Hi folks. Thanks for viewing! Check out our website at outlier.uchicago.edu/s3 for more STEM School fun.

I am curious to know whether the good practices you identified in STEM schools are applicable to STEM teaching and learning in non-STEM schools.

I study STEM integration and have been asked often, “If STEM is a focus, what does my child lose out on?” I find this a really interesting question. How would you answer it?

I enjoyed the video, and your document on the 8 elements from your website. One of the key “community” behaviors is “Staff shares with others practices they enact…” and also in these schools there’s teacher collaboration and reflection. These are hard to make happen in most schools. What have these schools done (or some of them, I imagine there’s a lot of variation) to really make teacher collaboration and reflection part of their cultures?

This is an excellent, detailed model of what a STEM school really is as opposed to the more normal amorphous concept. One thing that does concern me with STEM in general and your model as presented (I will visit your website) is a lack of any focus on civics or humanities -sometimes subsumed under the concept of STEAM) Do you address this concern at all in your model?

I really like the ‘woman on the street’ introduction to this video. It really helps the audience understand the focus of the project. Your data appears to be a lot of self-reporting and document analysis. Have you observed students and teachers? How do you make use of student scores on assignments and tests as part of your evaluation?

Hi David – We do observe and interview teachers and students at a sub-sample of our participating schools (in addition to teacher/student/school leader surveys at all participating schools). Analysis of these pieces is forthcoming. We do collect some state test scores (and grades) from many of our schools. We will examine differences in implementation (teacher strategies and student participation in various strategies) on achievement. However, this analysis contains many methodological challenges – for example, dealing with school fixed effects and lack of consistent data across states and districts. In addition, we don’t necessarily feel that standardized test scores should always be “the bar” that STEM schools are held to. Standardized tests have a number of limitations, and many of our schools tend to focus much less on standardized test-taking than traditional schools. Instead they focus on different goals, such as preparing students with strong 21st century skills (communication, collaboration, time management, organization, problem-solving, leadership, etc.) They work to prepare students to be flexible and have strong strategies in place for careers and college. Thus, a large focus of our outcome research will be on students’ attitudes and self-perceptions about themselves, STEM, and their future. We feel there is also a definite need for research that examines longer-term outcomes for STEM schools that really fit the goals of these schools. (And in fact, this is a challenge for educators beyond STEM schools.) As inclusive STEM high schools are beginning to have cohorts of graduates progress 4-5 years or more after HS graduation, studying some of these outcomes is becoming plausible.

Hi Melanie! You’re awesome.

Good review of what is a STEM school.