State
Councils Propel STEM Education
Key players
try to coordinate efforts
As STEM education gains ever more prominence,
statewide organizations are springing up from coast to coast to advance and
better coordinate the cause.
Arizona, California, Iowa, and New York are among the
states where STEM education networks and councils have been launched in the past
few years. They typically bring to the table a diverse set of players in the
state, including representatives from K-12 and higher education, leaders in
government and business, as well as nonprofits and other community
organizations.
A national coalition called STEMx, announced last year,
counts 16 member state networks, but the numbers go well beyond that, including
with the Governor's STEM Advisory Council in Iowa.
"I've watched these pop up like popcorn," said Jeffrey
D. Weld, the executive director of the Iowa council, which Gov. Terry Branstad,
a Republican, established through an executive order in
2011.
"You get this vast hue and cry for STEM, which is a
good thing, but then you have to enact something," said Thomas T. Peters, the
executive director of South Carolina's Coalition for Mathematics and
Science. "A lot of my friends are using the term 'random acts
of STEM,' which is a lot of what happens."
He added, "That is one of the drivers of all these
various collaborations, confederations, whatever you wish to call them, to be
more purposeful in what we do in terms of STEM
education."
For Mr. Peters, whose organization actually dates back
two decades (though the name has changed, he says), the agenda should center on
the three C's of communication, collaboration, and
coordination.
Road
Maps
The particular strategies of state organizations vary
considerably, but their work has included drawing state road maps for
improvement in the STEM subjects, launching STEM-focused schools, providing
grants for individual projects, and advocating a policy
agenda.
One common thread in many state organizations is
creating regional "hubs" that work at the local level to advance STEM with a
particular focus on the needs and resources in different
communities.
Funding for the networks varies, but often includes
state and private aid, or even federal Race to the Top
dollars.
The Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
has been a key funder for a number of the networks, including in California, New
York, and Ohio.
In 2011, for instance, it announced a grant of $10
million over five years to launch and support a new group called Washington STEM
in its home state. (The Gates Foundation also provides support for coverage of
business and innovation in Education
Week.)
Claus von Zastrow, the chief operating officer of
Change the Equation, a Washington-based coalition of corporate chief executives
that promotes STEM education, said he's encouraged by the proliferation of the
state networks.
"They're varied, have different kinds of mandates,
different levels of power," he said. "The real hope is that if you bring all
these actors to the table, they can ensure that all the different stakeholders
in the state will be pulling in the same
direction."
'Rooted in
Innovation'
The increased focus on STEM education is driven in no
small part by concern about the role the fields of science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics play in the nation's economic competitiveness and
the need to fill jobs now and in the future in those
areas.
The issue has gotten the attention of President Barack
Obama, who addressed STEM education and jobs in his State of the Union Address this
month, as well as that of state leaders.
"In Massachusetts, the economy is really rooted in
innovation, and so much of that innovation requires people with skill sets in
and around STEM at all different levels," said Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Murray, who
chairs the Governor's STEM Advisory Council in that
state.
Mr. Murray, a Democrat, said the council, formed in
2009, brings together some "high-level players," such as the president of the
University of Massachusetts system, the head of the Museum of Science in Boston,
and senior officials in business and industry. In addition, it includes school
superintendents and other educators.
In 2010, the council produced a detailed
strategic plan for "excellence in STEM
education."
Last year, it issued two rounds of grants to fuel STEM
learning activities. For instance, it awarded $350,000 in grants for seven
initiatives, matched by more than $1 million in private
money.
The combined grants included $268,000 for the DIGITS
Project, which pairs STEM professionals with 6th grade classes to increase
student interest in STEM subjects and careers, and nearly $150,000 for the
Advanced Robotics Initiative, which provides summer and after-school
opportunities for K-12 students.
The Arizona STEM network, created in response to a
call from Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, got started in
2012.
