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4
Conditions That Promote
STEM Success in Schools
W
hatever approach teachers take in the classroom, their work is
affected by numerous factors beyond their direct control. Par-
ticularly important are factors that affect teachers’ knowledge
and skills—their preparation, support for new teachers, and ongoing pro-
fessional development—and the climate and organization of the schools
in which they teach. Suzanne Wilson and Elaine Allensworth addressed
these two topics with a focus on teachers and schools, respectively. The
final section covers a panel discussion on partnerships between schools
and other organizations.
SUPPORTS FOR TEACHERS
There is a significant body of work on questions about teacher prepa-
ration, induction into the profession, and continued development for
STEM teachers, Suzanne Wilson noted. However, much of it is grounded
in a vision of a particular kind of teaching (Wilson, 2011). “That is, prac -
titioners and scholars are interested in teacher support systems that lead
teachers to teach in the ways that research and policy suggest they ‘should’
teach” (Wilson, 2011, p. 2). Wilson reviewed the literature that pertains to
STEM teachers, but she noted that researchers have not focused much
on subject-specific preparation, induction, or professional development.
Often the developers of a preparation or induction program have a
broad goal for changing what is happening in schools. Research about
programs with that sort of purpose might have the goal of establishing
43
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44 SUCCESSFUL STEM EDUCATION
cause-and-effect relationships or the research might be intended to iden-
tify ways to “move the system forward,” she observed. Fewer studies
examine whether a program prepares teachers who can enhance student
learning and engagement.
Research papers in this area also often use teacher preparation or
induction as a platform for exploring other issues of interest, she added.
For example, because there is considerable interest in the issue of teacher
identity in science teacher preparation, the results of many studies focus
on claims about teacher identity (Wilson, 2011). Fewer studies directly
address questions about what makes particular teacher supports effective.
Nevertheless, as several summaries of the literature on teacher prepa-
ration have indicated, a few features are associated with relatively more
effective teacher preparation:
• requiring teacher candidates to take more courses in their chosen
content area;
• requiring a capstone project (e.g., a portfolio of work done in
classrooms or a research paper);
• providing teacher candidates with practical coursework to learn
specific practices;
• providing teacher candidates with sufficient opportunities to
learn about the curriculum in their local district; and
• providing student teaching experience, carefully overseeing that
experience, and ensuring that there is congruence between
that experience and later teaching assignments.
The issue of what curriculum teachers are prepared to teach is very
significant, Wilson added. Among the approximately 1,200 traditional
and more than 140 alternative teacher preparation programs currently
in operation, she explained, “most do not know what . . . curriculum
. . . their teacher candidates will be teaching.”1 Thus, new teachers must
spend time learning what to do with a curriculum they have never seen.
In light of the lack of a core curriculum for teacher preparation, Wilson
noted that “some teacher education researchers have begun focusing on
core practices” that are key to effective teaching (see Wilson, 2011, p. 5). In
particular, she noted, Windschitl et al. (2010) have identified core practices
as those that are used frequently with all students, focus on topics that
1 The characterization of teacher preparation programs as traditional and alternative does
not reflect a meaningful distinction, Wilson noted, because these categories overlap mark -
edly in practice. However, research on the differences has been helpful in identifying some
of the elements that make teacher preparation effective; see National Research Council
(2010) on this point.
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CONDITIONS THAT PROMOTE STEM SUCCESS IN SCHOOLS
are central to the discipline or subject being taught but can apply to dif -
ferent topics and teaching approaches, and can be articulated and taught.
These practices can be used by beginning teachers, but they can also be
used in increasingly sophisticated ways as teachers gain experience. Core
practices should also “play a recognizable role in a larger, coherent system
of instruction,” Wilson said, that would encompass the content students
will learn and the assessments that will be used to track their learning.
The majority of new teachers receive some sort of induction program
or support, but there is very little empirical evidence about what aspects
of induction make a difference for teachers’ effectiveness because very
few studies have explored the specific features of these programs. There
is some evidence that teachers who participate in an induction program
are more likely to stay in the field and to be satisfied with their jobs. This
outcome is important because the research shows that the students of
teachers who have been in the field for 3-5 years have higher achievement
scores than students of newer teachers have, Wilson noted. Some evidence
also suggests that coaching is useful and that a match between the coach
and the subject matter being taught makes a difference.
