Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

5.23.11 | Writing in the Washington Post, Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and a former president of Teachers College at Columbia University, laments that only 85 teachers last week received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching.

There were slots for 106 teachers, writes Levine, but “not enough science and math teachers at the elementary level made the cut.”

The truth is that despite the well-documented national-security and economic prosperity consequences of graduating too few STEM-oriented students, and despite years of good-faith efforts by many dedicated people and organizations, the nation still does not have enough qualified STEM teachers. Even with jobs scarcer than they’ve been in generations, schools have had chronic trouble finding and holding onto well-qualified science and math teachers.

The reason for the low turnout may be somewhat more complicated. North Dakota is the only state without any winners this year, but then, none of the dozen or so nominees applied, according to this AP story.

“I got a number of people who responded they were too busy, some who just didn’t do it,” said Valley City State University associate science professor Donald Hoff, the state coordinator for the presidential awards program. “It’s a very demanding application process. It requires a commitment of time.”

National Science Foundation spokeswoman Maria Zacharias said the NSF has taken steps to help teachers with the process, including making webinars available. It’s not unprecedented for a state to have no winners one year, especially the years in which K-8 teachers are honored (primary and secondary teachers alternate award years). 

“In elementary school there are teachers who don’t necessarily identify themselves as specialists” in specific subjects, said Zacharias.

Over at Education Week, Jeffrey Mervis writes that state coordinators identified several explanations for the empty slots, “from the quality of the STEM teaching corps, to the program’s lack of visibility, to the uneven judging of candidates, to the rigorous application itself.”

“None of the reasons is reassuring to those who care about science in the schools, however. And together they paint a picture of a teaching profession under stress, battered by forces that could also undermine efforts by the Obama administration and many others to attract and retain a new generation of high-quality teachers in the STEM fields,” writes Mervis.

Teachers aren’t the only ones struggling to sustain themselves in STEM fields. This past weekend, CNN aired a report on education, and the segment “Why would-be engineers end up as English majors” is now available online.

Pulling data from a recent UCLA study (pdf), CNN notes that college students with STEM majors have a very low graduation rates, and those that do graduate often take more than four years.

Sylvia Hurtado, director of the Higher Education Research Institute and one of the UCLA study’s authors, said high school seniors are interested in pursuing science, math and engineering degrees more than ever. But research shows that most don’t make it to the finish line.

“Many students want to be in science, but very talented people are choosing other fields. That shouldn’t be the case,” Hurtado said. “It’s important to understand how we close this gap.”

Poor scientific literacy among college students is one reason students pursuing science and math are less likely to graduate from those programs. High school graduates aren’t prepared for first-year science classes in college, Hurtado said.

But there’s another problem, too: Higher education, itself. Science and math programs are designed and taught to winnow down the number of students. University tenure systems often reward professors who conduct research and publish their work, but not those who teach well.

Most of the students, professors and administrators interviewed identify the same culprit: a lack of mentoring for students involved in STEM fields. The tradition in those fields, in fact, is more of a do-or-die, survival-of-the-fittest attitude—which doesn’t do much to make the numbers grow:

Amenah Ibrahim vividly remembers her first introduction to thermodynamics. It was her freshman year at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and she sat in a large auditorium filled with students aspiring to degrees in chemical engineering.

“The first thing the (professor) told us was, ‘You should expect to see this class dwindle down as the semester goes on.’ It was the first thing they told us,” she said.

Ibrahim said the professor’s expectation came true. As the semester progressed, students began to drop the class, some switching to other majors entirely.

Ibrahim later explains the odds she had to receive her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering (which she did, after five years and three summer sessions):

“There were not a lot of resources to develop interest in students,” Ibrahim said. (Professors) say, ‘Here’s the workload, if you can handle it, you’re good to go. If not, sorry.’”

Though CNN doesn’t address the gender gap, I was pleased that the report incorporated the voices and experiences of young women, who often face a tougher time in STEM fields, in part because of the lack of female role models. (For much more discussion on this subject, see “Why So Few?” a report from the American Association of University Women on the environmental and social barriers that continue to block women’s participation and progress in STEM fields, including stereotypes, gender bias and the climate of science and engineering departments in colleges and universities.)

Despite the setbacks and struggles, however, the efforts to create the next generation of STEM-focused students and teachers continue unabated. Several bills have been introduced in Congress to address the STEM deficit. The Engineering Education for Innovation Act and the Innovation Inspiration School Grant Program Act—lofty in both name and spirit—would offer grants to states that integrate engineering into their K-12 curriculum and that produce more hands-on STEM experiences in the classroom. 

The National STEM Education Tax Incentive for Teachers Act offers teachers a tax credit to cover 10 percent of their undergraduate education. (Here’s the fine print: “up to $1,000 in any taxable year. Increases such credit amount to $1,500 for teachers in schools serving disadvantaged children.”) And the STEM Master Teacher Corps Act of 2011 establishes grants for exemplary STEM teachers at elementary and secondary schools.

Will efforts like these be enough to change the culture? What else should government and schools be doing?