"What Arizona saw, there was a proliferation of
activities relating to STEM education, but in a lot of ways, ... it's been very
disconnected," said Darcy R. Renfro, the coordinator of the state network and a
vice president at the Science Foundation Arizona. "What we were asked to do was
to coordinate, to really leverage and link all the STEM initiatives happening,
and elevate STEM."
The network received a small amount of startup money
from the state, but has since raised $6.6 million from private funders, said Ms.
Renfro, including Intel Corp., JP Morgan Chase, and the Helios Education
Foundation.
One top priority, she said, is to better understand
and promote high-quality STEM education
offerings.
"There are a lot of programs out there that say they
are STEM, ... but there is little data on what really is effective," Ms. Renfro
said. "That's a big piece of what we're doing, trying to identify what quality
is and help teachers, parents, and administrators make good decisions about they
do bring to their kids."
Creating
Regional 'Hubs'
Two priorities for the Tennessee STEM Innovation
Network, formed as a result of an executive order by then-Gov. Phil Bredesen, a
Democrat, in 2010, were to develop regional hubs and help start STEM-focused
schools.
The network has been fueled largely by a slice of the
state's federal Race to the Top grant. It's a public-private collaboration
between the state education department and the Battelle Memorial Institute, a
nonprofit research and development organization that operates Tennessee's Oak
Ridge National Laboratory.
"We've created six hubs across the state. We're trying
to organize STEM partners in each part of the state, businesses like FedEx,
Eastman Chemical, K-12 and higher education," said Wesley Hall, the director of
the Tennessee network. "We're [involving] everything from teachers' unions to
any kind of civic organization, Boy Scouts, Girl
Scouts."
The network played a key role in creating eight
STEM-focused "platform schools," with another opening next fall. For example, it
provided $2 million in Race to the Top aid to help create the L&N STEM
Academy in Knoxville, a new magnet high
school.
"All kids experience hands-on learning during the day;
corporate partners bring in real-world experience," Mr. Hall said of the new
STEM schools. "If they want to be engineers, it's amazing to bring in an
engineer from Volkswagen."
The new public schools, which are open to all
students, ascribe to a set of 10 design principles, such as providing enhanced
STEM learning, offering an integrated curriculum across subjects that "nurtures
imagination and creative thinking," and committing to share best practices with
other schools.
The Iowa STEM council has drafted 19 recommendations
to improve STEM education, said Mr. Weld, the executive director, and is
producing a set of manuals to help with implementation on such topics as turning
a school into a STEM school and how to license and prepare STEM
teachers.
In addition, drawing largely on $4.7 million in
recently awarded state aid, the Iowa council has awarded small grants for
"quality STEM programs," he said.
The council has a team of just three full-time staff
members, including Mr. Weld, but the network has hired six regional managers
working locally with the business and nonprofit sectors and others "to forge ...
partnerships and alliances we think will be sustainable long after the state
money runs out," he said.
Some of the statewide organizations, such as the
California STEM Learning Network, play an active role in the policy
arena.
The California group pushed hard to defeat a proposal
Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown included in his budget plan last year that would
have eliminated a second year of science as a minimum high school graduation
requirement, said Marcella Klein Williams, the network's chief education
officer.
The network's website lists five policy and advocacy
priorities, including adoption and implementation of the common science
standards being developed by 26 states, revising state and federal
accountability systems to place greater weight on science, technology, and
engineering, and ensuring all California students have access to high-quality
STEM activities in out-of-school time.
'Endless
Bandwagons'
Mr. Peters from the South Carolina coalition said he's
encouraged to see the recent proliferation of statewide STEM organizations
around the nation, suggesting they hold the potential to effectively harness the
groundswell of interest in STEM education coming today from so many
places.
He cautions that it's critical to channel the energy
and resources out there into productive and coordinated efforts that truly
improve STEM learning for young people, and not miss a ripe moment of
opportunity.
"We put teachers through endless bandwagons of the
thing that's going to save education," he said, "and this can't be another one
of those."
Coverage of science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics education is supported by a grant from the Noyce Foundation, at
www.noycefdn.org.
Vol. 32, Issue 22, Page
8
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