Assessment - BPS STEM Factor

ASS E SS M E N T

THE BPS STEM FACTOR RACIAL JUSTICE, STEM EDUCATION & THE BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS

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TABLE OF CONTENTS The Current STEM Landscape 5

STEM Solutions Require a Racial Equity Lens & Approach 14 The BPS STEM Factor: A Partnership between the Boston Public Schools & GE

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Evaluation of BPS STEM Factor

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Implications for GE & Its Philanthropic Approach

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Summary of Recommendations for Each Element of Ecosystem & Their Demonstrated Interdependence

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Future Considerations 56 Footnotes & Appendix 59

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INTRODUCTION

STEM EDUCATION, CAREER PIPELINES & URBAN YOUTH IN BOSTON, MA Boston is a hub for high-tech employment in fields such as biotechnology, computer science, and life sciences. The jobs available in Boston’s innovation hub require a highly educated workforce with very specific skill sets centered upon STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and 21st century skills (e.g. collaboration, communication, and problem solving). For those workers that have the education and skills that employers demand, there are numerous opportunities for high-wage jobs in a wide variety of fields.

Boston Public Schools’ (BPS) current curriculum has not shifted quickly enough to adapt to the demands of the innovation economy and the regional job market. Typical students in BPS are rarely afforded the opportunity to gain the type of STEM education and skills that would place them on the educational pathways and career pipelines that could lead to successful futures in these STEM fields.

The prerequisite to building a STEM pipeline is increasing students’ ability to complete a task, take a risk in a new setting, ask questions, transfer skills from previous learning, and embrace the philosophy that failure is an incubator for innovation. Infusing STEM initiatives with boot camps and technical coaching fosters the development of 21st century soft skills (analytical communication, collaboration and professional skills) and enhances students’ analytical hard skills (mastery of courses like mathematics, computer science, biology, and science). This combination helps participants to deconstruct challenges and solve complex problems which are the skills in high demand from employers in STEM sectors.

While a “majority-minority” city, there is vast underrepresentation of people of color from Boston in the city and the broader region’s high-wage STEM jobs, which contributes to an extreme racial wealth gap in the city. Most of the students in the public schools who are shut off from these opportunities are Black and Latinx. This means that intentionally improving educational pathways and career pipelines in STEM becomes a strategy for racial justice. Conversely, by failing to proactively prepare BPS students for STEM careers, we will in fact widen racial disparities.

In order to ensure that the pathways we open to economic opportunity are equitable, BPS STEM Factor has prioritized a strategy to look beyond the eager and engaged “first-row” students in order to draw in “second and third row students” – those who are less likely to raise their hand, be nominated by their teachers, or self-select for inclusion – in STEM career pathways. The return on investment in these students is a diversity of thought leadership and innovation that will enhance future perspective and productivity which is at the foundation of innovation and entrepreneurship.

In order to disrupt this “STEM Opportunity Gap,” we need to do things differently – transforming the ways in which we deliver STEM education and career development for all of BPS students. We believe that major philanthropic investment from Boston corporations in well-designed STEM programs that combine rigorous project-based classroom instruction with real-world internships and social supports can change the game.

As BPS STEM Factor grows, we envision it serving as a feeder system of capable workers to the numerous high-tech employers in the Greater Boston area. By providing robust opportunities for BPS students (especially African American and Latinx youth) to gain STEM skills and apply what they have learned in real-world settings through high-quality internships, we will prepare them with the foundation to succeed in STEM careers, while reducing racial inequities and helping ensure that Massachusetts has the labor force needed to maintain its position as a hub for STEM innovation.

Through the BPS STEM Factor, GE and the Boston Public Schools have been collaboratively responding to Massachusetts tech leaders’ call to improve STEM pipelines for public school students as a critical strategy needed to ensure the future success of their businesses.1 Providing stand-alone grants is not the answer. Building a successful pipeline

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of STEM-skilled workers instead requires intentional and strategic investment in STEM programming that is integrated across school curriculum, community projects and business internships.

1 THE CURRENT STEM LANDSCAPE

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STEM SKILLS ARE ESSENTIAL FOR THE CAREERS OF THE NEW ECONOMY In the United States, there is high demand for talented workers who have the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education and skills needed to meet the demands of the new economy. The need for these skilled workers is expected to increase dramatically in the coming years. Over the next decade, the growth in STEM jobs (13%) in the U.S. will outpace the growth in all other sectors (9%) and the requirement of advanced technical education and skills will be paramount.2 These are high-paying jobs. In fact, the median hourly wage ($38.85) for STEM jobs is more than double that for all other non-STEM jobs ($19.30).3 This trend is reflected in Massachusetts (especially Greater Boston) where there are tremendous opportunities to secure high-wage jobs for those with high levels of education and high technical skills in STEM. The emerging economy is booming in fields like biotechnology, computer science, and life sciences. Nearly half of all new jobs in Massachusetts require STEM skills.4 In the coming years, jobs that require a strong foundation in STEM education will continue to grow exponentially.

