HE:ED Highlight: STEM

HE:ED Highlights – STEM

Even though former vice president Al Gore has just recently focused on American youth’s lack of interest in STEM, it’s been an issue for a while. In fact organizations like ASTRA and STEM Education Coalition (www.stemedcoalition.org) have been posting STEM data for years. (By the way, this years STEM stats by state can be found at http://www.usinnovation.org/state-sheets.)

So, American kids aren’t opting (or prepared) to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics…Al Gore didn’t propose a solution during his global, online town hall meeting.

So…what do these groups propose we do?

Lets look at the STEM Education Coalition’s Core Objectives: (found at http://nstacommunities.org/stemedcoalition/objectives/)

1. Strengthen effective STEM education programs at all levels – K-12, undergraduate, graduate, continuing ed, vocational, informal – at the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and other federal agencies with STEM related programs.

2. Encourage national elected officials and key opinion leaders to recognize and bring attention to the critical role that STEM education plays in U.S. competitiveness and our future economic prosperity.

3. Support new and innovative initiatives that will help improve the content knowledge skills and professional development of the K-12 STEM teacher workforce and informal educators and improve the resources available in STEM classrooms and other learning environments.

4. Support new and innovative initiatives to recruit and retain highly-skilled STEM teachers.

5. Support new and innovative initiatives to encourage more of our best and brightest students, especially those from underrepresented or disadvantaged groups, to study in STEM fields.

6. Support increased federal investment in educational research to determine effective STEM teaching and learning methods.

7. Encourage better coordination of efforts among federal agencies that provide STEM education programs.

8. Support new and innovative initiatives that encourage partnerships between state and local educators, colleges, universities, museums, science centers and the business, science, and technology communities that will improve STEM education.

...and those seem great but, where is the evidence that these “new and innovative initiatives” exist in the urban (and rural) school districts where many argue they are needed? And if they exist how are the parents - that  manage the earliest parts of education - being made aware?