How do we forge a new path so that STEM education in 2020, 2030, and beyond is different and better than it is now? Recent trend analyses and national reports consistently indicate that higher education in the U.S. is not producing enough STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) graduates to meet projected U.S. labor market demands.In fact, national bachelor’s degree attainment trends in STEM don’t look good for any demographic group, including Whites and Asian/Pacific Islanders. While women and racial and ethnic minorities continue to be underrepresented across the STEM disciplines, they also are the largest untapped pool of potential STEM talent in the United States.

A new AIR national report on this issue, Broadening Participation in STEM, presents a comprehensive 20-year trend analysis of bachelor’s degrees in STEM and offers targeted recommendations for new ways to accelerate higher education outcomes in STEM. One key recommendation is to expand our current definitions and measures of STEM educational success.

The STEM leaders from across the nation who came up with these recommendations hope to reignite a vision for the U.S. as a global leader in STEM innovation—one that embraces diversity in STEM as an asset rather than an obstacle.

Just as shifting demographic trends are changing U.S. politics, emerging demographics dynamics are deeply and permanently changing the American educational landscape from pre-school learning through graduate and professional training. Historically, past seismic shifts like this were often accompanied by dramatic surges in innovation.

Our nation is at this point now. It’s time to capitalize on the substantial and emerging STEM talent unique to a country as large and diverse as the United States to broaden participation in STEM. If we don’t take this path to continued prosperity and security, our nation’s position as a global leader in innovation and progress in STEM fields will remain in peril.

-- Carlos Rodriguez, PhD, a principal research scientist at AIR

The following is a post from CompTIA President and CEO Todd Thibodeaux:

Most policymakers are familiar with the basic arguments for increasing the focus on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields to fuel US competitiveness: the US is falling behind in math and science; not enough of our kids are going into these fields; STEM is the backbone of innovation and growth. The solution? Increase education standards; get more kids into math and science fields; increase the number of kids graduating with college degrees in math and science who can take jobs in innovation-intensive fields.

If only it were that easy. And if only college degrees were the single puzzle that needed to be solved.

The cost of traditional four-year colleges is skyrocketing beyond many people’s means. Even once-affordable state colleges and universities are moving out of reach for middle class Americans.

Meanwhile, the number of jobs requiring technical skills is rising. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics says that in the next five years, STEM jobs are expected to grow twice as fast as jobs in other fields, while 80 percent of jobs in the next decade are expected to require technical skills.

And simply encouraging school-aged kids to go into these fields is not enough. CompTIA’s Youth Opinions of Careers in IT study found that while 97 percent of teens and young adults report loving or liking technology, only 18 percent report a definitive interest in a career in IT.

So how can the US meet demand for a workforce that has the technical skills and knowledge to fill these positions and keep our nation competitive?

Clearly, we need to think beyond the traditional paradigm of a four-year college. We cannot afford to exclude other ways to increase skills and competency in STEM fields.

Champions of the Startup 2.0 Act are talking about re-introducing this legislation, which languished in committee last session. This bill would allow high-skilled, foreign-born talent to remain in the US after earning college and other advanced degrees here. The goal is to keep this talent in the US to help drive US innovation and our local economies. There is a body of evidence that supports the supposition that high-skilled foreign entrepreneurs do create new products, new services and new jobs for citizens already here.

These high-skilled immigration visas would address an immediate need and provide one solution to the broader challenge of building a technically-skilled workforce. We support its passage. But more is needed. Technical skills development and job training and programs that aren’t four-year colleges fill a critical – and growing – gap in the workforce. Job training programs, from community colleges to technical schools to programs run through non-profits like CompTIA, can provide our workforce in the 21st century skills they need to obtain stable, high-paying technical jobs. They might be one way to turn a young person’s budding interest into a stable career.

Right now, there are more than 250,000 open IT-related jobs, an extraordinary number given the overall jobs picture. Many of these openings reflect a technical skills gap that can be filled through coursework and certification. In addition, CompTIA’s State of the IT Skills Gap survey released last year found that 93 percent of employers said there was an overall skills gap among their IT staff, indicating the need for ongoing skills training, even for those currently in the workforce.

Indeed, many would say there is a structural mismatch. Companies have trouble finding skilled workers, and workers who are eager for employment opportunities – or advancement – do not have the right skill set.

In these tough budget times, government programs play a critical role in providing much-needed skills training. The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) can provide incentives to businesses to participate in localized workforce development services. To support career and technical education, the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Improvement Act provides almost $1.3 billion in federal support.

Programs like these not only provide students exiting high school with an opportunity to gain technical skills, but they also help adults who are looking to change careers or have been displaced from their jobs.

But first, vocational programs, skills training, life-long adult education and certification must be part of the conversation. We cannot afford to exclude these options when addressing the challenge of educating and training a modern workforce.