The literature on professional development, in Wilson’s view, “still
consists largely of a nominated list of best practices,” though there is some
promising research under way. The best practices include the following:
• focusing on developing teachers’ knowledge and capacity to
teach specific subject matter;
• addressing problems and issues that teachers experience in their
classrooms;
• structuring the program around concrete tasks in which teachers
teach, assess their students, observe them, and reflect on their
practice; and
• allowing sufficient time for teachers to engage in a teacher devel-
opment program.
Wilson characterized the current state of teacher preparation, induc-
tion, and professional development as “a carnival.” She chose this meta-
phor to capture a reality in which there are excellent programs, terrible
programs, and many in between, and in which there are many vendors
and many sorts of goals. The system is both incoherent and flat, she sug -
gested, in the sense that, for example, “hardly ever is there an opportunity
for a teacher to build on what she has learned from a teacher induction
program during a professional development program.” The system “isn’t
even loosely coupled,” so teachers and teacher candidates must make do
with the programs and supports that are available, however haphazard
they may be.
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46 SUCCESSFUL STEM EDUCATION
Wilson suggested a few reasons why this nonsystem exists. Many dif-
ferent institutions—universities, school districts, vendors, cultural insti -
tutions, and funders—play a part in and influence these programs. They
answer to different constituencies and have different purposes. They also
serve teacher candidates and teachers who vary across many dimen-
sions. “Participants in various teacher development programs enter with
a wildly different array of experiences, knowledge, and skill” (Wilson,
2011, p. 15), making it difficult for those who develop and run profes-
sional development programs to plan coherent programs.
Moreover, there is no centralization of structure, requirements, goals,
or funding—which could be tools for coordinating policies, practices,
and resources to support a sustained focus on professional development.
Instead, as Wilson noted, “one program will come in with a textbook.
Another will come in with collaboration between a school and university
researchers on some sort of curriculum or assessment that they have
developed.” At the same time, states and districts frequently introduce
new mandates that require those who develop and run induction and
professional development programs to incorporate new information or
material. What is missing, Wilson observed, is the coherence and align -
ment that would allow the system as a whole to pursue clear-cut goals. In
this regard, she noted, “We just add things on . . . we do not collectively
say ‘this is what we are working on.’”
There are levers for influencing the system, however. For example,
state policies can address the structure and content of and funding for
teacher preparation and supports, as well as the characteristics of students
who enter teacher education programs. District policies may affect teacher
assignments and the curricula and texts teachers will use. Universities’
policies influence the nature and content of their teacher preparation
programs, as well as the potential for cross-university attention to content
preparation for teachers. Principals may promote a collaborative culture
among teachers and also influence the resources (such as models and
mentors) available for teachers.
Wilson also noted that there is currently quite a lot of innovation
in terms of teacher preparation (less in induction), but that there is not
enough good research. She said she concurred with Jere Confrey, who
suggested looking at the kinds of variables that might make a difference.
She noted that using measures of the value a teacher adds—such as by
using student scores at the end of a teacher support program—provides
some data, “but what you have to actually do is design studies that look at
all these mediating variables” in order to understand what is really effec -
tive. A participant also addressed this point, noting that a U.S. Depart-
ment of Education innovations and improvement program has required
evidence of effectiveness before anything can be funded at scale, but
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CONDITIONS THAT PROMOTE STEM SUCCESS IN SCHOOLS
that “most of the innovations that were funded were 20 or 30 years old
because it took that long to have the kind of evidence of an effectiveness
that would be expected.”
The fact that the curriculum for teachers is “flat” is perhaps the most
fundamental problem, Wilson said, because “there is no way for a teacher
to develop her knowledge of the content and content-based teaching
practice over time in increasingly sophisticated ways.” As a research base
grows that illuminates best practices in a richer way, it should provide a
stronger basis for policies that bring coherence to the system. Lists of “best
practices” at present are easily misinterpreted. For example, an empiri -
cally based finding that professional development is most effective when
a significant amount of time is allocated to it is often translated simply
into a minimum number of hours, regardless of program quality. Addi -
tional research on the particular features that make extensive programs
effective could provide insights that might allow others to improve the
quality of their programs.
SCHOOL CHARACTERISTICS
A lot of hope has been invested in two strategies for improving stu-
dent achievement, Elaine Allensworth commented. At a time when the
pressure is on public schools to prepare all students for college, despite
never before having successfully prepared more than about 30 percent, the
hope is that improving the teacher workforce and making curricula more
rigorous will provide the change that is needed. However, Allensworth
stressed, evidence from research on the organizational structure of Chi-
cago’s public schools suggests that “even if you get these things perfect, if
you don’t consider the context and you focus on these strategies narrowly,
you are not going to do a single thing to improve student achievement
in our underperforming schools and you may actually make it worse.”
