Science, technology, engineering, and math. This catchy acronym for these four academic fields has been pulsing through the collective consciousness for years. But 2011 has been a bumper year for STEM sloganeering. STEM conferences abound (for everyone from military personnel to women of color), school principals have declared that 2011 is “the year of STEM,” and countless newspaper articles dutifully report on various state and federal STEM initiatives, along with STEM-centric schools and classes.
All this ruckus about STEM is rooted in a daunting educational reality. In the latest PISA tests(assessments of 15-year-olds from around the world), American kids ranked # 31 in math and #23 in science — far behind many other industrialized nations. A lack of qualified science and math teachers in our public schools means that many children end up getting taught math by teachers whose expertise is really American history or language arts. With such intransigent problems, is it any wonder that technology companies can’t find enough Americans to fill their jobs, and end up recruiting from other countries?
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