Washington STEM Initiative Overview
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Click on any one of the questions below to have your questions about the Washington STEM Initiative answered.
What is the Washington STEM Initiative?
What is the Washington STEM Center?
How did this work get started?
Who is involved?
Why STEM?
What does Washington’s STEM Initiative compare to the STEM Initiatives occurring in other states?
Who can I contact for more information?
Washington STEM welcomes your feedback and is happy to answer questions. For comments, suggestions or inquiries, please email info@washingtonstem.org or call (206) 658-4320.
What is the Washington STEM Initiative?
The Washington STEM Initiative seeks to improve student achievement and opportunity in areas critical to our state’s economic prosperity: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). The Initiative aims to catalyze innovation in the state’s K-12 education system, increase teacher effectiveness and student learning, and dramatically raise the number of Washington students graduating ready for college and work and succeeding in STEM degree programs. These efforts are intended to benefit every student in the state, with a particular emphasis on accelerating the achievement of low-income and minority students.
What is the Washington STEM Center?
Partnership for Learning is coordinating the design of the STEM Initiative, including the launch of a new Washington STEM Center possessing the world-class leadership and resources necessary to drive a statewide effort of this unprecedented scale.
The STEM Center will provide supports to teachers and schools, seed innovation through regional grants, identify and accelerate programs proven to boost student achievement, and advocate for policies that position all Washington students for success. These strategies build upon promising existing programs in our state, such as LASER and the Transition Math Project, respond to Washington-specific needs and incorporate the best practices learned from STEM efforts in other states, such as Ohio, Texas and Alabama.
How did this work get started?
After witnessing impressive gains in student literacy and writing in the 15 years since Washington’s school improvement efforts began, Battelle, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Boeing Company, and Microsoft formed a steering committee of industry and foundation leaders interested in transforming math and science education.
Since June 2008, Partnership for Learning has convened weekly meetings of this steering committee to help guide the Initiative’s early stage planning. Our relationships with many of these companies and foundations date back to Partnership for Learning’s founding in 1994.
These companies and philanthropies collectively invest over $13 million annually to drive improvements to Washington’s public education system, primarily focused on math and science. There was a growing consensus among these private sector funders, however, that they could catalyze greater and more sustainable improvements by collectively focusing their resources on supporting a comprehensive, statewide initiative to improve STEM education and outcomes.
Who is involved?
Partnership for Learning and steering committee members have met with leaders and practitioners from Washington nonprofits, industry and the K-12 and higher education systems to discuss the challenges and opportunities at hand. At the same time, research into other statewide STEM initiatives has been conducted to inform this new Washington strategy.
Conversations with nearly 100 business and industry leaders, state policymakers, and education practitioners (including the Pacific Science Center, Transition Math Project, Museum of Flight and Technology Access Foundation) have confirmed the need for a new statewide focal point of leadership on STEM education to accelerate every student's achievement.
Why STEM?
Washington state has a rich history of STEM industry, yet it is in STEM disciplines that our students leave high school least prepared for college and work. Nearly 50 percent of students in community and technical colleges must delay their degrees to take non-credit bearing remediation classes, most often in math. This also decreases degree completion rates.
Our state ranks fourth in the country in technology-based corporations, but 46th in participation in science and engineering graduate programs. Low-income and minority students are least represented in STEM fields. Less than five percent of the STEM postsecondary degrees awarded in Washington are earned by students of color.
Unsurprisingly, our schools also lack sufficient numbers of adequately-prepared teachers in math and science. According to a recent study by the State Board of Education, nearly 500 new math teachers will need to be hired by 2013 in order to offer a third year of math—part of the new graduation requirements (known as “Core 24”) recommended by the State Board of Education.
Since Washington adopted standards-based reforms and accountability in the mid-1990s, significant gains have been made in students’ performance in reading and writing. Math and science, however, lag in comparison (see “High School Performance 1999-2008” chart below). By 2008, 86 percent and 81 percent of our state’s 10th graders meet standard in reading and writing, respectively. Slightly fewer than 50 percent are proficient in math, and only 40 percent meet science standards.
What does Washington’s STEM Initiative compare to the STEM Initiatives occurring in other states?
The Washington STEM Initiative’s proposed strategy responds to Washington-specific needs and builds upon best-practices in STEM industries as well as successful STEM initiatives in other states, such as Ohio, Texas and Alabama.
The four pillars of this strategy are:
- Strengthening the capacity and effectiveness of teachers;
- Spurring “disruptive innovations” in the public education system, such as new STEM schools or new ways of recruiting and retaining teachers;
- Advocating for ambitious state policies that enact systemic improvements and create a more effective and efficient allocation of public and private resources; and
- Leading a robust public awareness campaign to increase broad public support for improvements in STEM education and an acceleration of student outcomes.
Every student is:
- Engaged by rigorous, real-world instruction
- Better prepared for success in college, work and life
Every classroom and school has:
- Better prepared and supported teachers
- Rigorous, inquiry-based STEM instruction
Across Washington, there is:
- Sustained focus, coherence and coordination
- Effective use of resources
- Innovation
- Networked best practices
Who can I contact for more information?
Updates and additional information will be added to this and other STEM Initiative pages in the coming months. However, Partnership for Learning welcomes your feedback and is happy to answer any questions regarding the Washington STEM Initiative. For comments, suggestions or inquiries, please email stem@partnership4learning.org.