 professional development for Texas computer science teachers and already is responsible for a dramatic increase in the number of certified computer science teachers in Texas, in support of the nation's CS for All initiative. In 2015-16, the program trained 1,352 Texas educators and helped 177 teachers receive their CS certification," said the University of Texas at Austin on its website.

Read the full story.

Nicole Gorman, Senior Education World Contributor

2/3/2017