The STEM Shift

A Guide for School Leaders

Ann P. Myers, Jill Berkowicz

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781483393162
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

All you need to make the shift to STEM a reality!

This resource makes the process of shifting to a comprehensive, integrated STEM school or district within reach! Invaluable case studies featuring STEM pioneers model how successful, STEM-centered learning takes place. You’ll find process-specific best practices and strategies to help you:

• Understand, create, and lead the STEM change proces
• Prepare the school community for STEM
• Integrate 21st Century Skills, the arts, and humanities

Includes step-by-step checklists and visual mapping guides. Use this groundbreaking resource to systematically implement STEM instruction that prepares students for the global economy!

Part I Why STEM?

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

—Steve Jobs (Apple Inc.)

1 The Tipping Point

The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.

—Malcolm Gladwell

The past decades have presented multiple attempts at education reform. Still, the demands on the system for change endure. Those demands come from multiple sources and are multifaceted. They arrive with unrelenting speed. Think time has vanished to the point where it seems a luxury for leaders. As a result, wise, committed, innovative educational leaders have become master tinkerers. Neither the demands nor our responses have resulted in a reconceptualization of public education.

Past reform efforts led to relatively minor increases in performance. It is not surprising that the role of the federal government in education became more heavy-handed as the 20th century turned a corner. United States students were slipping in performance when compared to students from the Far East and Finland. Bipartisan support led to the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act in 2001. The shortcomings of public education, the need for increased accountability, and a zoom lens on teachers became rallying calls for reform mandates and political agendas nationally.

The debates, like many others currently ongoing in our country, polarized the stakeholders. Common Core Standards, related assessments and teacher and principal performance evaluations, global competition, charter school competition, and declining resources made for a perfect storm.

Data and Legislation

Educators knew there was a soft underbelly about which they did not speak. The achievement gap appeared on center stage as agencies began reporting the data by subgroup population performance. The focus on high school graduation rates and college entry now was accompanied by a conscience factor. Children in poverty were receiving a second-class education. According to the 2013 Kids Count data, that population comprises 40 percent of Black and African American children, 37 percent of American Indian children and 34 percent of Hispanic and Latino children and compared to 14 percent of non-Hispanic white children (see Kids Count). The school-age population is increasingly bilingual as well. Immigration and birth rates combine to accelerate the nation’s schools to the shifting point where there will no longer be a non-Hispanic white majority. It is these very children with whom schools have been least successful. Alarms went off. The goal of No Child Left Behind was to eliminate the achievement gap associated with race and social class (Rothstein, 2004). NCLB set a goal that proficiency for all was to be reached by 2013–2014. That date has come and gone. The achievement gap remains.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s report, Educational Attainment in the United States: 2009, indicates that only 60.9 percent of Hispanic students complete high school or more, for example, compared to 90.4 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 81.4 percent of African Americans (see Ryan & Siebens, 2012). The most difficult and legitimate complaint against our system emerged from this kind of data.

Fiscal policy exacerbates the problem. State funding does not flow based on the needs of the children served. The Great Recession of 2008 resulted in cuts to state funding for education across the country. Tax caps were passed to alleviate tax burdens, as school funding and public employee benefits became hot spots in the political arena.

Race to the Top was passed in 2009. Its purposes were to increase all student achievement, eliminate existing achievement gaps, increase the graduation rates, and produce graduates who were college and career ready to compete in the global economy. States desiring access to the funding associated with the law adopted the Common Core Standards, created new testing and tracking systems, and incorporated student results into personnel evaluation systems.

That final provision is most revealing. It touched the heart of every school with teacher and principal evaluation. Now, the federal government was not just lifting up expectations for students; it was also threatening the work security of those who were not making enough contribution to that effort. Funds were included to entice states and districts to “choose” compliance. In desperate fiscal conditions, due to the loss of state revenues and the repercussions at the local level, most did.

Educators, parents, and policymakers alike knew for years that not all children were receiving equal educations. But it was politically expedient and purposefully essential to maintain public support. America’s schools are, at least most of them, publicly funded and responsible to children, parents, and taxpayers. Therefore, educational leaders became masters at discussing and publishing those data that were positive.

The percentage of graduates going on to higher education was one of those. The open enrollment admission policies of many colleges bolstered the numbers. Then, those very same institutions began complaining about the preparation of their freshmen. All the positive data was true, but it was also incomplete. As others began to reveal more negative data, efforts to retain public support made educators look as if they were purposely hiding something. All were hampered by the complexity of the issue and the dimensions of the problem. Even with no personal gain or systemic benefit at stake, trust for the system and its leaders eroded.

