Spotlight - an open window of opportunity / Ethan Krain and Dorit Farnes

The CEO of the Trump Foundation, Eli Horvitz, is optimistic about the future of science education in Israel

The state of education in Israel in general, and scientific-technological education in particular, is a very common topic in Israeli discourse. The article "upgrading the science teacher" shows that the issue occupies a high place in the American priorities as well. We therefore met with Eli Horvitz, CEO of the Trump Foundation, which was established in 2011 to work to improve educational achievements in Israel with an emphasis on the teaching of mathematics and science in secondary schools to talk about teachers, students and the science education system in Israel.

"It should be understood that in the coming decade a rare window of opportunity will open for a major improvement in science education in Israel. This is an opportunity that should not be missed because it is not certain that it will return," Horvitz began the conversation. The situation today is not good, he admits, but the Trump Foundation identifies several trends and phenomena that underlie this optimistic statement.

First, in recent years we see a trend of improvement in student performance. "Many compare us to Finland, and the situation in Finland is indeed much better than ours," confirms Hurwitz. "But while Finland's ranking in the international tests is starting to drop, Israel's ranking is rising." One of the reasons for this, in his opinion, is the high government investment in education. Israel invests more than 8% of the gross domestic product in education, a higher rate than that invested by countries that are usually compared to Israel. "You can argue about the ways and the directions, but you can't deny the scope of the investment," Horvitz explains. Although he qualifies his words by saying that the rate of students in Israel is high relative to the population, and this places a heavier burden on the working sector that needs to finance the large investment, but in his opinion the investment is beginning to show its signs in various indicators, such as in the field of literacy.

The second trend is the approach of many math and science teachers to retirement age. In these subjects, and especially in physics, there is a high proportion of teachers over the age of 50 and even over the age of 60. "Currently, this is not necessarily a disadvantage," emphasizes Horvitz, because these are very experienced teachers. But the rate of retirement of the old teachers is higher than the rate of entry of new teachers, so there is a growing shortage of teachers. The question is therefore: "How to reduce the shortage and fill the ranks?" In some schools, the distress leads to poor stress solutions. In the middle schools, where science studies are compulsory studies, the retiring teachers are sometimes replaced by other veteran teachers who previously taught other subjects, not necessarily scientific ones, and their knowledge and skills in these subjects are not good. In the upper divisions, majors are closed and classes are avoided. "Nowadays physics is taught in the scope of 5 study units in only about a third of the high schools," says Horvitz. However, this great shortage is also a great opportunity to train new, high-quality teachers.

Another trend identified by Horvitz is the saturation of matriculation eligibility rates. "The State of Israel made a decision, correct in my opinion, to ensure that more students finish school with a matriculation certificate because it is the key to higher education and economic success." Indeed, in the last 30 years, the number of eligible people has increased from 1990% in 48 and stands at 4% today. This success did indeed lead to an increase in university enrollments, but the increase has slowed down in recent years and seems to be reaching a threshold that will be much more difficult to break through. The pressure to obtain a matriculation certificate also has a price, especially in mathematics studies. "A student who fails math," Horvitz explains, "is not entitled to a matriculation certificate, so the school will encourage students who have difficulty reducing the scope of their studies and take the exam in 5 study units instead of 5." Today, less than 10,000 students take the XNUMX-unit matriculation exam in mathematics. The emphasis on receiving the matriculation certificate therefore sometimes comes at the expense of its quality. Improving the quality of the matriculation certificate is therefore another window of opportunity to improve scientific education.