One study (Bryk et al., 2009) examined 200 Chicago schools, all of
which were performing very poorly in the early 1990s: the research-
ers wanted to know why half of them improved dramatically and half
stayed the same or got worse. They were able to use a wealth of data—
including longitudinal survey results, student records and test results,
and community and crime data—to compare the two groups of schools.
All of the schools were in low-income neighborhoods and served student
populations that were 90 percent minority. Figure 4-1 depicts the sharp
divergence in the performance of the two groups.
Based on their analysis, the researchers concluded that five organi-
zational supports were crucial for school improvement—and made the
difference for the 100 schools that improved so dramatically. They pre-
sented these supports in a framework because the supports do not have
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48 SUCCESSFUL STEM EDUCATION
Percentage of Students Scoring at or Above
National Norms in Mathematics 1990-1996
Percentage
FIGURE 4-1 Mathematics performance of students in Chicago schools with high-
est and lowest growth, 1990-1996.
SOURCE: Allensworth (2011). Adapted from Bryk et al. (2009).
the same potential benefit in isolation that they have when they function
together: see Figure 4-2. For example, principal leadership is necessary,
but it must be strategically focused on developing the other four supports,
Allensworth explained. The teachers’ qualifications were less important
than the way in which teachers worked together to take collective respon-
sibility for the school. Similarly, the parents needed not just to participate
in school activities, but also to be brought in as partners in their children’s
education, and community organizations needed to be involved in a way
that was aligned with the school’s instructional programming. Two other
critical elements are a climate that is safe and orderly and supportive to
students and an aligned curriculum (that is closely linked to standards)
with engaging, student-centered pedagogy.
More specifically, the researchers found that among schools with a
well-aligned curriculum and a strong professional community of teachers,
48-57 percent improved substantially in both reading and mathematics.
Among schools in which the adults failed to work cooperatively, none
improved, and 41-59 percent were stagnant. The real value of these ele-
ments, Allensworth explained, lay in their combined strength. Schools
that were strong in at least three of the areas were 10 times more likely
to improve in reading and mathematics than schools that were weak in
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CONDITIONS THAT PROMOTE STEM SUCCESS IN SCHOOLS
FIGURE 4-2 Five essential supports for school improvement.
SOURCE: Allensworth (2011). Data from Bryk et al. (2009).
three or more. Sustained weakness over time in even one of the elements
also appeared to undermine a school’s improvement.
The researchers wondered whether these elements are equally impor-
tant in all types of schools. They divided Chicago’s schools into groups
on the basis of their racial composition and the economic backgrounds
of their students (in Chicago, racial and economic segregation are closely
tied). The researchers found that schools serving disadvantaged commu-
nities are less likely to show improvements over time: see Figure 4-3. They
also found that the most disadvantaged schools are least likely to have the
five critical supports. However, if those schools had strong internal sup -
ports in all five areas, they were just as likely to improve as advantaged
schools that had the supports. The more advantaged schools could better
afford to have weaknesses in a few of the elements, but, in general, the
essential supports were also more likely to develop in schools in areas
where there was strong community cohesion—where people participated
in local organizations such as churches and community groups—and
where there were lower crime rates.
It may seem obvious that these five elements are important,
Allensworth observed, but most improvement strategies are generally
much narrower: “Just get the right curriculum. Let’s fire all the bad teach-
ers and then hire new ones.” Such strategies do not focus on building the
organizational capacity of schools. Other studies Allensworth reviewed
highlight this point. For example, DeAngelis and Presley (2011) used a
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50 SUCCESSFUL STEM EDUCATION
Percentage of Schools That Stagnated or Improved
Racially
African-American Mostly
Integrated
Latino Diverse
Minority
Low Average
Very Low
SES SES
SES
FIGURE 4-3 Comparisons of schools’ improvement by characteristics of student
populations.
SOURCE: Allensworth (2011). Adapted from Bryk et al. (2009).
wealth of data on Illinois teachers to examine the relationship between
their characteristics and student learning. They found that while teacher
qualifications were associated with value-added scores in reading and
mathematics, organizational structures in the schools actually mattered
more. More specifically, schools with highly qualified teachers had much
higher learning gains than schools with weaker teachers, but schools that
had weak climates—defined by the level of order and safety—did not
make gains, even if they had highly qualified teachers. In schools with
weak climates, teacher qualifications “made absolutely no difference,”
Allensworth emphasized. These results suggest that good teachers cannot
be effective in schools that lack a supportive climate, and other research
shows that teachers leave if they do not believe they can be effective in a
school (Allensworth, Ponnisciak, and Mazzeo, 2009).