Social and Economic Factors

In addition to the purely educational issues, there are social and economic issues driving the agenda. The nation’s population is aging rapidly. The United Nations Population Division coined the phrase gray tsunami to describe the growing percentage of the population that is over sixty years of age and living well into their eighties. These Americans will be dependent on the growing immigrant population in the United States, as they become the workforce on which our economy, and our democracy, will rely. Of course, minority students’ lower achievement in science and math presents a jeopardized feeder system for professions in those fields.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas (2013) reports the immigrant population had increased from twenty-five million in 1996 to forty million by 2011. So it is not surprising that the Pew Research Center notes that an astounding 93 percent of the workforce expansion over the next thirty-six years will be made up of new immigrants and their second-generation offspring. As immigrant population numbers increase, the United States school population reflects that changing landscape. According to the Center for Public Education (2012),

The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that “minorities” will make up the majority of U.S. schoolchildren by 2023, the majority of working-age Americans by 2039, and the majority of all Americans by 2042 . . . American students can expect to live and work in communities that will be much more diverse.

Within a few decades, the school-age population will be primarily black, Hispanic, and Asian; the elder population will be primarily non-Hispanic white. The profile of race in America will be profoundly evident when the age factor is considered.

Workplace and Technology

The need for a highly skilled workforce and the lack of success with the very populations that will constitute the workforce of the future captured the attention and heightened the concerns of business leaders. They are already seeking foreign workers in STEM professions at increasing rates. H-1B visas allow companies to employ foreign workers in occupations that require highly specialized knowledge in fields such as science, engineering, computer programming, medicine, health, and economics, among others. Those workers can be employed in the United States for full-time jobs for up to six years. Companies like Microsoft, Facebook, and Google have advocated increasing the number of those visas allowed each year, indicating they cannot find American workers for these jobs. In fact, Facebook is called a “visa dependent” company with 15 percent of its workers from other countries. But they are not alone.

Forbes reports that IBM hired 6,190 highly skilled immigrant workers in 2012 and paid them an average annual salary of $82,630 (see Forbes). In the same year, Microsoft employed over 4,000 foreign workers. They received an average annual salary of over $109,000. From big to small, businesses are clamoring for a more highly skilled workforce prepared to enter STEM professions. A 2012 report from Information Technology Industry Council, Partnership for a New American Economy, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce suggests that “by 2018 there will be more than 23,000 advanced degree STEM jobs that will not be filled even if every new American STEM grad finds a job” (p. 1). In addition, this report discloses that currently there is full employment for U.S. workers with advanced STEM degrees and that STEM fields hire a higher proportion of foreign workers than non-STEM fields.

Simultaneously, the cost of a computer has decreased as computer capacity has increased. More people own laptops, and mobility has become an asset. More businesses offer wireless service to their customers. Wi-Fi has become a word. The proliferation of programs has extended down to the youngest of users and has broadened the scope of possibilities for all.

Social media continues to be adopted by the mainstream. Businesses and professionals, alike, use LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter as means of meeting the public and sharing information. Apps for newspapers and magazines are downloaded and are being used more exclusively in growing numbers. Storage is in clouds, and collaboration is available over multiple platforms.

Resistant or resilient, education has survived for decades by growing and adding but fundamentally remaining structurally recognizable. That day has passed. Classrooms with desks and blackboards and teachers lecturing will soon take a place in a historical photo album next to a one-room schoolhouse and a Conestoga wagon. Schools cannot be the bastions of the past. They must be the conveyors of the values and lessons of the past, but their role is to ready children for the future. And the future is not a patient partner.

STEM possesses the first really promising potential to reenvision the educational orientation from the b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Acknowledgements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Digital Resources
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Part I Why STEM?
• 1 The Tipping Point
• 2 The 21st Century Learning Environment
• 3 Clearing the Path
• 4 The Achievement Gap
• 5 Special Populations
• Part II Shifting
• 6 The Shift Begins Within a Leader
• 7 Entering the STEM Shift
• 8 Planning the Shift
• 9 STEM Curriculum Shifting
• 10 Developing Capacity: STEM-Centric Professional Development
• 11 Time for STEM
• 12 STEM Collaborations and Trust
• 13 A Call to Action
• Appendix: A Checklist for Evaluating the Quality of the Planning Process
• Index
• Publisher Note