Education Week - March 6, 2013 - 27

EDUCATION WEEK

Why STEM Education Must Start in
Early Childhood
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 32

Kali Ciesemier

natural-born scientists and engineers. Like stem, investment in early-childhood education is a workforcepipeline issue. Research has shown that high-quality
pre-K cuts the rate of children being held back a grade
in half; decreases juvenile arrests by a third; and increases high school attendance by a third, college attendance by a whopping 80 percent, and employment
by 23 percent. High-quality early-learning environments provide children with a structure in which to
build upon their natural inclination to explore, to
build, and to question.
There is an exciting and powerful link between stem
and early childhood. Research confirms that the brain
is particularly receptive to learning math and logic between the ages of 1 and 4, and that early math skills are
the most powerful predictors of later learning.
Research from the University of California, Irvine, confirms that early math skills are a better predictor of later
academic success than early reading is. The study found
that in a comparison of math, literacy, and social-emotional skills at kindergarten entry, “early math concepts,

Tracing Technology’s
Unintended K-12
Consequences
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 25

the nation.
Phrases like “hitting the books”
may soon be nonexistent as budgets for e-readers chip away at the
book budgets for school libraries.
An electronic book has a lot of appeal: It is cheaper to manufacture,
lighter to carry, and even manages to reduce a student’s carbon
footprint. Since students are so
comfortable with touchscreen
methods, it stands to reason that
reading may actually come more
easily when learned through an
electronic device. The problem
again is not that the technology
harms the actual learning me-

such as knowledge of numbers and ordinality, were the
most powerful predictors of later learning.”
If math skills are such an important component of
academic success, but people would rather be cleaning their bathrooms or eating broccoli, I’d say we have
a problem. Math skills and other stem competencies
are important to the country’s long-term competitiveness because today’s young children are tomorrow’s
workforce. Workers who are fluent in these competencies will be more prepared and qualified to fill the jobs
that our innovation economy demands.
This concept is integrated into the Massachusetts
education system, beginning at the earliest stages.
The strategic plan of the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care officially recognizes that “inquiry and exploration are foundations
for math and science and are also the foundations
for early learning.” The department’s commissioner,
Sherri Killins, has made remarkable strides in linking stem and early childhood by encouraging stem
professional-development opportunities for earlychildhood educators, aligning state standards and
frameworks by ensuring a pre-K component to math
and science standards, and intentionally integrating
stem into daily activities with students through curricula and quality measurements through the state’s
Quality Rating and Improvement System.
Massachusetts has engaged in productive partnerships with the private sector as well, including tens
of thousands of dollars in donated hardware and software from ibm to support the state’s implementation
of its Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge grant
from the federal government. Other companies, like
National Grid, John Hancock, and JP Morgan Chase
are also supporting efforts in the state to explore innovative ways to bolster the early childhood workforce.
And why wouldn’t they? International competition
for talent is getting stiffer. As the Center for American
Progress and the Center for the Next Generation study
points out, “half of U.S. children get no early-childhood
education, and we have no national strategy to increase
enrollment,” while China, for example, has plans to
enroll 40 million children in preschool, an increase of
50 percent, by 2020. Just for some context, there are a
total of about 24 million children from birth to age 5 in
the United States. By 2030, China will have 200 million
college graduates, more than the entire U.S. workforce.
Which gets back to the original point: Where are employers going to find workers? To remain competitive in
the global economy, investment is needed to ensure a
workforce pipeline that would rather engage in science,
technology, engineering, and math than cleaning bathrooms and eating broccoli. And the best way to shore up
that pipeline is to start investing in it early. n

chanics, but that it raises new issues about how one learns.
When we read for pleasure, most
of us are seeking a form of transportation. We feel a special interest in a particular subject matter.
Excitement. A chance to escape
reality.
People who love to read have an
interactive relationship with the
material. Cracking open a fresh
book is an experience unlike any
other. Kids who are introduced to
literature in the same way that
they learn math problems, or have
video calls with grandparents, or
play noneducational games do not
have the same reverence for reading, because it is nothing special.
I’ve heard the argument that
it is not the delivery method but
the content that matters in getting kids excited about reading,
but I’m not sure I’m biting. Again,
this is an issue that is still too
young to judge definitively. It is
just one instance of the indirect

impact of rapidly advancing technology that keeps me up at night.
So what, then, is the answer? If
technology is embraced by some
and rejected by others, how can
elementary and secondary school
students be expected to know the
right way to learn? It seems that
the answers are about as clear
as mud. I believe that technology has provided the swift kick
that K-12 education has needed
for decades to make the sweeping
adjustments required to reach
contemporary students and inspire education. I am just not
sure yet which traditional teaching elements deserve to be clung
to and which ones are meant for
the curb.
The debate of how best to prepare our children for a lifetime
of achievement is one I believe
deserves constant attention in
order to give young students the
best shot at academic—and life—
success. n

