Strong STEM Education Policy

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, in a few short hours, we are going to be voting in this Chamber on a rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is long overdue.

It has been 13 years since the No Child Left Behind Act was passed, and many educators and probably all Members have heard a lot of the clumsy and unworkable provisions that need a rewrite. More importantly, there are other reasons why it is time for a new law for our K-12 system.

Educating our children is a dynamic process, and everything from technology in the classroom, as well as the workforce needs of our national economy, have drastically changed in the last 13 years.

Clearly, as a nation, we need to use this rewrite of Federal education law as an opportunity to equip our Nation, and particularly our children and grandchildren, with the tools they need to succeed.

One area which we all know needs updating and strengthening is the area of STEM education--science, technology, engineering, and math. Employers all across the country are desperate to try and find incoming young people into our workforce who have these skills to succeed.

The good news is, in the last 13 years, STEM occupations have grown three times faster than non-STEM occupations. In addition, the average income is two times higher in terms of the wages of STEM-educated workers compared to non-STEM. That is the good news.

The bad news is that only 16 percent of graduating high school seniors are interested in STEM. If you drill down deeper, young girls and young minorities are woefully underrepresented in the single digits.

Clearly, we need to move stronger as a nation in the area of STEM. If you look globally, China is producing 23 percent of the world's STEM degree graduates--the U.S., only 10 percent.

Mr. Speaker, if you go back 58 years ago, our 34th President, Dwight Eisenhower, confronted a similar moment of crisis in terms of our education system.

In October 1957, the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite, which shocked our Nation. We realized we were falling behind and that we needed to step up our game in terms of our educational and research system. This Republican President led the charge to pass the National Defense Education Act in 1958, which boosted and set a national goal, a national priority, for science and research across our country.

At the time that he signed the bill in 1958, he said that, in both education and research, we needed to redouble our exertions, which will be necessary on the part of all Americans if we are to rise to the demands of our times.

He also noted that this bill, the National Defense Education Act, back in 1958, would ``do much to strengthen our American system of education so it can meet the broad and increasing demands imposed upon it by considerations of basic national security.''

Fast forward 57 years, we now have a national STEM education coalition made up of employers like Microsoft, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the American Farm Bureau, who have come together with a core set of principles on how we can today, in 2015, boost teachers with these hard science degrees in our elementary and high schools, how we can drill down and encourage, again, underrepresented groups such as young girls and minorities to get involved and engaged in education.

We came forward on the Education and the Workforce Committee with an amendment supported by the STEM coalition, and it was rejected on a party-line vote by the Republican majority, who said that the national government had no business being involved in local and State education policy. That is totally unacceptable in terms of the challenges that our Nation faces today.

Unfortunately, the Rules Committee rejected our amendment from even being voted on today as part of the update of the No Child Left Behind bill.

Again, it is the ultimate measuring stick of the failure of this bill to address the needs our Nation faces in terms of K-12 education policy. We should follow the example of this gentleman. He understood that at times, we have to rise up as a full nation.

We can't rely on one local wealthy school district to invest in science and technology and engineering and math and leave behind other populations in this country because, as a nation, we need to come together to address and succeed and face this challenge. It will bring good things in terms of higher income and more growth for our country if we embrace these types of policies.

The good news is that the Republican chairman of the Senate Education Committee did embrace the STEM education coalition provisions, and they have put it in their bill.

Today, unfortunately, we are going to go do this exercise, this theater of passing a bill which woefully fails the test in terms of what our Nation faces today, but hopefully, later in the process, a conference committee will come together, and we will follow the example of Dwight Eisenhower and our bipartisan coalition of the 1950s to allow this Nation to have the tools to succeed.

We need to pass strong STEM education policy for our young children.

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