Building Engineering and Science Talent (BEST) has announced the results of its final assessment of best practices in pre-kindergarten through grade 12 math and science education to keep women, minorities, and persons with disabilities on the educational path to careers in science and engineering. The report, titled "What it Takes: Pre-K-12 Design Principles to Broaden Participation in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics," showcases nine programs with significant evidence of effectiveness and eleven that warrant further research, based on an in-depth evaluation of research evidence programs by the BEST Blue Ribbon Panel on Pre-K-12 Education and the American Institutes of Research (AIR).
The BEST panel, chaired
by Dr. Shirley Malcom, head director for Education and Human Resources at the
American Association for the Advancement of Science,
screened
200 programs and selected 34 for detailed examination. One of their significant
findings was that only a very limited number of projects qualified for review
based on their high standards for research-based evidence. None of the programs
met the panel's highest rating ("Verifiably Effective"),
and the 2 that met the "Probably Effective" rating had gathered
most of the relevant student data in the 1960's and 1970's. The
report notes that system features - such as the high cost of rigorous,
quantitative evaluation and the ways that these programs are funded - account
for the lack of modern, rigorous data.
Despite these limitations, the report focuses on approaches that are needed
in pre-K-12 education to research and meet a difficult and increasingly urgent
national
challenge -- the under representation of women, African Americans, Hispanics,
Native Americans, and persons with disabilities in science, technology, engineering,
and mathematics. These underrepresented groups comprise nearly two-thirds of
the overall U.S. workforce yet only make up one-quarter of the science and
engineering workforce. BEST, an initiative of the Council on Competitiveness
was established
in 2001 at the recommendation of the Congressional Commission on the Advancement
of Women in Science, Engineering and Technology.
http://www.bestworkforce.org/publications.htm
Click on the first bullet "What it Takes: Pre-K-12 Design Principles to Broaden Participation in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics." There are 2 pdf documents, with the second (Part 2) providing more details about the results presented in Part 1.