Allensworth noted that Chicago has also worked hard to reform its
curriculum, with the goal of ensuring that all students will take more
rigorous classes and there will be more equity among them. She observed
that “de-tracking” students was identified by a number of other present -
ers as a critical improvement tool. In Chicago, however, the result has
been a decline in achievement.
Chicago began in 1997 to require all of its students to take a college
preparatory curriculum and eliminated all of its remedial classes. There
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CONDITIONS THAT PROMOTE STEM SUCCESS IN SCHOOLS
was no concomitant rise in test scores. Instead, attendance and gradu-
ation rates declined, more students failed courses, and fewer students
went on to 4-year colleges (Allensworth et al., 2009; Montgomery and
Allensworth, 2010). Thinking that the curriculum had not been imple-
mented well, the district intensified its focus on aligning the curriculum
with professional development and providing teachers with coaching.
But increased time on mathematics and improved, interactive pedagogy
also brought no improvements in test scores or students’ grades (Sporte,
Correa, and Hart, 2009).
Follow-up research showed that increased rigor does little to increase
learning if schools and classrooms are disorderly—indeed, order is a
prerequisite to success. However, maintaining order becomes more dif -
ficult when demands on students increase because students tend to
withdraw when work gets harder, unless support for them increases
as well. When order declines, the learning climate for all students is
affected. In addition, schools may not have the professional capacity to
teach demanding classes to all students.
Two decades of research in Chicago schools show that there are no
“magic bullets,” Allensworth concluded. Narrow interventions are tools
for making improvements, but they should not be ends in themselves, she
argued. “School improvement requires systemic work on multiple fronts”
to build the five essential supports: school leadership, parent-community
ties, strong professional capacity, a student-centered learning climate, and
instructional guidance.
Respondent Milbrey McLaughlin highlighted the importance of
themes evident in Allensworth’s presentation that were also part of other
workshop discussions. The descriptions of individual schools and the
discussion of practices that support STEM education provided many
examples of what teachers and students gain when schools are sites of
collaboration and communal learning. For example, Confrey called atten -
tion to the value of collaborations among researchers and practitioners to
develop improvements for particular educational contexts. Wilson and
Schmidt both called attention to the opportunities that are lost when
there is insufficient coordination among the elements that influence STEM
education, including curriculum for students and for teacher candidates,
textbooks, and professional development. At present, McLaughlin noted,
Americans not only disagree about what students should be taught, but
also lack both a common framework to determine what success means and
a common vocabulary with which to investigate and address problems.
Policy makers have a funny way of responding to such ideas,
McLaughlin suggested. She noted that a few years ago, when there was a
flurry of attention to the importance of teacher communities, one district
responded by issuing lists to teachers of colleagues with whom they were
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52 SUCCESSFUL STEM EDUCATION
assigned to collaborate. This may seem silly, but there are few clear guides
as to how to create teacher communities, she added. At the same time,
accountability structures exert an opposing force, often seeming to pit
teachers against one another in a competitive sense, rather than encourag-
ing them to share data, collaborate about the approaches they have found
to be effective, and speak candidly about the challenges they face.
For McLaughlin, these ideas highlight the need for both micro- and
macrolevel policies. As an analogy, she cited the Gates Foundation’s
investment in vaccines. This is a macro strategy she observed, to target
diseases on a large scale. But to be effective it has to be implemented on
a micro scale: it only works if every individual in a target population is
vaccinated, which requires persistent efforts to reach and educate people
community by community.
PARTNERSHIPS TO ENHANCE STEM EDUCATION
In a panel discussion of partnerships between schools and external
organizations to enhance their capacity to offer quality STEM education
and learning experiences, Martin Gartzman, Vanessa Lujan, and Linda
Rosen discussed aspects of the education system that can be positively
influenced by different sorts of partnerships.
Seeking a Marriage of Interests
Martin Gartzman discussed multidistrict collaborations that provide
support for teachers and administrators. He observed that a number of
the presentations at the workshop had demonstrated how easily even
very well-intentioned and long-standing reforms (such as that at Railside
School) can be undermined by changes in policy, personnel, or direction.
