Kicking The Education Can Down The Road At NASA
After four years of attempts to kill NASA’s Education Office a new Administration wants to increase NASA’s education funding.
A person with a PhD in Education lives in the White House. Overall the Biden/Harris Administration talks about enhancing education in all quarters of the government. Instead of having a political donor running the Department of Education into the ground, an actual teacher and professional educational manager is now the Secretary of Education. If you are interested in the future of our nation’s education system, now would be a good time for you to start being enthusiastic – again.
You’d think that NASA would be overjoyed. Alas, even in the best of times, NASA’s education efforts have been under funded, filled with congressional pork, and at odds with NASA Public Affairs and the outreach efforts run by various NASA directorates, Missions, and Centers. And they lack even the most basic of metrics to allow its efforts to be evaluated for effectiveness. Rarely has NASA’s education office been run by an actual professional educator with prior education management experience.
As Bill Nelson assumed the position of NASA Administrator, he has been saying all the right things about education, inspiring the next generation, the value of NASA as a global ambassador, etc. Jim Bridenstine said the same things. So did Charlie Bolden and Sean O’Keefe. Unlike his predecessors NASA has a $147 million request – a 15.7% increase over FY 2021 appropriations in its education budget in the President’s FY 2022 budget request. The budget request shows an out year runout reaching $160 million in FY 2026. If you look at the STEM summary in the NASA budget justification (page 725) – the 3 pages of ‘lets get rid of education’ verbiage from the Trump era is replaced with 6 pages of ‘what can we do to expand education’ at NASA.
