June 2013

Late last month, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released a five-year STEM education strategic plan, which lays out the Obama administration’s vision for:

• Helping STEM efforts reach more students and more teachers more effectively by reorienting federal policy to meet the needs of those who are delivering STEM education: school districts, states, and colleges and universities;
• Enabling rigorous evaluation and evidence-building strategies for federal STEM education programs;
• Increasing the impact of federal investments in important areas such as graduate education by expanding resources for a more limited number of programs, while recognizing shortages in key disciplines and professions; and
• Providing additional resources to meet specific national goals, such as preparing and recruiting 100,000 high-quality K–12 STEM teachers, strengthening the infrastructure for supporting STEM instruction and engagement, increasing the number of undergraduates with a STEM degree by one million over the next decade, and broadening participation in STEM fields by underrepresented groups.

The roadmap is the work of an interagency committee, created by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which included 12 federal agencies and the Smithsonian Institution. The committee was co-chaired by Joan Ferrini-Mundy, assistant director for Education and Human Resources at the National Science Foundation, and a long-time AERA member.

The five-year strategic plan is mandated by the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act—better known as the America COMPETES Act.

The plan has encountered bipartisan opposition in Congress. The reason: It proposes eliminating about half of the current programs and consolidating STEM program responsibilities into three agencies: K–12 education in the U.S. Department of Education, undergraduate and graduate programs in the National Science Foundation, and informal and public science initiatives in the Smithsonian Institution.