I want more students from a broad range of backgrounds to have the opportunity to pursue careers in engineering, science, computing and the health professions. I know – from research and my own experiences in the classroom – that how well students prepare in high school correlates strongly with whether these students succeed in college majors in these fields. In recent years, I’ve been doing what I can to help teachers, administrators and parents prepare their students better for college STEM majors.
Yet I regularly encounter vehement opposition to my efforts. While she was Commissioner of Education, Pam Stewart told me that she didn’t have any interest in high school physics because it wasn’t something that all students should take. The research on how important high school physics is to students who might choose to pursue STEM majors in college didn’t seem to interest her at all.
There seems to be a third viewpoint as well – that the only educational metrics that matter at the secondary and postsecondary levels are the rates at which students earn credentials – high school diplomas, associate’s and bachelor’s degrees, and industrial certifications. Despite the clear disparities in the economic value of bachelors’ degrees, many education policy-makers and analysts treat all bachelors’ degrees the same: Interdisciplinary social sciences (ranked in the bottom 25 by salary by Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce) equals engineering (which dominates the top 25).
These are not beliefs held in bad faith. I believe Pam Stewart has a heart of gold. Policy-makers who zero in on the rates at which students earn high school diplomas and whatever-the-field college degrees are informed by their own experiences and the experiences of those close to them.
A little more than a decade ago, a graduate student in FSU’s science education program provided a framework that I’ve used to understand the viewpoints of those who don’t agree with me. That graduate student, Todd Hutner, is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama. His advisor was Sherry Southerland, who is in charge of FSU’s teacher education program.
Professor Hutner’s master’s thesis described his development of a survey instrument for assessing which of three competing goals science teachers find most important in their teaching. Hutner adopted three goals described by David Labaree in 1997 – democratic equality, social efficiency and social mobility. Here is how Hutner described these three goals:
Democratic equality favors an educational climate of equality and equity (Labaree, 1997b). The main purpose of educational policy that favors democratic equality recognizes that upon adulthood, each student will assume the responsibility of citizenship. Therefore, proponents of democratic equality argue that schools transmit a common core set of values and knowledge, thereby ensuring some stability in the body politic, and that students be given opportunities to understand their civic responsibilities. Furthermore, democratic equality advocates equitable treatment of students, as that very much promotes a cohesive society.
Social efficiency, as its name implies, favors an educational system of efficiency and tracking (Labaree, 1997b). For advocates of this goal, the primary purpose of education is to produce a workforce that will meet the demands of the labor market. Within this goal, education seeks to identify the most likely career path for each student, and provide that student with the skills necessary to successfully fill their market role. This leads to a system that promotes, among other things, tracking and high stakes testing, all in the name of economic utility.
Lastly, the social mobility goal promotes an educational system that favors the upward mobility of academic elites (Labaree, 1997b). Whereas the previous two goals favored public utility, proponents of social mobility view education as a private good. In the educational system structured around this goal, education is devalued, relegated to the role of a credential (Labaree, 1997a). Furthermore, knowledge is a limited resource, and the purpose of the individual student is to gain more of this good at the expense of other students. Educational competition is promoted, as education itself has no intrinsic value, only the amount obtained relative to others that can be traded in for a desirable social role.
Pam Stewart is clearly in the democratic equality camp.
My advocacy is most consistent with the social efficiency goal, although some might accuse me of being in the social mobility category. I have a great deal of respect for those who pursue the democratic equality goal and I’ve pursued it at various times in my career. Either way, the tone of Hutner’s descriptions of both the social efficiency and social mobility goals make me wonder whether I should confess the goals of my educational advocacy to a priest.
I will suggest that those who exclusively count high school diplomas and college degrees as metrics – without regard to rigor or field of study – value the social mobility goal most highly. I might get some pushback on that, though.
The bottom line is that this goal classification system gives me a framework in which I can understand the disagreements I have with other educators and policy-makers.
In which category (or categories) are the goals of Florida’s K-12 science teachers? Hutner’s thesis was published in 2009, so it is at least possible that his conclusions are outdated – but I suspect not. In validating his instrument, Hutner surveyed 157 Florida science teachers. On the basis of the survey responses, Hutner determined whether each teacher had a democratic equality goal, a social efficiency goal or a social mobility goal – and allowed for the possibility that a teacher had more than one of the three goals.
Hutner concluded that 84 of the 157 teachers he surveyed (54%) held the democratic equality goal – and none of the other two. Forty-nine teachers (31%) held both the democratic equality and social efficiency goals. Another 10 held all three goals, and 13 held none of the three goals. Only one could be classified as social efficiency only, and no teachers could be described as social mobility only.
For me, the bottom line is that 62% of Florida K-12 science teachers do not share my social efficiency goal. These are noble people who care deeply about their students. But it is highly unlikely that they buy into my advocacy for improving the preparation of high school students for college STEM majors.
This result is consistent with my experience. So I usually tread lightly when talking with educators and policy-makers. Disagreement or open hostility do not surprise me. I seldom respond with force – mostly only when my personal integrity is questioned, and that doesn’t happen very often. Even my opponents usually respect my motivations, as I respect theirs.
When Florida’s recovery from the pandemic begins (whenever that is), the beliefs of policy-makers and educators will play even bigger roles in decision-making than they did pre-pandemic. This is one of the reasons for my pessimism regarding the future of the STEM pipeline – the resources that remain after educational budgets are ravaged by budget cuts will likely be devoted almost entirely to activities that benefit all students and are consistent with the democratic equality goal. Those of us who are trying to give students the opportunity to pursue careers in engineering, science, computing and the health professions will have to do so without much help from the K-12 schools, despite their valiant efforts on behalf of our state’s children.
Bridge to Tomorrow 