In 2015, 40 governors committed to providing their K-12 students with equal access to educational opportunity by ensuring that all of their classrooms were connected to high-speed broadband. During 2016, 34 of these governors took action, taking advantage of the opportunity presented by the modernization of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) E-rate program, to begin the process of delivering on this commitment.
This document is an outgrowth of the 2016 National Education Technology Plan (NETP). The NETP presents a shared vision and call to action for transformational learning enabled by technology at all levels of our education system.
The report, “Early STEM Matters: Providing High-Quality STEM Experiences for All Young Learners,” is the culmination of two years of work by the Early Childhood STEM Working Group, which was co-organized by Erikson Institute and UChicago STEM Education at the University of Chicago. With the report, the working group, which includes scholars, policy makers, curriculum developers, and educators from across the United States, aims to inform the public discussion around STEM experiences in the early years.
Reading science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) trade books is the perfect way for students to build literacy skills while learning STEM content.
In the global labor market, computational thinking skills and knowledge of computer science are required in nearly all career fields. What’s more, jobs in computer science, information technology (IT) and related fields represent a large and growing sector of the economy. By 2020, as many as 4.6 million out of 9.2 million jobs in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields will be computer-related, according to the Association for Computing Machinery.
The maximum advertised download speeds amongst the most popular service tiers offered by ISPs have increased from 12-30 Mbps in March 2011 (when the program first launched) to 100-300 Mbps in September 2015. These increases are not uniform across access technologies and have been driven primarily by the cable industry, with smaller increases in fiber based systems. Average DSL speeds have increased only slightly over these years and satellite speeds, over a shorter time interval, have remained constant.
The purpose of this report is to shed light on just how widely diffused the country’s innovation-driven, high-tech economy really is, so members of Congress and other policymakers can find common cause in advancing an agenda that builds up the shared foundations of national strength in a globally integrated marketplace.
The data presented here are from a large scale, nationally-representative survey of African American youth (ages 11 to 17) and their parents, supplemented and informed by a series of ten focus groups with African American parents and youth across the country (for more information on the demographics of the survey and focus group samples, please see the Methodology).
The 2016 report is a 100-page tome packed with specific, technical recommendations that the contributors believe will be important for Congress to fund and support as robotics starts to take center stage across U.S. industries.
“The early learning community has been wisely cautious about using technology with our youngest children,” said Libby Doggett, deputy assistant secretary for Policy and Early Learning at the Department of Education. “But technology, when used appropriately with caring adults, can help children learn in new ways–and lessen the growing inequity in our country.”
