Although leaders in government, business, and education wring their hands about the decline of science and math education in the U.S., there don’t seem to be any proven innovations that will boost the student achievement in science and math. Yes, there are many ideas, experiments, strategies, and tools—this new curriculum; that professional development program for teachers; this after-school program; that work-place internship program. But there’s nothing that a school can implement with the assurance of producing much better results.
This was our deflating conclusion when we scanned in 2007 for innovations in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math education (STEM for short). A study by the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) for the west Michigan WIRED initiative identified seven STEM-improvement strategies:
- Curriculum Redesign for STEM
- Increased Exposure to STEM – In School and Out of School
- Delivery of Instruction of Math and Science
- Math and Science Teacher Recruitment, Preparation, Professional Development and Retention
- Engagement of Students and Parents in Learning Math and Science
- Whole School Models for STEM
- Ubiquitous Broadband Internet Access
But there were no “magic bullets.”
This wasn’t a dead end for innovation, but it was a reality check. As we plunged into three projects to design STEM achievement improvements, we recognized that
(a) improvement would require a “comprehensive ensemble” of innovations, not just a new program or two, and
(b) innovations would have to be prototyped, tested to learn what worked, and revised to get better results, rather than implemented and put on cruise control.
The projects were all in Michigan:
- Design a region-wide STEM improvement initiative for west Michigan as part of the U.S. Department of Labor’s WIRED initiative. This design was completed but not implemented.
- Design a new middle-high charter school district in Detroit, a charter school focused on science and math education for low-income, “at risk” students. Designing a “whole school” for math and science success is one way of bringing together a number of innovations for concentrated impact. The school opened in September 2008 and its superintendent and middle school principal blogged for nuPOLIS about a week on the “front line.”
- Design a STEM initiative for school districts in Newaygo County in western Michigan, with more than 9,000 students and math and science test results below state and national averages. The “SPIN Proposal,” a portfolio of about a dozen innovations, was designed to attract a substantial grant from The Fremont Area Community Foundation and the buy-in of a handful of school boards and superintendents. An early step in the design process was to gather the “brutal facts” of student achievement in math and science and to stimulate a community dialogue about these results.
We’ve posted documents from these design processes, which you can find in the document box, above on the right.
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