By 1960 a program was developed that emphasized understanding rather than memorization and created films, inexpensive laboratory kit, experiments and teaching material to provide hands-on experience and thinking. Topics were organized to underscore overarching conservation principals. Almost overnight high school physics teaching had been revolutionized. Spurred by the success of the PSSC similar programs were created and successfully implemented for chemistry and biology. Mathematicians had their own approach, They’d focus on the beauty of math and get away from the mindless arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry and algebra that had been taught since the late 19th century. While the science programs succeeded, the new math failed – it made too much of a leap. Parents and teachers alike fought and quickly killed it.
Science teaching, if the metric is the supply of Ph.Ds. in science, is too successful. There simply aren’t enough research jobs to match supply and the number of posts in the US is shrinking. One might argue that a Ph.D. in physics is useful in other areas – I’ve been told physicists think differently and the same is probably true for all of the physical sciences – but if anything the pipeline is working .