From inspiration to impact: Attracting women to STEM

Key points:

  • The bottom line: Representation matters
  • Encouraging a passion for STEM from a young age will keep more women in STEM

The number of women working in STEM jobs has increased 31 percent over the past decade, but women continue to be outnumbered by men in some of the fastest-growing and highest-paying jobs—including roles in engineering, computer science, and the physical sciences. Although women make up half of the total U.S. college-educated workforce, they only represented 34 percent of the science and engineering roles in 2021, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Not only is it important to see more women fill STEM jobs from an equity standpoint, but there is also a lack of professionals to fill the demand for future STEM roles, projected to grow by 11 percent over the next decade.…Read More

How to build a P-TECH Academy on the go

As the principal of a brand new “pathways in technology early college high school” (P-TECH), I’ve had to become comfortable with the idea of building a program even as students are enrolled in it. Fortunately, my leadership team and I understand what our school will look like when everything is in place.

We have a blueprint that we’re implementing one year at a time, so we don’t have to do everything at once. We also have a partner, the Ulster Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), that has successfully run a similar program for eight years providing guidance and support. Here’s how it’s working so far and why it’s so important to our students and our community.

Building the plane as we fly—with excellent mechanics aboard…Read More

A smarter way to think about college

This month, hundreds of thousands of graduating high school seniors are weighing their college options. For many, it’s an intensely stressful time as they are rejected or waitlisted by schools they aspired to attend and decide where they will spend the next four years of their lives. Unfortunately, most will base those decisions on criteria that don’t actually determine the quality of their education and ignore the criteria that do.

Choosing a college to attend is not like choosing a product to purchase, though students often approach the decision with a consumer’s mindset. There is no Consumer Reports to rely on, leaving students and their parents unduly influenced by a school’s reputation, the glitziness of the admissions materials, the amenities in the student housing, the impressiveness of the recreational facilities, and the quality of the campus tour. None of these bears any relation to the quality of the instruction you will receive as a student.

Even sampling a class or two while visiting a school tells you virtually nothing meaningful.  As any teacher knows, there are good days and bad days in every course.  What you experience is not generalizable to the course as a whole, much less to the entire school.…Read More

The Earth Prize 2023 Winners Announcement


On Monday, April 24th, The Earth Foundation held a fully virtual event, The Earth Prize 2023 Awards Ceremony, to announce the winner and runners-up of its USD 200,000 environmental sustainability competition for teenagers. Over 1,270 student teams registered from over 1,000 schools across 116 countries and territories for the 2023 edition of the competition.

Team Delavo, made up of four young women – Yagmur, Avjin, Damla and Irmak from Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey – was proclaimed the victorious recipient of the USD 100,000 grand prize that comes with The Earth Prize 2023 Winner title. The prize money will be split evenly between the team members and the educational institution with which they registered for the competition, Bahçeşehir Koleji Fen ve Teknoloji Liseleri (Diyarbakir Bahcesehir College for Science and Technology High School).

Inspired by the problem of water scarcity from droughts in the Tigris River basin where they live, the team’s winning idea is the “ECaundry” device, which addresses the fact that 20 gallons (75 liters) of toxic waste water from every load of laundry in the world’s washing machines contaminate the soil and groundwater. Once the ECaundry is hooked up to the machine its integrated hollow ultrafiltration tubes and carbon filter treat and reuse laundry waste water, thus conserving more than 90% of it.…Read More

PowerSchool Partners with Scribbles Software to add More than 2,000 Colleges to the Naviance eDocs Network

Charlotte, North Carolina – Scribbles Software today announced a partnership with PowerSchool (NYSE: PWSC), the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America, and PowerSchool Naviance. This partnership will nearly double the number of institutions in the Naviance eDocs network, greatly expanding college access for high school students.

Scribbles Software has served over 12 million students with transcript requests since 2012 and provides over 400 districts and charter schools with a best-in-class network to ensure easy and equitable access for students pursuing higher education. In the last year alone, Scribbles completed nearly one million electronic transcript requests from districts across the United States, including 25 of the 30 largest districts in the country.

“Scribbles is thrilled to partner with Naviance to expand access to a broader higher education network. Through this partnership, districts and schools will be able to empower more students to have more access to life-changing opportunities,” said Marshall Simmonds, Vice President of Sales for Scribbles Software.…Read More

New Mexico’s Middle College High School Selects Discovery Education’s Pivot Interactives to Support Student Science Explorations

Charlotte, NC —New Mexico’s Middle College High School, a public charter school within Gallup-McKinley County Public School District, today announced it has selected Discovery Education’s innovative digital resources to support student science explorations. In this new collaboration, Discovery Education’s Pivot Interactives will help students in the school’s high school physics class more deeply engage with phenomena and other scientific concepts as they develop their understanding of the discipline. Discovery Education is the worldwide edtech leader whose state-of-the-art digital platform supports learning wherever it takes place. 

Located in Gallup, New Mexico, the mission of Middle College High School (MCHS) is to provide an innovative and high-quality individualized learning environment for a distinct set of students. Operated in partnership with University of New Mexico-Gallup, MCHS provides a seamless educational continuum that benefits students as they move from high school to their post-secondary goals. MCHS is increasing student involvement in postsecondary education by emphasizing service to students of diverse backgrounds who are normally underrepresented at the local, regional, and national levels. 

