Successful STEM Education A Workshop Summary (2011) / Chapter Skim
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2 Four Kinds of Schools
2 Four Kinds of Schools
Pages 7-24
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These schools do not have admissions requirements but offer specialization in one or more of the STEM disciplines. Many have the mission of helping stu dents from population subgroups who are not well represented in STEM fields prepare for college study and STEM careers.
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Many of these schools offer advanced coursework through the Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate Programs and other opportunities for highly motivated students. Presenters reviewed research and perspectives on each of these school types.
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For their study, they identified four subtypes among the selective schools that specialize in STEM education: residential programs; comprehensive programs that have a special focus on STEM; specialized STEM programs that operate within a larger school; and half-day programs, in which students commute between a specialized program and their home schools. Finding that these schools offer very different experiences for students, Tai and Subotnik collected data from two of each of these four types.
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Tai and Subotnik used statistical procedures to determine how much of this variation could be accounted for by differences among these school types and how much could be accounted for by variations among the students. They calculated that school-level differences accounted for 3.6 4 Tai explained that their comparison group was identified through a national academic talent search program and was composed of students, matched by age, grade, and stan dardized test scores, who had also chosen to participate in formal science and mathematics activities.
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These preliminary data provide a more detailed picture of why students who graduate from specialized schools pursue STEM fields in college at a rate nearly 50 percent higher than that of other students. INCLUSIVE STEM-FOCUSED SCHOOLS Schools and programs that offer a broader population of students the chance to focus on STEM subjects have some things in common with the selective schools, but there are differences as well.
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. The science, technology, engineering, and mathematics academy and the related magnet program share the goals of giving students the opportunity to pursue independent and collaborative research projects, as well as to work with mentors at local businesses and research organizations.
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Over time, she suggested, it will be important to study the math and science literacy of T-STEM students, their readiness for college, and the rate at which they choose to major in STEM fields. In addition, she believes, researchers should study the effects of inclusive STEM schools in other states, and should build the capacity to look longitudinally at high school 6 The researchers used statistical procedures to identify comparison schools that were similar to the T-STEM academies: see Appendix A in Young (2011)
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Many of the credits are articulated so students can earn credits at the local community college, and the math, engineering, and architecture institute offers six year-long engineering courses through Project Lead the Way.7 In the STEM-related institutes, students can further specialize and can also undertake field work or find mentors at local research or other sites or engage in distance learning. Types of Career and Technical Education Lake Travis High School's flexible approach to providing career and technical education -- in which students can partake of as much of it as they wish -- can be found in many models.
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Regional Career Technical Centers Regional career technical centers are designed to provide 11th and 12th grade students with instruction not available at their home schools, and students typically spend half days in the centers, although a few are full-day. Stone said that there is limited evidence about the effectiveness of these programs, in part because student data are collected by the home schools and cannot easily be linked to time spent in regional centers.
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State and local agencies that receive federal funding through this legislation are required to offer programs that coordinate academic and CTE coursework and prepare students to obtain industry or academic credentials.8 Career Clusters or Pathways Career clusters and pathways describe ways of grouping coursework related to different occupations or industries to help guide students in choosing a sequence of high school courses that will prepare them for a field in which they are interested. Sixteen clusters have been defined by the states' "Career Clusters Initiative."9 One is science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, but a number of the others (e.g., agriculture, information technology, manufacturing)
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From page 17... ...
Other approaches include curriculum integration, in which links among academic disciplines are explored and students have opportunities to learn about the real-world applications of mathematics and sci ence; project-based learning, in which students conduct extended inquiry projects; and work-based learning, in which supervised learning activities take place at a work site. Stone described a study he and colleagues conducted to determine whether enhancing the mathematics instruction embedded in a technical education program would build students' mathematics skills while still developing the intended technical skills (Stone et al., 2008)
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students are educated in traditional schools, and many of those schools do an excellent job at STEM education. Many high schools offer advanced placement and international baccalaureate courses for highly motivated students.
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She worries that the state's assessments will not soon be aligned with the Common Core standards, which New Jersey has adopted: "We are going to be teaching something that isn't going to be tested and we will be a failing school in a few years." Effective Mathematics Education Many individual schools are very effective, William Schmidt agreed, but, on average, U.S. students are not excelling in mathematics and science and even the most elite U.S.
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Because it is large, it is printed at a scale that illustrates patterns in the lack of consistency on the coverage but does not allow readers to discern the text.) However, the Common Core mathematics standards more closely resemble the pattern for the high-performing countries: see Table 2-4.
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Thus, it is a district's responsibility to reorganize the material to make it coherent and consistent with the standards to which its students are being taught. If all states adopt the Common Core stan dards, he added, which have been internationally benchmarked and are focused, coherent, and rigorous (see Table 2-4)
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His conclusion from these results is that when students are offered a coherent curriculum, taught by teachers who have been trained to implement it, "they will learn." USING STATE DATABASES TO IDENTIFY SCHOOL OUTCOMES This review of school types suggested many factors that may contrib ute to good outcomes for students. Administrative data collected by states can be used in quantitative analyses that can shed light on the relation
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He emphasized that this research is still in progress and that the preliminary exploratory analysis does not support causal inferences. For Florida, the data available to Hansen included end-of-grade read ing and mathematics scores for public school students in grades 3-10 and counts of courses taken in core STEM subjects, advanced STEM, and voca tional and technical education, for the school years 2004-2005 through 2008-2009; for North Carolina the same data were available for 2005-2006 through 2008-2009, as well as end-of-course scores.
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Hansen was particularly interested in whether expanding access to STEM instruction generally would mean decreased opportuni ties for high-achieving students, and whether intense focus on STEM for all students would crowd out learning in other subjects. His early findings suggest the possibility that the availability of more advanced courses may tend to push marginal students into lower-track courses.
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