In November 2012, Dr. Robert Tai, Associate Professor at the University of Virginia, and his team of researchers collected and analyzed more than thirty studies and reports on PLTW. Dr. Tai’s report states, “Research on PLTW programs across the U.S. offers evidence that PLTW contributes to raising student achievement and motivation in science and engineering, both of which are essential to success in these career fields.”136
A recent six-year longitudinal study from Texas State University found that PLTW students scored significantly higher on the state’s eleventh grade mathematics assessment, a higher percentage met the college-ready criterion, a higher percentage enrolled in Texas higher education institutions, and the non-college-bound PLTW students earned higher wages.
If you need further evidence, visit a PLTW school. Consider Pike Central High School in Petersburg, Indiana. Pike County is a rural community in south central Indiana. Pike Central High School students were emotionally moved by several natural disasters they saw in the media. So, they collaborated to develop an emergency shelter with solar power and a water filtration system. The students—Jessica, Colton, Anna, among others in the class won first place for the project at MIT and presented the shelter to President Obama at the White House Science Fair in 2012.
More than fifty percent of Pike Central students are enrolled in PLTW courses, including both Biomedical Sciences and Engineering programs. On a recent visit to the school, students presented a range of projects including the award-winning emergency shelter, mobile apps for southwest Indiana businesses, a method for killing E. coli bacteria in water, and a Humvee that the students transformed into a remote-controlled vehicle.
The Pike County Chamber of Commerce and Economic Growth and Development Council believe in and support PLTW. Paul Lake, the executive director of the Economic Growth and Development Council, stated, “PLTW is important not just to Pike County, but to Indiana and the nation as a whole. The best and brightest are coming up through school, and we need to figure out a way to foster their entrepreneurialism and innovation in our communities, rather than sending them off to a large city to chase a job.”
Examine Gulliver Preparatory School in Miami, Florida. After several devastating natural disasters, the country of Haiti remains the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, while holding the highest number of infant mortalities, mainly due to the prevalence of waterborne diseases and inaccessibility to clean, potable water. Engineering students at Gulliver Preparatory School wanted to help, so they designed and manufactured a clean energy water filtration system. Students discovered in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake that the UV lights, wires, and the necessary electrical outlet to support the purifier were too complex and fragile. After numerous design modifications and improvements, they developed a new water purification system that did not require an external energy source.
Not only did Gulliver win the Conrad Foundation’s Spirit of Innovation Challenge, students Ian, Laura, and their classmates, along with Master Teacher Claude Charron, were presented with the Heart of Haiti award recognizing the impact their work was having on the people of Haiti.
It is through world-class curriculum, high-quality professional development, an engaged network, and delivering positive results that PLTW is widely recognized as the nation’s preeminent STEM solution. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called PLTW a “great model of the new CTE succeeding all across the country,” and Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young American’s for the 21st Century, from Harvard University, called PLTW a “model for 21st-century career and technical education.”
Yes, PLTW works. However, only through the continued promotion of these ideals can PLTW continue engaging new students and help them meet their full potential. America’s students who succeed in STEM-related fields will transform this country, and given the opportunity, they will transform the world.
The stakes are high!
5
Conclusion
This book is not about averting a crisis; it is about solving one. The work of reforming our education system, generally, and the way we teach and inspire STEM education, specifically, has never been more urgent. We face precarious economic times, we have a too-high unemployment rate, and yet we have millions of jobs unfilled in America because of a lack of skilled and interested talent to fill them. But, we do not have a people shortage. We have a STEM skills gap because we have an expectations and aspirations gap. And we have those gaps because we do not expect enough of our students, and our students do not expect enough of themselves. That is why our greatest threat to economic prosperity is, right now, not our inability to solve these problems but rather our commitment to high expectations for all students, inspiring intellectual curiosity, and building a nation of collaborative problem solvers, critical thinkers, innovators, and entrepreneurs. While I have highlighted the problems we have and the challenges we face, inspired and engaged students will solve most of these factual problems over the course of the next generation—but only if we do our part by inspiring and engaging them today.
Science, technology, engineering, and math education are essential for our students and our country. These areas are where the jobs are and where our future lies. It is where American greatness lies. It is no mistake or coincidence that the minds that helped shape our country, from Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Franklin, were the same minds that gave us inventions and designs, from the spherical sundial and swivel chair to the moldboard of least resistance, from the cipher wheel to maps of the Gulf Stream and bifocals and swim fins.137
I implore parents and principals, teachers and superintendents: focus on STEM. Make it exciting, but also rigorous and relevant. Connect students with great role models. I know it can be done— I see pockets of excellence every day. But, pockets of excellence are not good enough. We have to create a system of excellence. Do not make excuses or confuse budget constraints with priorities—in other words, we invest in what we believe is important. Do not settle for the minimum that qualifies to check the STEM box. Demand the best for your students and deliver it to all of them.
