Five Policy Challenges for STEM Advocates
James Brown, STEM Ed Coalition, April 9, 2013
The Current Policy Environment
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The Federal Budget Outlook
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The Most Important Political Issue in 2012
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Status of ESEA Reauthorization, Year 1 2 3 4 5 6:
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Will Immigration Reform be Next?
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STEM Education: Perception vs. Reality
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#1: Accountability
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Government vs. Private Sector Investments
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$941 billion
Fed + State + Local
$153 billion
Federal
Spending on Education
$1-5 billion
Private Sector Investments
in STEM Education
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it
• Federal: Under NCLB math and reading required, but not science.
• Waivers have changed the entire game.
• Common Core and NGSS have become “surrogates” for accountability
• How do we define core subjects and priorities?
• How do we define STEM subjects?
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#2: 200+ Federal STEM Programs
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What is the federal role in STEM?
• 200+ federal STEM Programs at 13 different agencies
• ~$3 billion in total
• Need to get most bang for the taxpayer buck
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#3: Recruiting and Retaining Great STEM Educators
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“Teacher Quality” and STEM
• STEM subjects have a rapid rate of change
• STEM professionals make more than STEM teachers
• We don’t have good indicators/systems for teacher effectiveness, which makes incentives difficult
• STEM Master Teachers Corps is a very hot topic
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#4: Building the Right STEM Pipeline
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Total Employment in STEM in 2020Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
* Subtotals do not equal 9.2 million due to rounding.
Source: Jobs data are calculated from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Employment Projections 2010-2020, available at http://www.bls.gov/emp/. STEM is defined here to include non-medical occupations.
Where the STEM Jobs Will BeProjected Annual Growth of Total STEM Job Openings 2010-2020
* STEM is defined here to include non-medical occupations.
Source: Jobs data are calculated from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Employment Projections 2010-2020, available at http://www.bls.gov/emp/.
Where the STEM Jobs Will BeDegrees vs. Jobs Annually
Sources: Degree data are calculated from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Science and Engineering Indicators 2012, available at http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/appendix.htm. Annual jobs data are calculated from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Employment Projections 2010-2020, available at http://www.bls.gov/emp/. STEM is defined here to include non-medical degrees and occupations.
Only 40% of students who enter college as STEM majors finish
their degrees
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#5: Recruiting More Champions for STEM
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Q: “Who has been talking to you about STEM issues?”
A: ?????????
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What we ask at the end of every meeting on Capitol Hill
Thank You!
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The STEM Education Coalition
An Alliance of More than 500 Business, Professional, and Education Organizations