MARCH 6, 2013

www.edweek.org

Customization Is Key
To School-Safety Plans
LETTERS to
the EDITOR
K-12 Experience
Must Be Expanded
To the Editor:
Thank you for your
Commentary, David T. Conley
(“What’s in a Name?,” Jan.
23, 2013). I lead organizations
composed of researchers,
professional developers, and
practitioners focused on
researching, assessing, and
teaching key social-emotional
measures related to academic
success.
Since the passage of the
No Child Left Behind Act,
educators have focused on
the most obvious approach:
improving academic
achievement by teaching
better and more rigorous
educational content more
effectively.
However, the focus on
the most obvious neglects
what is equally obvious:
Students learn only when
they cognitively associate
their academic activity as
important and relevant
to them personally,
and proactively build
the necessary socialemotional skills (such as
academic confidence, stress
management, and positive
connections to teachers)
to assure their academic
success.
The problem is that
focusing exclusively on the
most obvious hasn’t moved
us toward improved academic
outcomes, especially for our
lower-socioeconomic students.
The data are pretty clear
that the status-quo focus
on the most obvious in K-12
education will work for
students who have their
own sense of academic selfefficacy, motivation, and/
or a focused, interested,
educationally established
parent or caregiver. That
status quo is obviously not
working for the rest—which,
judging by graduation rates,
is arguably at least 25
percent to 50 percent of the
population we are trying to
serve.
Accordingly, we must
increase the understanding
and practical application
of the equally obvious by
expanding the K-12 classroom
experience to teach what Mr.
Conley defines as “the full
range of behaviors, attitudes,
and beliefs students [can]
demonstrate while engaging
in the learning process.”
We remain devoted to
that task and welcome such
partnerships.
Steven Weigler
Chief Executive Officer
ScholarCentric and the Center for
Academic Resiliency Research
Denver, Colo.

To the Editor:
In his remarks to the nation
on Jan. 16, President Barack
Obama offered a wide range
of ideas to make schools safer.
One component of his safeschools plan is to ensure that all
schools have a comprehensive
emergency-management
plan, and he directed his
administration to develop
a set of model emergencymanagement protocols.
These model plans will
presumably supplement
guidance published in 2006
by the U.S. Department of
Education’s Readiness and
Emergency Management
for Schools Technical
Assistance Center and follow
the guidance of the federal
government’s National
Incident Management System.
While this previous
guidance provides a
reasonably broad framework
for such protocols, our
recent review of emergencymanagement plans found
them lacking the detail
necessary to make them
effective.
Districts generally assume
responsibility for developing
an emergency-management
plan. However, every
school has unique security
considerations, and so districtlevel protocols are generally
not sufficiently customized to
be comprehensive.
For example, response
time is a critical factor for
emergency planning. A school
with a response time of 45
minutes will have a greater
need to maintain internal
resources than a school with
a five-minute response time.
The layout of the school
facility as well as numerous
other factors can also have an
impact on the requirements of
an emergency plan. Existing
school-level plans need to
recognize these differences.
The federal government
can provide models, but
such models will not make
schools safer unless local
officials tailor them to specific
circumstances in each school.
In addition, establishing
voluntary standards and
ratings for school emergencymanagement protocols
would provide school
officials, parents, and other
stakeholders with information
about the quality of their
schools’ plans.
Donald J. Cymrot
Vice President of Education

Stephen E. Rickman
Director of Justice Programs
CNA
Alexandria, Va.

Previously, Mr. Rickman served
as the director of the District of
Columbia Office of Emergency
Preparedness (1990-1995) and
the director of readiness for the
White House Office of Homeland
Security (2002).
PAGE 28 >

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Education Week - March 6, 2013

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