K-12 Teaching and Physics Enrollment

Abstract

We have collected and analyzed the relevant data from public schools in greater Houston area of Texas. Based and analyzed. Since the data is only limited to a few school, we are still working on getting more data so that we can compare and contrast the results adequately and understand the core of the enrollment issue at the national level. However, based on the raw data and partial analysis, we propose a few recommendations towards the improvement of science education in Texas Schools, in general, and greater Houston area schools in particular. Our results indicate that the quality of science education can be improved significantly if we focus on the improvement of high school education or even intermediate schools when students are first time exposed to science in a little technical way. Simply organizing teacher training programs at K-12 level as school education plays a pivotal role in the decrease in physics enrollment at the higher level. Similar analysis can actually be generalized to other states to find out the best way to increase the physics enrollment.