House Panel to Bush: Math Later

doi:10.1126/science.312.5780.1585c

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ScienceScope

A new $250 million push by the White House to strengthen mathematics for elementary and middle school students appears doomed this year after a House panel zeroed it out of a 2007 spending bill for the Department of Education (ED).

Dubbed Math Now, the initiative was to be the centerpiece of a $412 million request to improve math and science education that is part of the president's broader American Competitiveness Initiative. But legislators decided to put off the program while an ED-funded panel, launched last month, studies the effectiveness of various math curricula (Science, 19 May, p. 982). "It made more sense to wait until the panel has finished," says a congressional aide. The spending panel provided only $97 million for ED's share of the competitiveness initiative.

Education lobbyists don't expect any more support in the Senate. "I got the sense several weeks ago that it was a lost cause this year," says Ken Krehbiel of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. At the same time, however, legislators added $42 million to the president's $183 million request for the Mathematics and Science Partnerships, a state block-grant program for precollege math and science education.