Of course, too, not all of this starts at the school level. I urge every parent to take time with his and her children to talk about the great discoveries and discoverers and scientists and inventors of our time. One can do this with biographies of everyone from the Wright Brothers to Sally Ride, from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs. What did they learn? How did they learn it? How did they fail and try again? What effect did those people have on society? These are great conversations to have with children. And for children struggling in math and science classes, or who need extra help, sit with your child through Internet-based classes and tutorials, of which there are a growing number, including, most notably, the Khan Academy.
Engage your children civically and ask community leaders to sponsor a science and jobs opportunity fair. Congressman Frank Wolf of Virginia does this regularly, bringing in local and regional STEM-oriented professionals to highlight their work and meet with middle school and high school students. Every congressional district in America should be doing the same. This is a winning approach for everyone: it is in the schools’ interests, it is in the local employers’ interests, and involving elected officials with either his or her schools and local corporations is in their interest.
Talk with your school’s principal to ensure highly effective and proven STEM programs, such as Project Lead The Way or the Perry Initiative, are available to your children. In sum, do everything you can to engage your child’s interest and support it at the school.
Now let’s address the question of education reform more generally. To systemically improve overall student achievement, we must have a concerted effort that includes a variety of reforms such as longer school days, more instructional days in the school year, high-quality early childhood education programs for all children, rewarding successful teachers, paying high-performing teachers more in salaries and bonuses, and changing the pedagogical approach in K-12 and post-secondary education. Fortunately, there is already some good news to report even here.
There are opportunities, for example, to get involved in the way we go about teaching math and science with the new Next Generation Science Standards and the Common Core State Standards which are being implemented in the vast majority of states. There has been some controversy over the Common Core but the fact is they are being deployed—so the question is not so much what is in them now as it is how they will be used. Indeed, one of the positive aspects of the standards is that they allow school districts and teachers to determine how they will be taught. Get involved now—it is a perfect opportunity that we must not miss.
Despite the political arguments around the idea of the Common Core, it is important to keep in mind that it represents standards, not curriculum. Our students are educated in local schools, but they will compete for jobs across the country and around the globe. Kirsten Baesler, North Dakota’s superintendent of public instruction, made one of the most compelling arguments for the Common Core at a recent meeting I participated in with the Council of Chief State School Officers. She described a family that had recently moved to her state from Arizona. The children were highly successful by all measures, including doing very well on Arizona’s state assessments. But when the student’s results came back from the North Dakota state exams, their performance was significantly below expectations. Deeply concerned about the students, Superintendent Baesler—the students’ vice principal at the time—began comparing North Dakota and Arizona state standards to discover significant differences, not in the quality of the standards, but of the grade level in which certain concepts were introduced. The students were learning, but they had simply not been introduced to the material at the time they took the tests in North Dakota.
Then, she described a visit to a local school district where teachers and administrators were celebrating the return to school. In welcoming all the new students, teachers marched into the auditorium carrying flags representing the states from which the new students had come. There were 32 state flags. There are thousands of these situations every day throughout thousands of school across the United States. Students move from state to state, from district to district, from school to school. It just makes sense that we have common standards. Not having common standards perpetuates our national and international education deficits, and simply leaves our competitiveness to chance.