For example, the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development predicts that the STEM employment sector in the Greater Boston region will increase between 2014 and 2024 in high-wage occupations, such as software developers, applications (15.9%), computer systems analysts (18.2%) and operations research analysts (31.9%). Moreover, looking more broadly at growing sectors reveals that they both require a strong background in STEM education and produce high salaries, in fields such as Computer and Mathematical (16.5% predicted growth and $94,493 average salary in 2016), Healthcare Practitioners and Technical (15.4% and $100,786) and Life, Physical and Social Science (11.2% and $68,024).5

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LACK OF SKILLED EMPLOYEES TO MEET STEM DEMAND

STEM EDUCATION – PUBLIC SCHOOLS NEED TO IMPROVE

Currently, however, industry leaders consistently argue that there are not enough skilled workers to fill open positions that require high technical skills. There is a STEM talent gap that threatens to undermine our future economic productivity.

The Education Commission of the States makes it clear that “U.S. business leaders cannot find the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) talent they need to stay competitive.”6

There also is a growing consensus that the United States is falling behind in science and math, as well as in “technical” education. Our educational system is not adequately preparing public school students for the STEM jobs of the new economy. According to the Pew Research Centers, the U.S. ranked 38th out of 71 countries in science and 24th in math achievement of 15-year-olds.10 Many communities in the U.S. are now STEM deserts where opportunities for STEM education simply are not provided. In fact, over “half of U.S. high schools do not offer calculus, 4 in 10 do not offer physics, more than 1 in 4 do not offer chemistry, and about 1 in 5 do not offer Algebra II, which is considered a gateway class for STEM success in college.” 11

Again, the national trends are reflected in Massachusetts’ innovation economy. According to Boston Foundation CEO Paul Grogan, the Commonwealth of MA had over 123,000 open high-tech jobs in 2015 but lacked the workers with the education and talent to fill them.7 Locally, 26% of Boston tech employers cite the availability of skilled workers as the biggest challenge of doing business in Massachusetts, yet only 1% of MA businesses cite the local K-12 school system as an advantage.8 BPS STEM Factor supports Grogan’s contention that “It’s clear that education is where efforts should be focused to address the growing skills gap.” 9

In Boston, far too few students, especially youth of color, have access to the challenging math and science content that would adequately prepare them for STEM careers. The need to dramatically improve STEM education in the city is reflected in 2017 MCAS (standardized state assessment) scores, which show that less than 15% of Boston Public Schools 8th graders who took the science exam scored proficient or above.12 These STEM opportunity and achievement gaps burst the potential pipelines to higher education that could feed the demand for skilled STEM employees. Few students, especially students of color, are pursuing degrees in STEM and thus are not prepared for the sectors that need skilled employees. Despite the strong demand and employment forecasts, nearly two-thirds of U.S. college students nationwide do not obtain a degree or certificate in a STEM field.13 One reason for students not pursuing this course of study is the perception that science and math are too challenging. Racist assumptions about the ability of students of color to succeed in STEM magnify the problem of low expectations. These factors contribute to a situation in which over half (52%) of U.S. adults surveyed believe that youth do not pursue a STEM degree because coursework and classes are too hard.14

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THE IMPORTANCE OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR TEACHERS OF STEM Professional development has tremendous importance for IT IS IMPORTANT those teaching STEM education given the broad consensus around the need for science and math teachers to adopt FOR TEACHERS TO new pedagogical practices that dramatically depart from the UNDERSTAND THAT THE lecture style in which most have learned to teach. Research has focused on improving STEM teacher preparation in PROCESS OF CENTERING order to provide student-centered, real-world applicable, and interdisciplinary teaching practices (e.g. engineering and STUDENTS IS AS technology integration into math and science classrooms).

IMPORTANT AS THE It also calls for incorporating “engineering design process” CONTENT KNOWLEDGE. as a key pedagogical practice. Here, students are required “to apply content knowledge to solve problems...develop[ing] THEY MUST LEARN TO new understandings, while refining their ideas,” a process that should allow students to “fail and persevere.” It is import- SHIFT THEIR ROLE TO ant for teachers to understand that the process of centering ONE THAT IS MORE AKIN students is as important as the content knowledge. They must learn to shift their role to one that is more akin to a TO A FACILITATOR. 15

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facilitator. 17

Teachers must evolve to offer instructional methods that provide opportunities for students to develop “twenty-first century skills such as collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, accountability, persistence, and leadership” if we want to prepare students to succeed in school and STEM careers.18 To improve their teaching practice, school systems must begin to provide long-term, comprehensive and sustainable STEM professional development and teacher technical assistance.

