Managing for Effective Teachers and Leaders

TEACHING & LEADERSHIP

Connecting to Your Work

How can you mobilize to help ensure an effective teacher for every student and principal for every school? Read recommended actions from The Opportunity Equation report. MORE
 

2011 UPDATE

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In the two years since its release, the Opportunity Equation has promoted the goal of excellent, equitable STEM education for all students. This update covers major developments and highlights questions and priorities for the future. MORE

 
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Initiative

Partnering for Excellence: STEM Partnership Innovations

Designing Partnerships for Excellence

Our nation’s children need richer and more engaging STEM learning. If we are to bring new ideas to long-standing problems and new talent to emerging opportunities, we need to educate all of our young people to higher levels of understanding in the STEM fields. Despite the heroic efforts of our nation’s best teachers and principals, many of our schools are ill-equipped to do that; and yet our communities are filled with many of the world’s most talented professionals in these fields. Top research institutions, universities, STEM-focused corporations, medical facilities, and government agencies (to name a few) are located minutes from schools. Most operate in complete isolation from schools where teachers yearn for more depth in their content matter and students are disengaged from STEM subjects. Imagine what could happen if the skills, content knowledge, and experience of those institutions’ professionals were infused into schools to support teachers and engage students.

What if schools and STEM-rich institutions partnered to connect STEM professionals to teachers and students in meaningful, lasting ways that most existing partnerships – because of the short-term nature of their designs – are unable to achieve? Imagine “long-term, part-time” partnerships that are meaningful for students, meaningful for adults, and sustainable for employers, and that transform the style and depth of STEM learning in schools. (Read more about the potential power of STEM professionals in this piece.) 

 

The Competition

Last year Opportunity Equation and Carnegie Corporation of New York launched an online competition to identify and spur development of partnerships with this long-term/part-time design, “Partnering for Excellence: Innovations in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Education,” an Ashoka Changemakers competition. More than 250 innovators entered the competition, and  seven entrants (out of a total of 265) were awarded with prizes totaling $140,000 from sponsors including Google and the Amgen Foundation. (Read more about the design of the competition in this Huffington Post blog)

National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF) and Purdue University College of Engineering’s EPICS High took home the judges’ prizes, while Citizen School claimed the top spot in the popular vote. NCTAF’s entry entitled “STEM Learning Studios: Transform Schools from Teaching Organizations to Learning Organizations” brings real-world scientific applications directly to the classroom by pairing STEM professionals with interdisciplinary teams of four to six teachers who work together to develop meaningful, hands-on projects for students. “Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) High” by Purdue University connects high-need and underrepresented student populations with STEM learning in meaningful ways, to explore social justice issues (by associating academic standards and skills with challenges faced within the community) while simultaneously providing these students with STEM-centered support and career-focused mentoring services through relationships with local STEM professionals. Citizens Schools’ “Recruiting STEM experts to Advance Achievement, Lift Aspirations, and Re-Imagine Schools” brings STEM professionals into schools through apprenticeship programs that both inspire and engage students in STEM fields and provide successful examples of an innovative use of extended learning time.

But the competition was designed to go beyond identifying, recognizing, and awarding the top entries: it was designed with a longer-term vision in mind for more than just a few applicants. The goal was to begin to build a community of innovators of long-term/part-time partnerships.

 

Building a Community of Practice

To seed that community, Opportunity Equation and Carnegie Corporation selected those applicants whose innovations most exemplify the long-term/part-time approach – or that represent complementary approaches able to amplify success. These 34 entries from districts, non-profits, and corporations are of varying sizes, reach, and areas of focus.

With the intention of building out a community of innovators around this long-term/part-time approach, Carnegie Corporation of New York and Opportunity Equation are fostering a STEM education community to create opportunities for the innovative group of 34 applicants to collaborate, share best practices, and design and implement fresh ideas, methods, and programs.

In March, members of this community came together for a day and a half of shared learning, collective storytelling, and fruitful networking at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. They walked away with a powerful realization. Associates, from all parts of the country, are striving simultaneously toward the same objective using a similar approach – to ensure high quality STEM learning for all students by bringing STEM professionals into the classroom. After many long hours of tough questions and deep discussions, a cohort of colleagues materialized, recognizing their shared work as a young, but growing, field within STEM education. They created a collective identity and simultaneously strengthened the messages of their individual organizations. To learn more, watch the videos of their impactful shared story as well as the fascinating narratives behind each of the unique organizations.

 

Additional Competition Details

Competition Judges: 

Competition Prize Winners:  

Judges Prizes of $30,000 each (sponsored by AFT Innovation Fund, Alcoa Foundation, Google, and competition co-sponsors Opportunity Equation):

People’s Choice Award of $10,000 (sponsored by Noyce Foundation and the competition co-sponsors)

Amgen Foundation Prize of $10,000

ExxonMobil Foundation of $10,000

Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Innovations in Life Sciences Prize of $10,000 each

Jhumki Basu Prize of $10,000 each