What we need are robust common standards by which we will evaluate all students’ performance. If the standards are not high enough for your students, increase them. If you want to connect the standards and curriculum to local uniqueness, then do it. If you want to teach a certain way that is effective, that is the point. The College Board’s Advanced Placement program is based on common frameworks with nationally standardized tests. We need this because students go to college and universities all over the country and we need a common way to evaluate student performance. The same is true for the SAT and ACT. It just makes sense. By way of one illustration absent a Common Core-type plan: Wisconsin, according to the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, has such different (or lagging) standards from the rest of the country that their students could achieve proficiency in certain subjects while their scores were actually lower than seventy percent of the students from other states.130
Or, take Louisiana. As one former public school teacher, and now-professional math tutor and businessman there recently put it: he was stunned by a story a few years back about a high school valedictorian at one of New Orleans’ high schools. This valedictorian could not pass the math portion of Graduate Exit Exam. Indeed, she failed it six times.131 This story can be replicated and found throughout the country, where students are number one at their school, but underperform in basic subjects on a national or international scale—they get passed along and up, until it is often too late to teach them any more. Stories like these were why this teacher (now businessman) supported the Common Core in Louisiana. He also made a great point about the economy. Sure, offshore and Indian gaming casinos can be fun and can provide jobs. But how much better would the jobs and economy be with a Fortune 500 company not involved in the gaming industry be? To that end, he made the excellent point: “IBM just announced plans to open an 800-person software development center in Baton Rouge. Such a center can only be successful if IBM is able to hire employees whose math skills are on par with employees of Asian companies, and there’s no doubt that IBM would have gone elsewhere if Louisiana had failed to adopt the more challenging Common Core standards for math.”132
There is both a conservative and a liberal case to be made for the Common Core, which is to say it should not be a political issue—after all, how many things do former Governor Jeb Bush (Florida), Governor Jan Brewer (Arizona), former Governor Mike Huckabee (Arkansas) and President Barack Obama agree on? Charles Blow of The New York Times got it right, the time for bright and shiny new concepts, yet another deployed educational experiment that sets us all back or delays our progress, should be long past over. We actually do know what works: “[W]e need a national standard for what kind of education we want our children to receive. Our educational system has become so tangled in experiments and exams and excuses that we’ve drifted away from the basis of what makes education great: learning to think critically and solve problems.”133
Katherine Porter-McGee and Sol Stern, nationally recognized education analysts who fall on the conservative ideological divide of the education reform movement—scholars from the Fordham and Manhattan Institutes, respectively—have written up their case for the Common Core this way:
The Common Core standards are also not a curriculum; it’s up to state and local leaders to choose aligned curricula. [Having] carefully examined the new expectations and compared them with existing state standards: [We] found that for most states, Common Core is a great improvement in rigor and cohesiveness.134
And when it comes to the controversial math standards and the Common Core, Porter-McGee and Stern, find this: “mathematical content dominates the [Common Core] K–12 expectations. Unlike many of the replaced stat
e standards, Common Core demands automaticity (memorization) with basic math facts, mastery of standard algorithms, and understanding of critical arithmetic. These essential foundational math skills are not only required but prioritized, particularly in the early grades. The math standards focus in depth on fewer topics that coherently build over time.”
In conclusion on the Common Core, let me put it this way: Yes, I agree, states should not be coerced into adopting the Common Core or any set of standardized lesson plan, instruction, or goal. States should be free, as the Common Core intended, to adopt them and use them at their will. Governor Brewer of Arizona, as conservative a governor as one can find, understood this and adopted the Core under a different name. Fine. But here’s my challenge to those so opposed to something like a Common Core: If we got rid of it tomorrow, would students be better off? Would parents? Would there be less indoctrination (for those who are concerned, legitimately concerned) about that? Would scores be higher? Dropouts lower? Teacher quality better? Of course not—that is the system we have had for the past two generations that has failed us and led us to the very problems I detail here.
4
I Am Convinced We Can Do This
To be clear, there is no shortage of organizations trying to address the issues I have written about. Home-grown school programs have sprouted across the country, organizations have developed local or regional programs, and a few have aspired to implement programs on a national scale.
But scaling to a national level requires more than just good intentions. Many organizations underestimate the importance of robust data systems, partner networks, and generally lack the human and financial capital to create an infrastructure necessary to grow the organization. Then there is the essential question of program efficacy. Many organizations lack research and measurable student outcomes, and the systems to collect performance data. And even if a program achieves positive results in an isolated implementation, can those results be replicated without quality degradation on a national level?
Even with these issues addressed, fledgling organizations now face the significant challenge of sustainability, particularly as the philanthropic support gap widens within an organization and they are challenged to raise more capital to expand and sustain operations. This is at a time in which companies and foundations are embracing accountability, proven strategies, and making high value-add investments from which they expect a return.
Project Lead The Way has navigated these issues. That is why Change the Equation, a CEO-led organization, recently endorsed PLTW as one of only four STEM programs of high quality and ready to be taken to scale nationally; the Social Impact Exchange named PLTW to its S&I 100 Index of non-profit organizations providing widespread impact and great promise of scalability; and PLTW received the national CLASSY award for educational advancement. PLTW is the only STEM organization endorsed by the Aerospace Industries Association.
PLTW was the vision of teacher Richard Blais and began in 1997 in twelve high schools in upstate New York. The mission was to inspire students and address the shortage of engineering students at the college level. Mr. Blais earned the support of the Liebich Family, and their Charitable Leadership Foundation provided substantial support to develop and expand the program. Over the years, PLTW has enjoyed tremendous support from several companies and foundations. Most notably, in 2007, the Kern Family Foundation, believing in PLTW’s potential to transform K-12 education and students’ lives, began a multi-million-dollar strategic investment to help take PLTW to a national scale.