The Wall Street Journal recently put it this way: We face a future of either “rapid innovation driven by robotic manufacturing, 3-D printing and cloud computing” or one of “job losses, stagnant wages and rising income inequality.”138 Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon goes so far as to say all the great inventions are behind us139— we cannot accept that. Professor Gordon illustrates his point this way: he asks audiences what their choice would be if they could keep everything invented up until 2002 or keep everything invented after—his examples, the indoor toilet versus the smart phone. He says the indoor toilet was the major innovation, changing the way people live while the smart phone was merely a refinement of something already invented. The Wall Street Journal asked the same question of its readers. The response? Seventy-one percent would rather have their smart phone than an indoor toilet, while twenty-nine percent would rather have the toilet.140
There are, of course, people in the world who do not have indoor plumbing but can read the Wall Street Journal on their phones. And there are people who, I imagine, have indoor plumbing but not a smart phone and get along just fine. The question, the option, misses the point. The point is smart phones changed the world—from thought to communication. Indoor plumbing changed life for the better, too. But as humans, we truly can get along without either. We may not carry on well, or as happily or as prosperously as we would like, but we would carry on. Now the words “greatness” and “best” make sense. We can live without toilets but are we not better off for having them? We can live without smart phones but are not most of us more productive with them? We can have both indoor toilets and smart phones and recognize that we are better off for both.
And we can do one other thing, too: recognize that we have no idea what we may be capable of inventing five and ten years down the road. People may ask about the next Internet, but that is like taking the year of 19
80 and asking about the next word processor—the Internet was nowhere on the scene of people’s imaginations. The distance between the 1987 5k memory word processor and the way in which I am writing this book, and using the Internet for research along the way, is the distance in imagination and invention and discovery from the indoor toilet to the smart phone. The change in telephonic communications and electronic mail delivery represents a world of difference that took place within the span of a decade, from 1990 to 2000 for example. We simply cannot fathom what we are capable of creating or solving.
My last anecdote: Erica Malloy is a Project Lead The Way science teacher at Marshalltown High School in Iowa. The Times Republican newspaper pictures her with a broad and bright smile and describes her excitement about her new biomedical sciences curriculum: “Students will be matching DNA, examining genetic diseases, doing mock crime scene investigations and utilizing a ton of technology as part of the new class.”141 “It’s a lot of what they would be doing in a college lab, but they are getting this at the high school level,” Malloy said. “When they go to college they will be ahead of the game.” In addition to all this, the local medical and surgical center will be sending professionals into the classroom to help inspire and train students. Ms. Malloy’s students will be ahead of the game not just for college, but for life.
There are several thousand schools with classrooms like this in America today. That is the good news. The challenging news—the opportunity—is that in America today there are over 50 million school students, public and private, and nearly 130,000 schools.142 We have a lot of work to do to reach all of them. But there is a concerted call of concern now from industry and government. I want to impress how critical it is that parents and educators join that call. Demand can, after all, drive supply.
I have avoided using the phrase “Sputnik moment” in talking about the need for a STEM revolution. I think the idea of a “Sputnik moment” is trite and has been used for too long without enough action. One looks at the reams of studies on education reforms, the totality of education experiments, and the trillions of dollars invested in our education system over the past several decades, and we can fairly say we have tried any number of moon shots. Meanwhile, our scores have remained flat—at best—over the same period. Instead of calling for such another moment, as so many studies do, I suggest we simply get to work with what has proven to work. And, we must make these programs available to all students.
The elements of having an entire system of schools with safe atmospheres, clear missions, good to great teachers, solid leadership, substantive evaluations (for both teachers and students), parental involvement, and a sense of community is just not that difficult.143 What will be difficult will be sustaining our national success and building our children and our students’ futures if we do not demand and employ these elements now.
If we believe in American exceptionalism, if we believe we are the last best hope of mankind, if we believe we are the country the tempest-tossed run to, if we believe we are a shining city on a hill, it is time to be honest with ourselves. A revolution in our thinking and practice of teaching science, technology, engineering, and math is, quite simply, our moral and economic imperative of the day. The crisis is here, in the present. We have no idea what and who we are losing by the day, how many potential Mark Zuckerbergs, Steve Jobses, or Marissa Mayers we are turning off from STEM fields each year or each day. We can marvel at the state of our technology today and such achievements unimaginable to most people just a few years ago, such as 3-D printers, Google Glass, Smart Watches, and autonomous vehicles. And technology changes rapidly. As recently as 2006, there were no iPhones, as recently as 2009 there were no iPads. Today those two products generate over seventy percent of Apple’s revenue.144
Today, many of us have a GPS system in our car that has changed driving entirely. Is that a new invention or a refinement of cartography or the American Automobile Association’s TripTiks? The question is irrelevant. A short twenty years ago most people were still asking their friends for directions to places they had been or lived in order to travel there. Now we go to remote places in our cars without even thinking about how we would have arrived there or mapped it as we once had to…without much accuracy.