A hint of the way in which this can be achieved can be found in comparing the achievements of Israeli students in math literacy in the international PISA tests for evaluating students (see figure). The students are ranked on a scale of grades between 1 and 6. In Finland in 2006, 10% of the students were classified as weak students who obtained grades in the low grade range (1 and below), 70% obtained grades in the medium range (2-4) and 20% were defined as excellent students who received high grades (5-6). In Israel, on the other hand, 40% of the students received low grades that year and only 5% of the students reached the top grades. A similar picture was also obtained in scientific literacy. "A modern country in the 21st century must strive for a more egalitarian distribution," claims Horvitz and suggests two directions. The first direction is to reduce the number of struggling students. "This is a national mission," he adds. Among this group there is an over-representation of the periphery and minorities and closing this gap requires continuous action from early childhood to employment, as well as cultural and linguistic adjustment. The state does invest in favoring the periphery and disadvantaged populations to bring them to the base level. "But this task, despite its importance, is too big for a philanthropic foundation like the Trump Foundation," says Horwitz. "But maybe we can contribute something in the other direction: increasing the proportion of outstanding students."

To achieve a more even distribution of student achievements She is the goal of the Trump Foundation. The percentage of outstanding students in Israel is low compared to the countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and which participated in the international PISA tests, and especially compared to countries whose education is well known, such as Finland. The foundation believes that investing in quality teaching can increase their rate.

In recent years, success stories have been published from different parts of the world, in which there was a great improvement in achievements within 10 to 15 years, a relatively short time in terms of education. Examples include the province of Ontario in Canada, which, like Israel, is home to many immigrants and which began educational reforms after two major salary agreements with teachers, or Poland, whose students have improved greatly. "Each country has a different culture, and a different starting point, but the common thing in all the success stories is a large investment in improving the quality of teaching."

In contrast, other reforms, which focused on organizational changes, teachers' salaries and other major changes, did not cause a noticeable change, because the reform was, in fact, carried out far from the classroom. "When the classroom door was closed, the teachers taught as usual, the reforms had no effect," says Hurwitz. "In countries that have improved, the quality of classroom instruction is the best predictor of improvement." All these countries try to recruit the best people for teaching. This is indeed a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. One should also invest in what Horvitz calls "clinical teaching skills", that is, deep training in the teacher's abilities in the classroom so that he can adapt his teaching to the needs and abilities of each student.

The nature of quality teaching and how it is measured are controversial issues. Some advocate that the teachers be knowledgeable in the study material, others emphasize the skill of managing the lesson and the students, and others advocate combining the emphasis on the right ways to teach certain content. In Israel, too, people are debating whether an improvement in student grades is the right measure of the quality of teaching, or whether more holistic factors that are very difficult to measure should be taken into account.

The Trump Foundation believes that there are a great many students among those who received intermediate grades (55%) who are not maximizing their abilities - and this is precisely what quality teaching can improve. Excellent teachers will be able to attract more students to study physics and help them persevere and succeed in their studies. . Horvitz believes that the expansion of the circle of students in the mathematics and physics majors will inevitably involve increasing the number of students in the class and the existence of a greater variety of abilities and needs. The additional students will need more educational assistance, and therefore the teachers will need skills that will allow them to provide an individual response to each student in large and diverse classes.

"If we increase the number of students learning science, students with different abilities, with different backgrounds and with different learning styles and paces will also arrive, and the teachers will have to know how to give each of them an appropriate response," Horvitz explains. "And this knowledge will only come from the field, from learning from the experience of veteran and excellent teachers, from documentation of their work and the methods and ways they use in the classrooms. This is the direction of the Trump Foundation, which is why we support projects that are conducted within the schools themselves while integrating the students into active teaching."

The challenge is therefore to train a new and excellent generation of math and science teachers who will fill the obvious shortage and respond to the expected increase in the number and diversity of students. Horvitz believes that there is a large number of people in Israel who will be willing to fill these quotas and who can become excellent teachers. He believes that math and science teachers are highly regarded by the public. The public especially appreciates people who have chosen teaching as a second career, and today there are many more who are considering choosing teaching at a more advanced stage in their professional lives.

Referring to the situation in the United States, as described in the article on page 22, Horvitz says that he usually prefers to compare Israel to other, more similar places and not to the United States, except in special cases. Such a special case is the prestigious 'Hotam' program which recruits talented people for teaching in a competitive selection process and which operates in the spirit of the successful project in the USA: Teach for America. "Even if the critics claim that these projects are superficial and too fast," he says, "they attract excellent students, who integrate into education over time, and that's what we want to achieve."