Partnerships between schools and outside groups are particularly fragile,
and in his view what determines their success is not what they tackle
(e.g., professional development, curriculum, or afterschool programs),
but whether there is confluence between the needs of the district and
the interests of the partner. He believes the primary driver should be
the needs of the district, although in many cases external partners have
preconceived ideas or research goals and are seeking a partner school in
which to implement those ideas. Collaborating and managing the partner-
ship requires considerable time and energy from both parties and works
best when the interests of both are served.
Gartzman also agreed that innovations that do not address the core
instructional program tend to become “feel-good initiatives.” As an exam-
ple, he described a curriculum partnership between Chicago schools and
local museums, in which the museums developed curriculum guides for
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CONDITIONS THAT PROMOTE STEM SUCCESS IN SCHOOLS
school field trips. However, the district had not articulated a clear vision
of its mathematics and science goals for these trips, and the guides conse -
quently did not address core instructional topics. In response, district staff
worked with the museums to replace independent activities structured
around their exhibits with activities that drew on museum resources in
service of curricular objectives.
Using Partnerships to Build Capacity
Vanessa Lujan emphasized that partnerships can influence district
and state policy (from the top down) and teacher and district capacity
(from the bottom up). Foundation-supported and community-based part-
nerships (including informal science institutions such as museums), she
suggested, that are focused on afterschool programs, curriculum imple-
mentation, and professional development can be designed in part to build
networks of leaders—superintendents, science coordinators, curriculum
leaders, and lead science teachers and out-of-school-educators—who
can bring new skills to their work. Districts and schools may encounter
policy barriers, however. For example, schools that have been placed in
program improvement status because of inadequate test scores may opt
out of such opportunities, she explained. Schools move in and out of this
status, which makes it difficult for informal science instititutions to build
and sustain partnerships within a district. Teacher turnover and layoffs
resulting from severe budget problems also undermine team-building
and engagement.
Drawing on Different Kinds of Expertise
Linda Rosen described the contribution of Change the Equation, a
network of more than 110 CEOs (chief executive officers, of corporations)
who “pledge to connect and align their work to transform STEM learning
in the United States.” The very existence of the organization, she sug -
gested, sends an important message. The participating companies have
been interested in and supported STEM education for a long time, but
they recognized that their investments “have not brought the return they
might have hoped for.” Together, the companies are investing more than
half a billion dollars annually, as well as allowing release time for their
employees to volunteer for STEM programs during working hours.
The organization partners are increasingly aware of the importance
of third-party evidence of effectiveness, however, and they have focused
on evaluation, Rosen said. They are looking for programs that are not
“dependent on a charismatic visionary,” but have been demonstrated to
be replicable, she explained. Many of their investments are in nonprofit
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54 SUCCESSFUL STEM EDUCATION
organizations that develop STEM education programs with a track record
for effectiveness. They are willing to invest in formal programs that sup-
port teachers and students in schools but are particularly drawn to informal
education, in part because schools and districts can be very challenging for
them to understand and navigate, while they can work with out-of-school
partners more easily and see the impact of their work more immediately.
When working with schools and districts, they often seek a commitment
from the district so that there is a reasonable expectation that the program
can be sustained after the partnership ends.
Overview
All three panelists agreed that it is important to find programs that
can be scaled up to benefit not just one or two schools but hundreds, but
they also noted how difficult that can be in practice. Gartzman reminded
the group of earlier discussions of the importance of school context to
outcomes. He suggested that the business community may underestimate
what is required to achieve the desired outcomes. A participant noted that
the focus on informal partnerships and working around district policies
was a cause for concern and wondered what it takes to develop successful
partnerships within formal K-12 STEM education.
Lujan agreed with Gartzman that listening carefully to districts to
understand the challenges that impede their progress is critical. In the
context of the Lawrence Hall of Science’s BaySci project, she noted, teach -
ers worried that they could not teach science effectively, given the con-
straints on classroom time because of testing requirements for mathemat -
ics and English language arts. BaySci staff worked with the districts and
school leaders to help them convey to teachers that they had “permission”
to spend time on science and help them reconcile competing demands
from the district, the school, and the classroom.
Rosen added that the CEOs had found success in focusing on formal
professional development, and Gartzman cited as just one example the
Chicago algebra initiative, which was designed to increase the number
of students taking algebra by 8th grade. They worked with Chicago-area
universities to help increase the number of teachers who had the prepa -
ration and credentials to teach algebra: the universities created a 1-year
course, which they taught jointly, as well as a credentialing exam.