The current political focus on skills development is one of the rare instances where fashion meets substance in Washington—a great moment that should be celebrated and acted upon by anyone who wants to leave a stronger and more prosperous America to future generations.

Policymakers are finally looking at the right driver for improving education, health and economic outcomes. Building skill upon skill from infancy through preschool, school and young adulthood is the best way to guarantee a highly valuable workforce that drives a strong national economy.

The economic fate of any country rests in the skills of its people. Human capital creates economic capital. That means we have to spend capital on people in order to make capital with people. Labor economist and Nobel Laureate James Heckman has shown that low levels of skill result in declines in wages and increases in the need for social assistance. He also draws a direct causal link between high skills and high economic productivity. Most importantly, his extensive research clearly shows that the most important time to invest in skills development is from birth through five, when foundational cognitive and character skills are most malleable. The earliest learned skills and experiences have the greatest influence over later school achievement, college graduation, career choice, income level, healthy lifestyles and constructive social behaviors.

That is fact, not fashion. However, policymakers can use these facts to fashion one efficient and effective solution for a host of problems such as the achievement gap, global economic competitiveness, poverty and rising economic inequality. Quality early learning from birth to five helps prevent the achievement gap, increases school achievement and provides the consistent and persistent talent America needs in its next generation of scientists, engineers, teachers and creators.

The time is ripe. We know enough about the importance of skills and early skills development that we should stop talking and start acting. That means greater investment in quality early learning from birth to five, especially for disadvantaged children. It means connecting early learning with the early grades from K-3. And, it means realigning our K-12 education system to reflect what we know about developing the whole person with a wide range of cognitive and character skills. Developing a person of value — and making sure that every child has a chance to become one — is one of the greatest gifts we can leave future generations of Americans.

For the better part of three decades the discussion about K-16 education has been inextricably linked education and economic development (insert mandatory reference to 1983’s Nation at Risk). It is clear in a global economy driven by nimbleness and innovation that our nation must transform its educational system from the outmoded 19th century model to one relevant for today’s challenges. Our ability to compete long term as a nation—as well as for individual states and regions—demands new, integrated approach to education and the economy.

Our competitiveness is driven by an education system that is designed to produce students that possess superior knowledge and are competent in skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. We must also capitalize on rapidly emerging technologies and a reshaping of industry through grassroots economics. It is important to note that our nation not only faces economic malaise but also significant and growing educational achievement gaps that go beyond just gaining a competitive advantage in science and engineering. These are structural problems that cannot be solved by merely adjusting our immigration policy (vis a vis visas) to attract and retain foreign talent. We need a systemic and sustainable solution.

So what do we do? First, we need to acknowledge that the fusion of content and higher-order skills (inquiry, creativity, and critical thinking drive STEM learning) is ongoing in many schools and school districts across the country. There are both grassroots models as well as national models like New Tech Network, one of KnowledgeWorks’ subsidiaries. New Tech Network works with a network of 125 schools in 20 states providing an instructional approach centered on project-based learning, a culture that empowers students and teachers, and integrated technology in the classroom.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is working on advancing the concept of Deeper Learning at the state, district, school, and policy levels (Master core academic content, Think critically and solve complex problems, Work collaboratively, Communicate effectively, and Learn how to learn). Part of this strategy includes networking innovative school networks together, networks of schools such as New Tech Network, Envisions, Expeditionary Learning network, High Tech High, and others. Additionally, EdLeader21 is a national network of school and district leaders focused on integrating the 4Cs (critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity) into education. They are currently working with approximately 100 school districts across the country to not only implement across a large system but in doing so align curriculum, instruction, professional development, and assessments.

Second, the natural system progression in education should push us toward a competency-based learning system. We have done the basic blocking and tackling of standards-based education (worksheets and No. 2 pencils and disengagement of both students and teachers) to really looking at the fusion of content and skills through innovative models and district-level systems change. We need to begin to implement and scale a competency based learning system. This is being implemented in districts in California, Maine and Vermont, to name a few, and being advanced in states like Iowa, Kentucky and Oregon.

Competency-based learning divorces academic attainment from seat time and instead focuses on mastery. This system allows for differentiated supports for students extra work and time for students struggling to master a certain concept and acceleration for students that master content and skills more quickly. With a focus on mastery, students are more likely to be engaged and better outcomes can be achieved because the pace of learning is tailored to the student. Authors Bailey, Schneider, Sturgis, and Vander Ark in the recently released Digital Learning Now report, “The Shift from Cohorts to Competency,” offer, “Competency education drives student beyond just knowledge and understanding. Students demonstrate proficiency by applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating new knowledge.”

