Building the STEM Workforce Our Future Economy Needs

Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Oct 4, 2019
This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
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Building the STEM Workforce Our Future Economy Needs

Giving Compass’ Take:

• The author highlights organizations such as Project Lead the Way which helps students from Kindergarten through high school learn STEM subjects in their core curriculum.

• How will learning STEM concepts earlier on help kids enter the workforce?

• Read about the individuals and organizations that are combatting the gender gap in STEM. 

As graduation celebrations turn to summer internships and, hopefully, new jobs, Missourians were greeted with a report that should ring the alarm and cause us all to rethink education.

The Missouri Chamber of Commerce highlighted that by 2030, Missouri will face a shortage of 200,000 qualified workers. This report mirrors other findings that point to deficits within the science-, technology-, engineering-, and math-based (STEM) talent pipelines.

This is not just a Missouri issue, but also a national issue. The nation must prepare its children for an economy we can’t predict, but are assured will be different. The key challenge is to ensure that any changes in education meet the needs of ALL students, not just a select few.

Thankfully, there are many opportunities to bridge the gap. Throughout many public schools and districts, there are pockets of innovation occurring that have promise to scale. Forbes recently profiled one such effort. Project Lead the Way is a national nonprofit that serves millions of kindergarten- through high school-age students. It is an in-school engineering, computer science and biomedical science program that uses project-based learning to engage students in STEM learning and complement the school’s core curriculum.

Read the full article about supporting students in STEM by Larry Jacob at Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

If you are looking for more articles and resources for K-12 Education, take a look at these Giving Compass selections related to impact giving and K-12 Education.

  • This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
    Click here for more.
    Ninth Grade is a Critical Time for Students

    School transitions bring considerable change for students. One particular tension is the increase in responsibility that happens when students go to high school, combined with less supervision and less support. Students can easily confuse having the responsibility for getting to class and getting work done on their own with having the freedom of choice of whether to do it or not. Rather than waiting until students are almost done with high school and so far behind in credits they have virtually no chance of graduating, educators are now working to prevent students from failing in the first place. Over the last decade, ninth grade early warning indicators have shifted the way that educators perceive and address the issue of high school dropout. Dropout prevention programs traditionally focused on students who had failed half or more of their classes the prior year, or were only occasionally coming to school; those students are obviously in need of support. At that point, Consortium research shows students have about a ten percent probability of graduating, or less. In the meantime, students who were just starting to struggle—those getting Ds or Fs in their classes or missing a day or two of class a month–were not viewed as in need of intervention. Read the full interview with Elaine Allensworth on ninth grade at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

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