WASHINGTON — A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine provides a strategic framework for education policymakers, school administrators, and educators to advance equity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. The report explores barriers to equity in STEM education from kindergarten through high school, and outlines steps decision-makers can take to make improvements.

Stakeholders at all levels of the education system — including state, district, and school leaders, and classroom teachers — should see themselves as decision-makers who can increase equity in STEM education, the report says. The committee that wrote the report developed five equity frames to guide decision-makers in creating equity goals and making decisions about policy and practice. The five frames are:

• Reducing gaps between groups

• Expanding opportunity and access

• Embracing heterogeneity in STEM classrooms

• Learning and using STEM to promote justice

• Envisioning sustainable futures though STEM

The report identifies professional learning for teachers, instructional practice and materials, assessment, and pathways for students as key policy domains where decision-makers can act to advance equity in STEM education. 

“One specific takeaway from the report is imperative: Everyone has a role in making STEM education more equitable,” said Eileen Carlton Parsons, professor emerita at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and chair of the committee that wrote the report. “Anyone interested or anyone invested in creating a more equitable education system in their community can find propositions to explore in our recommendations.”

To foster change, the report recommends that state, district, and school education leaders and decision-makers in school and extracurricular settings should build strategic plans for equity in STEM education. To develop and further these strategic plans, leaders should conduct an initial “equity audit” to identify patterns of inequity and to prioritize investments and changes.

In support of these recommendations, the report says:

• State-level actors and district leaders should implement systems approaches (e.g., portfolio-based approaches) to measuring the performance of districts, schools, and educators. The approaches should reflect multiple measures beyond student achievement.

• District and school administrators should modify or eliminate course and program placement policies that limit students’ access to advanced STEM coursework and programming and should devote resources to building the capacity of teachers and school staff in response to these policy shifts.

• STEM educators should consider how routine teaching practices may be supporting or limiting students’ opportunity to learn based on their identities, and work to disrupt inequities both in and out of the classroom, among other actions.

• State, district, and school leaders should select evidence-based STEM instructional materials that are aligned with their goals for equity, among other characteristics — such as curriculum that includes a variety of instructional approaches and leverages culturally appropriate examples.

The report also recommends that funders of K-12 education — such as government agencies, philanthropic organizations, and business and industry — provide resources to develop STEM instructional materials and professional learning materials for teachers that include attention to equity or center on equity. Organizations should prioritize funding proposals for STEM education programs that identify a specific vision of equity, articulate a clear plan for how the project will achieve its equity goals, and that focus on equity throughout the project design. Funders should also expand options for projects to demonstrate success, including through measures that go beyond narrow definitions of student achievement.

The study was undertaken by the Committee on Equity in PreK-12 STEM Education and sponsored by NASA, the National Science Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation, National Academy of Sciences’ Thomas Lincoln Casey Fund and W.K. Kellogg Fund, Samueli Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, engineering, and medicine. They operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Lincoln.

Contact:

Hannah Fuller, Media Relations Officer
Office of News and Public Information
202-334-2138; email news@nas.edu