In other words, a more competitive, responsive educational system that not only drives attainment but economic development, our nation needs a system where students at all levels of school are proficient in content and skills and in applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating new knowledge. Moving to a competency-based learning begins to set the stage for real educational growth in the United States.

One of the many goals of education is to produce skilled graduates who can succeed in meaningful jobs.

We shouldn’t shy away from that reality, or worry too much about creating education programs through the ‘lens’ of job skills. Because ultimately, job skills and a more ‘well-rounded education’ are both parts of the same continuum. In today's complex society, the skills needed to succeed in the workplace require a well-rounded education that goes far beyond technical expertise.

As I recently wrote in The Huffington Post, business leaders can do this by both improving student achievement in critical subjects like math and science, but also by helping to develop nonacademic skills that help students achieve their college and career goals. By creating this holistic approach, we can build a pipeline of trained leaders. And by starting sooner rather than later, we can help those students who may not be able to attend a 4-year university by giving them earlier exposure, training, and insight.

There are 3 main ways that businesses can help prepare our students for 21st century jobs:

1. They can help students develop the functional or technical skills early on—like math, science, and analytical skills—that are necessary for later success. Too often, students don’t master basic skills: in New York State, only 50% of eighth graders are proficient in science; 46% are proficient in math. Once they fall behind, it becomes harder and harder for students to catch up. Only by providing a strong foundation in these subjects from an early age can students compete for jobs—either STEM or otherwise—once they reach high school or college.

2. By promoting awareness of and access to industries, positions, and career tracks, students learn about the job market as well as the fundamental connection between education and career aspirations. By sharing how they prepared for and found their jobs, today’s professionals can help students find a career that interests them, and make a plan for how to obtain it.

3. Students need on-the-job training in the form of internships and apprenticeships. But these experiences shouldn’t be focused solely on technical experience, as an expanding field of research suggests that certain behavioral characteristics and social/emotional skills—such as perseverance, discipline, managing, time management, and other social skills—are just as important in advancing in a career. There’s no better place to cultivate these skills than in the workplace, and developing those qualities now helps our students arrive at work ready to contribute.

We can—and should—integrate skills into K-12 education as soon as we can, whether for STEM professions or for other fields. But we must do more than just teach ‘skills’: we need to teach the context in which they’re used, the reasons why they matter, the ways to refine them, and how businesses and professionals ultimately rely on their intellectual and human capital to shape the world.

Maybe it’s time we turned the STEM shortage political bloviations over to Mythbusters. We haven't heard this many anguished cries of alarm since Eisenhower and Sputnik. At least the 1958 National Defense Education Act resulted in a massive improvement in science textbooks and instruction – an approach with more promise than importing indentured foreign workers.

The first step in busting this myth is to take a look at the federal government's Bureau of Labor Statistics projections of the fastest growing jobs. Only two or three of the top 30 could be considered as requiring extensive STEM training. Even for the few STEM jobs projected to have dramatic percentage increases, these are big increases to a small number. For instance, the 62% increase in biomedical engineers represents less than 10,000 new jobs nationally -- compared to the need for more than 70 times that number of new home health aides. Instead of the STEM obsession, what is needed is training for the far larger number of the forgotten middle level jobs.

Of the nation's nine million people with STEM degrees, only about three million work in STEM fields. Despite the lamentations of employers about not being able to hire qualified people (which is true in some locations), the real problem is that there are too few jobs for the qualified people available. Further, when businesses can off-shore jobs or hire foreign nationals at a fraction of the cost, there is no incentive to hire our home-grown kids.

The STEM urban myth rests on a greater unexamined myth of “economic competitiveness in a global market.” The problem is that universal, high level primary and secondary STEM education at the primary and secondary levels doesn’t make it into the World Economic Forum’s twelve pillars of economic competitiveness. Adopting “world class education standards” and tests doesn’t make the list either. Let’s get real: the inability of the federal government to resolve its own fiscal problems has far more to do with our economic competitiveness than high school math requirements.

STEM as urban myth has several bad implications for education and social policy. First, it excites pressure to add even more science and math high school requirements -- even though they encourage the glut in an over-supplied field. (Common Core believers are pressing forward in science based on the myth). It also wastes educational resources teaching skills which most students will never use. In the short run, for those students with limited interest or proclivities in STEM areas, it increases alienation from school and encourages drop-outs. As only 18% of United States kids are interested in a STEM career, that may be about right as “the United States’ education system produces a supply of qualified [science and engineering] graduates in much greater numbers than the jobs available.”

More importantly, the myopic concentration on higher, harder STEM skills for all students distracts us from the purposes of education and overshadows the true skills for the twenty-first century. These include things like communications, responsibility, teamwork, evaluating information, listening, negotiating and creativity.

So the real question may not be “since when” did NCLB morph into narrow STEM skills training. It may be “since when” did we forget the broader purposes of education in a democratic society?