“One of the things that I’ve been focused on as President is how we create an all-hands-on-deck approach to science, technology, engineering, and math… We need to make this a priority to train an army of new teachers in these subject areas, and to make sure that all of us as a country are lifting up these subjects for the respect that they deserve.” President Barack ObamaThird Annual White House Science Fair, April 2013 I could write a long post detailing all the reasons STEM education is great, but I won’t. It seems almost absurd that in 2016 we are still arguing the importance of STEM education. Especially since we live in such a wired world. A world where information is at our fingertips, news is instantaneous, and now cars can drive themselves. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) recently released results for the 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Technology & Engineering Literacy (TEL) Assessment. The TEL assessment measures students’ ability to apply technology and engineering principles to solving problems. Sadly, there were substantial gaps between the technical skills of White students and Black and Hispanic students. However, Black 8th grade charter school students outperformed their traditional school peers. In fact, the percentage of Black charter school students who performed at or above Proficient on NAEP TEL was ten points higher than Black students at district-run schools (27 percent vs. 17 percent). Similarly, more than one-third (36 percent) of Black students in district-run schools scored at or below Basic, compared to only 25 percent of their charter school peers. This is particularly important, given that more than one-quarter of charter school students are Black. While we still have a long way to go, these are promising results. The more we uplift and educate our lowest performing students, the better we can educate all of our students. This means less time remediating students, more class time to allocate to other areas, fewer resources expended teaching things that are not relevant to the grade level, and new opportunities to nurture high-performing students. Additionally, these results show us the lack of importance we place on STEM education. Although research has shown us the benefits of STEM education, the adoption of these programs is still met with some reluctance. If we continue to ignore the importance of adequately equipping our students with basic technical competencies, we are in danger of having an underqualified workforce in the coming years. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the number of high-tech jobs will increase by 691,000 from 2014 to 2024. In addition to this, our dependencies on third-party high-tech service firms to bring our systems into the 21st century has risen, creating 3.4 million additional jobs over the last 20 years. As it stands, employers have already acknowledged that a skills gap exists amongst new applicants, most notably a lack in technology skills. When we consider the needs of minority children we must include the need for stable and profitable work in their futures. Driving upward mobility for these groups should be one of our top initiatives. By providing every child with an education that will allow them to be competitive, in both secondary educational endeavors and the job market, we can help to achieve this. By increasing access to schools that bring these subjects into focus, like many charter schools do, we can help minority children excel now and in the future.
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