As I say above, we have no idea what we are capable of, what we are missing, and what tomorrow could be like with a serious effort aimed at excellence in STEM education. My concern is not whether all the great innovations have been invented, it is whether we will continue to invent at the pace we have in the past. It’s not as if all the diseases have been cured, nor that we can even imagine how much better our lives can be when or if the next Internet is invented.
I have long respected outsiders’ views of America. They often see us better than we see ourselves. Thus, a speech the former Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, delivered to a Joint Session of Congress in Washington, D.C. in 2011 was too-little noticed, but it touched my heart as strongly as any I have heard in recent memory. I close with it:
Our future growth relies on competitiveness and innovation, skills and productivity, and these in turn rely on the education of our people…
In both our countries, true friends stick together, in both our countries, real mates talk straight. So as a friend I urge you only this: be worthy to your own best traditions. Be bold. In 1942, John Curtin—my predecessor, my country’s great wartime leader—looked to America. I still do…
The eyes of the world are still upon you. Your city on a hill cannot be hidden. Your brave and free people have made you the masters of recovery and reinvention.
As I stand in this cradle of democracy, I see a nation that has changed the world and known remarkable days. I firmly believe you are the same people who amazed me when I was a small girl by landing on the moon. On that great day I believed Americans could do anything.
I believe that still.145
The great reform and adventure begins today. I would like to think this book has convinced the adults—parents, teachers, principals, elected officials, corporate and community leaders. We must now convince our children.
Endnotes
1 National Assessment of Educational Progress. NAEP - Nation’s Report Card. http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_g12_2013/#/whatknowledge.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 “An International Education Test.” The New York Times. December 7, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/12/07/education/07education_graph.html?ref=education 5.
5 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. “PISA 2012 Results.” OECD Better Policies for Better Lives. http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results.htm.
6 “The Human Wealth of Nations.” Wall Street Journal. December 3, 2013. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304355104579236150801599552#printMode.
7 Dillon, Sam. “Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators.” The New York Times. December 7, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/education/07education.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&.
8 National Assessment of Educational Progress. “What Every Parent Should Know About NAEP.” National Center for Educational Statistics. http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/parents/2012469.pdf.
9 National Assessment of Educational Progress. “NAEP - Nation’s Report Card Home.” NAEP - Nation’s Report Card.
10 Ibid.
11 The most recent NAEP report for 12th-graders is 2010; the most recent NAEP report for fourth- and eighth- graders is 2013.
12 Bennett, William. “STEM Education That Works.” Wall Street Journal. June 14, 2013. http://online.wsj.com/article/PRCO-20130614-905532.html.
13 The Nation’s Report Card. “Science 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress at Grades 4, 8, and 12.” National Center for Educational Statistics. http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/main2009/2011451.pdf.
14 The Nation’s Report Card. “Science 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress at Grade 8.” National Center for Educational S
tatistics. http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/main2011/2012465.pdf.
15 “Science 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress at Grades 4, 8, and 12.”
16 “Report to the President: Engage To Excel: Producing One Million Additional College Graduates With Degrees In Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics.” The White House. February 1, 2012. http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/pcast-engage-to-excel-final_feb.pdf.
17 My College Options STEM Connector 2012-2013. “Where Are the STEM Students? What Are Their Career Interests? Where Are the STEM Jobs?” STEM Connector. http://www.stemconnector.org/sites/default/files/store/STEM-Students-STEM-Jobs-Executive-Summary.pdf.
18 The Nation’s Report Card. “Grade 12 Reading and Mathematics 2009 National and Pilot State Results.” National Center for Educational Statistics. http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/main2009/2011455.pdf.
19 “Science 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress at Grades 4, 8, and 12.”
20 “STEMtistic: Proficient at Math, but Not Interested.” Change The Equation. http://changetheequation.org/stemtistic-proficient-math-not-interested-0.
21 Sheehy, Kelsey. “Colleges Fight to Retain Interest of STEM Majors.” US News and World Report. June 18, 2013. http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2013/06/18/colleges-fight-to-retain-interest-of-stem-majors.
22 My College Options STEM Connector 2012-2013.
23 “Reagan Quotes.” PBS. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/reagan-quotes/.
24 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. “Words of Warning to the Western World.” August 14, 2002. http://lib.ru/PROZA/SOLZHENICYN/s_word_engl.txt_with-big-pictures.html.
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