MCHS’s leaders sought a new suite of high-quality, standards-aligned digital resources that could quickly be integrated into instruction and were adaptable enough to meet the needs of students’ varying learning styles. Following a careful review of potential solutions, school administrators selected Discovery Education’s Pivot Interactives for use in both middle and high school classrooms. …Read More

Fewer than half of underserved students believe post-high school education is necessary

As school district leaders continue to worry about students’ college and career readiness, a new survey finds that less than half of students from traditionally underserved populations believe education after high school is necessary.

The new survey conducted by ECMC Group, in partnership with VICE Media Group, surveyed more than 1,000 high school students ages 14-18 from low-income, first-generation and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) backgrounds and found that only 45 percent believe education after high school is necessary, compared to 52 percent of all high schoolers.

In addition, only 8 percent feel fully prepared to make the decision of what to do after high school.…Read More

Vernier Science Education Updates Vernier Graphical Analysis® Pro to Further Meet the Needs of Educators and Students

BEAVERTON, Oregon — Vernier Science Education has updated Vernier Graphical Analysis ® Pro to further meet the needs of high school and college educators and students. This award-winning app, which helps students engage in advanced data analysis as they think critically and make real-world connections, now includes even more features to deepen and extend learning—including an annotation feature, which enables students to comment on a region or point of a graph.

“Technology, such as our newly updated Graphical Analysis Pro app, can support students in building STEM literacy and forming critical connections between abstract scientific ideas and the real world,” said John Wheeler, CEO of Vernier Science Education. “With Graphical Analysis Pro, students can visualize and interact with experiment data they have collected via nearly 50 of our sensors. At the same time, educators can use the app to enrich their live instruction and provide even more opportunities for students to interact with and analyze data outside of the classroom or lab.”

Graphical Analysis Pro lets educators and students easily view and sync a video to sensor data, which enables them to replay, speed up, slow down, and pause recorded experiments at key moments in time. Whether learning happens remotely or in person, students can perform live experiments and share data over the internet in real time as they analyze and graph data and experience three-dimensional learning. …Read More

The purpose of a K-12 education: Who decides and how do we get there?

In a recent report by Populace (2022), 55 percent of American parents expressed their desire for educators to rethink how today’s K-12 schools are educating our children. The study found that, despite the widespread perception that American society wants K-12 schools to prepare students for college, college is not as important to parents as it used to be. Instead, the study reported, today’s parents would like to see their children develop practical skills “for both life and career” (p. 10), critical thinking skills that allow them “to problem solve and make decisions” (p. 8), and moral character traits such as “honesty, kindness, integrity, [and] ethics” (p. 20).

The Populace study reported that today’s parents want more individualized educational experiences for their children, with greater emphasis on students’ interests and personal/career goals than on a one-size-fits-all curriculum. Parents want their children to have learning opportunities across a variety of modalities, and they want learning to be assessed through demonstration of mastery as opposed to traditional assessments like standardized tests.

According to the Populace study, today’s parents believe that “better” (as in straight As and college bound) should not be the purpose of a K-12 education, but “different” (as in a customized educational experience for every student) should be. It seems that–at least for parents–the purpose of an American K-12 education is changing.…Read More

Building pathways to successful STEM careers for ALL learners

The journeys that children take through education are not as straightforward as most people think.  

In recent years, close to 70 percent of students went straight from high school to college, with those going to four-year universities typically outnumbering those enrolling in two-year colleges by roughly two to one. But a growing number of young people are forging new paths that involve a detour around college altogether.

College-going rates have been trending down since before the COVID-19 pandemic. And a national survey conducted in 2021 by ECMC Group found that less than half of high school students said they planned to attend a four-year college or university–a decrease of more than 20 percentage points from 2019. …Read More

My top 3 digital science lab resources

As a former molecular biologist turned college and 7-12 educator, I have taught laboratory science classes for the past 3 decades. I’ve seen a lot of changes in science education (especially digital content) over the last 30 years, but one challenge has remained the same: students have to learn laboratory skills.

As a science department chair at a high-performing public high school in Arizona, I can attest firsthand to the stress this component of science education places on young, new science teachers who may not have the benefit of being a trained research scientist in college and who feel intimidated to lead an entire class of 30+ adolescents through a lab that they must by themselves prepare everything for.

This insecurity can lead to many 7-12 science teachers opting not to complete many hands-on labs with their students either because they lack the resources or the confidence to do so. Add to this the fact that districts often emphasize and require science teachers to host and participate in school and district Science Fairs, and it is no wonder that good science teachers are hard to come by.…Read More

Paper™ acquires MajorClarity to Create a Comprehensive Career & College Readiness Platform

MONTREAL – Paper™, the leading Educational Support System (ESS), today announced that it has acquired MajorClarity, a best-in-class Career & College Readiness (CCR) tool. Together, the companies will offer a comprehensive CCR platform that will support all students, regardless of their preferred path after high school.

Today, most high schools and CCR programs are focused primarily on college preparation, despite the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting that in 2021, only 61% of high school graduates enrolled in college—a 20-year low for college enrollment.

These reports indicate that a growing number of high school graduates are enrolling in Career and Technical Education (CTE) or trade schools, enlisting in the military, or going directly into the workforce. However, these students have fewer career readiness tools at their disposal than their counterparts who plan on attending college.…Read More