STEM Education

Challenge:

“Studies show that Black and Hispanic children from low-income families often start kindergarten behind their White peers in early math and pre-reading skills. Young children of color are more likely to be enrolled in low-quality early care and education programs than their White peers.” These statistics continue to be the basis for sizeable disparity later in life, with blacks holding just 6.4% of STEM jobs, compared with whites holding 71.2%.

Opportunity:

If started early and leveraged properly, STEM Education will become the great social equalizer for children experiencing disparity.

CH4K Action:

Establish education as a child’s absolute number one priority

Explicitly stress the value and opportunities available with STEM as a career option from an early age

Leverage focused, disciplined, well planned mentoring programming and create interactive programming with examples of success from communities like their own (CIOs, CTOs, etc.)

Per theories from Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers” put children on paths to achieving 10,000 hours of STEM/Information Technology training during the K-12 educational years

Sources:

• My Brother’s Keeper Task Force Report to the President – May, 2014

• Herrera, Carla, David L. DuBois and Jean Baldwin Grossman. 2013. The Role of Risk: Mentoring Experiences and Outcomes for Youth with Varying Risk Profiles, Executive Summary. New York, NY: A Public/Private Ventures project distributed by MDRC.

• United States Department of Commerce Report – Economics and Statistics Administration