Grading K-12 performance on STEM and second languages

Since Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, school quality has primarily been measured in terms of reading and math scores. While there’s a lot to be said for keeping close tabs on how well students are mastering the basics, focusing exclusively on these skills can leave us insufficiently attuned to how well students are faring in other subjects that are crucial to their career success and to the nation’s international competitiveness.

Two of the skill sets that matter most are STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects and world languages. The U.S. Department of Commerce reported in 2011 that the projected growth rate for STEM jobs between 2008 and 2018 was 7 percentage points higher than for non-STEM jobs (17 percent and 9.8 percent growth, respectively) and that STEM workers earned 26 percent more on average than non-STEM workers. That same year, 70 percent of employers predicted that Spanish proficiency would be moderately or highly valued between 2011 and 2021, and 42 percent said the same when it came to proficiency in Chinese.

{mosads}Fortunately, a new report helps shine a light on how the U.S. is faring in these critical areas. In September, the Chamber of Commerce released Leaders & Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on K-12 Educational Effectiveness (a co-author of this piece, Hess, was an adviser on the analysis). The report examines the share of students in each state who are passing Advanced Placement (AP) courses in STEM subjects or in world languages. The results suggest that a lot of work lies ahead.

Parents and taxpayers should care about two big things when it comes to these areas: how many kids are being prepared and how well they’re being prepared. This means that states should not strive merely to enroll students in these courses, or merely to produce good results with a select handful of students. The goal ought to be quantity and quality.

The report measured the share of graduating students in each state who received at least a 3 on one or more AP STEM exam and the share who did so on at least one AP language exam. Put another way, a state’s score is the number of students who passed an exam divided by the total number of graduating students in that state.

When it comes to STEM pass rates, the top five states were Massachusetts (16 percent), Maryland (15.9 percent), Connecticut (15.4 percent), Virginia (13.9 percent), New York (13.7 percent) and New Jersey (13.1 percent). The median performance was 7.5 percent. These results are hardly cause for celebration. In the nation’s best-performing states, not even one in six high school graduates had passed an AP STEM exam. But the worst-performing states made those top five look sensational. The bottom five performers were North Dakota and Nebraska (tied at 4 percent), West Virginia (3.6 percent), New Mexico (3.5 percent), Louisiana (1.9 percent) and Mississippi, bringing up the rear at 1.2 percent. Just 17 states had even 10 percent of graduates passing at least one AP STEM exam.

The results are similarly disappointing when it comes to language skills. Only two states had at least 5 percent of graduates passing even one AP World Languages exam, 20 states had a rate of less than 1 percent, and the median performance was just 1.2 percent. The top five performers were California (8.78 percent), Florida (5.23 percent), Texas (4.98 percent), Massachusetts (4.81 percent), and the District of Columbia (4.36 percent). The bottom five were Louisiana (0.32 percent), Hawaii (0.20 percent), West Virginia (0.12 percent), Mississippi (0.05 percent) and North Dakota (0.04 percent).

But these dismal rates may even overstate the degree to which schools prepare students in foreign languages. In the three top-performing states (California, Florida and Texas), roughly 90 percent of AP language exams were taken in Spanish — and those are states with huge Spanish-speaking populations. So it’s likely that their performance may say less about school-based instruction than about what students are learning at home.

The fact that states are performing so poorly in educating students in STEM and world languages represents a major missed opportunity to prepare students for 21st-century employment, and prepare the country to thrive internationally. As the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology wrote in a 2010 report, “The success of the United States in the 21st century — its wealth and welfare — will depend on the ideas and skills of its population. … As the world becomes increasingly technological, the value of these national assets will be determined in no small measure by the effectiveness of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in the United States.” Boosting reading and math scores is certainly important, but there are many other challenges facing states and students today. Some states are doing a far better job than others addressing those challenges, but it’s hard to conclude that even the best states are succeeding.

Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Hatfield is a research assistant in education policy at the American Enterprise Institute.