Now based in Indianapolis, Indiana, PLTW has nearly 8,000 programs operating in more than 6,500 schools serving hundreds of thousands of students in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. PLTW is growing rapidly because it is effective, and because of a vast network of business and philanthropic partners, excellent teachers, and college and university affiliates.
The need for highly effective, nationally scalable STEM solutions could not be greater. The Department of Commerce estimates that the number of STEM jobs will grow seventeen percent by 2018 versus 9.8 percent for all other fields. Employers, however, report they are unable to find the talent required to fill these STEM jobs, leaving the United States, by 2018, with more than 1.2 million unfilled STEM jobs. While this may sound like an outstanding opportunity for American students, it will mean nothing if we do not adequately prepare our students to fill these jobs.
America’s STEM crisis must be addressed now. If we are to succeed as a nation, we must adequately prepare our students for success in post-secondary education and careers. PLTW’s work is centered on building a pipeline of well-educated and well-trained STEM professionals ready to compete in a rapidly changing global economy.
So, what makes PLTW unique from science, technology, engineering, and math courses already taught in schools? Professor Howard Gardner of Harvard says the greatest deficit for American students is their inability to apply learning in a context in which it was not learned. In America, we teach subjects in isolation and tend to teach “a mile wide and an inch deep.” This is where PLTW is different. PLTW students create, design, build, discover, collaborate, and solve problems while applying core concepts from math, science, and other academic areas. In other words, PLTW focuses on depth over breadth in an interdisciplinary approach to learning where core academic content is applied rather than taught in isolated subject areas. It is the difference between solving the Pythagorean theorem and designing a suspension bridge in 3D modeling software, followed by prototyping and testing to determine load bearing—it’s the difference between dry and boring, and exciting and relevant. This hands-on, project- and activity-based approach appeals to diverse students and engages them on multiple levels, introduces them to areas of study that they typically do not pursue, and provides them with the foundation to continue on a proven path to college and career success. PLTW classrooms are innovation zones where rigorous academic standards are integrated and students collaborate to apply academic content in a real-world context.
Additionally, PLTW programs are successful in all school sizes and types, including public, private, public charter, parochial, urban, suburban, and rural schools—both small and large. On a consistent basis, PLTW’s programs are positively impacting students and their ability to succeed in achieving their desired educational and career goals. In addition to academic skills, students learn 21st-century skills pertinent to becoming highly qualified professionals. Our students learn how to communicate effectively, work in teams, facilitate discussions, practice professional conduct, think critically, and problem-solve.
Take the story of Josh, a PLTW graduate from Francis Tuttle Technology Center in Oklahoma City. In a recent interview, Josh described his PLTW experience in engineering, which combined applied learning with rigorous math and science emphasis. He talked about how the program helped students develop their presentation and communication skills while solving meaningful problems. Josh’s capstone project in Engineering Design and Development was driven by a problem he dealt with at work concerning shoe theft. Through his work at Kohl’s Department Store, he collected actual data and enlisted the help of the store manager and security. Josh led a student team that designed a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) inventory system with the help of professionals in the field and his own intense research. They prototyped the solution and presented their working solution to several other business CEOs. The summer after his senior year of high school, he completed an internship at Surgery Logistics, creating a connection between the company’s vision for RFID and Near Field Communication (NFC) in the health care environment. Josh is now an engineering student at Oklahoma State University (a PLTW Affiliate). He has started his own company, RFID Edge, which promotes STEM education for the secondary education sector on RFID and NFC. He interned at the Riata Center for Entrepreneurship at OSU, served in the Freshman Research Program, on the Freshman Representative Council for the College of Engineering, and is a member of the Entrepreneurship Club.
While many STEM programs only focus on certain students, PLTW aspires to prepare all students in grades K-12 at various learning levels. The PLTW model accommodates a range of implementations and provides flexibility at a local level. PLTW supports the U.S. workforce by engaging students, regardless of their backgrounds, in STEM disciplines and building a pipeline for future professionals.
Let’s now return to Toppenish High School in rural Washington at the heart of the Yakima Nation. As the school’s principal, Trevor Greene transformed the school culture into one of high expectations for all students. He expanded academic opportunities for his students, many of whom were not expected to graduate high school. Greene added rigorous courses, including more than thirty sections of PLTW Engineering and Biomedical Science courses. Greene also increased student interest and success in post-secondary education. Through PLTW and its affiliate universities, students have the opportunity to earn up to thirty hours of college credit by the time they graduate high school. He has also prioritized parental and community involvement, reaching out to migrant families and the Yakima Nation on the very reservation where he grew up. In 2013, Greene was named the MetLife/NASSP High School Principal of the Year, one of the highest honors given to secondary educators.
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