This practice is described as “ongoing, job-embedded professional learning focused on improving the quality of work offered to students, (e.g., lesson study, communities of instructional practice) that is related to STEM content knowledge, pedagogy, formative assessment, and other teaching tools.” 19 The importance of providing holistic and ongoing professional development support for STEM teachers is underscored by a study of STEM teachers in an urban district in the U.S. south that showed that while teachers may learn new pedagogical practices around STEM project-based learning (PBL) and even understand its important role in their effectiveness as a teacher, they may still lack the ability to apply these learnings to their teaching practice and effectively implement PBL in their classroom.20

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A number of other Professional Development programs for STEM teachers have focused on the importance of integrating classroom work with a real-world STEM milieu through cross-sectoral partnerships between public educators and businesses. For example, in Chicago, the Baxter Center for Science Education is a formal collaborative network (comprised of the Lindblom Math & Science Academy in Chicago, the Office of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education Partnerships at Northwestern University, and Baxter) that prioritizes the life science needs of businesses in designing a formal training program for secondary teachers.

pragmatism, they offer teachers the opportunity to engage in “lab activities they can practice with their students” that are both engaging and aligned with curriculum and standards.25 TechMath is another multi-sectoral (businesses, universities, schools) and collaborative professional development program that is designed to fill the pipeline to STEM careers. The initiative has proven effective in improving teachers’ “understanding of business applications for mathematics and science instruction,” while empowering them to “design Problem-Based Learning (PBL) Modules,” to use in their classrooms.26

The trainings create a seismic shift that pushes teachers away from lectures and towards hands-on, interactive activities that appeal to student interests, have real-world applicability and collaborative opportunities for problem solving. Emphasizing

Unfortunately, professional development for those teaching in STEM disciplines has lacked a systematic process that could more effectively advance teachers’ knowledge, skills and practices to propel student learning and better foster a robust STEM pipeline. Research has described the ways in which “educators’ opportunities to learn new practices and skills are irregular, poorly designed, and shoddily presented.” 21 There are, however, some well-designed STEM programs that boost pedagogical and instructional practices, including those that effectively overcome challenges faced by inner-city teachers. The UrbanSTEM program, a year-long professional development program for teachers in a large (300,000 students) urban district is one training program that has shown to positively impact teacher efficacy, which is defined as a “teacher’s perception of their ability to influence student learning & achievement.” 22 The key strategies of this STEM professional development initiative have been to provide “teachers with purposeful, flexible, and scaffolded real-world engagement tools and pedagogies” that they can use to advance STEM learning in their classrooms.23 Deb Shapiro writing for The National Science Teachers Association echoes the idea that professional development should strengthen teachers’ “confidence, and comfort [in] being able to teach STEM to their students.” 24

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THE IMPORTANT ROLE OF PARENTS IN CHILDREN’S STEM EDUCATION

RACIAL OPPORTUNITY GAPS IN STEM EDUCATION

Over 60% of Americans believe that a key reason for the problems with STEM education in U.S. public schools is parents’ limited engagement.27 This idea is backed by research that suggests that parent engagement with their children is a critical factor in students’ perceptions of the usefulness of engaging in STEM classes. When students believe that there is future value in taking STEM classes, they are more likely to enroll in advanced science and math classes,as they become optional. Parents can play a major role in influencing their children’s understanding of the utility in pursuing STEM.

The Education Commission of the States makes it clear that STEM deserts have a racialized dimension as students of color in particular are prevented from accessing “challenging math and science content that would prepare them for STEM careers.”36 The existence of racialized disparities is supported by the Leadership Conference Education Fund which highlights statistics showing that in the United States, only “66 percent of high schools serving the highest percentages of Black and Latinx students [even] offer chemistry.”37 The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights also has documented racial disparities in enrollment and achievement in areas like 8th grade algebra. For example, nationally, only 65% of African Americans passed Algebra 1 in comparison with 85% of White students.38

In fact, researchers have demonstrated in a multi-year longitudinal study that when parents were given informational materials about the utility of STEM, 86% shared this information with their kids, which in turn had a major impact on students’ STEM decisions, achievement and career direction.28 One of the researchers, Judith Harackiewicz, describes how “Teens whose parents received the experimental intervention perceived math and science to be more valuable and important, obtained higher scores on the math and science ACT test [12% points on average], and actually enrolled in more math and science classes in 11th and 12th grades.”29 She also describes important downstream impacts identified in a follow-up study five years later, which included increased enrollment in STEM classes in college and higher interest in STEM careers. This impact is supported by previous research that shows that parental career expectations and support are a critical factor in their children’s career decisions and thus bolsters the strategy to educate “parents about the importance of their roles in empowering their children with career decision making.”30 As it relates to STEM specifically, Lilia Halim’s research argues for the need to better engage parents whose “positive perceptions and values...toward the subject of science propel[s] [them] to cultivate their children’s interest in science and science-related careers.”31 It is clear that one important strategy to steer more students into STEM academic pathways and career pipelines is to boost parent engagement. As researcher Christopher Rozek argues: “Parents are potentially an untapped resource for helping to improve the STEM motivation and preparation of students...

We could move the needle by just encouraging parents to have these conversations about the relevance of math and science” with their children.32

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While additional research needs to be done in the area of parental engagement, education officials and policy makers must be careful not to continue the practice of blaming “working-class and some minority ethnic families [for] suffering from a ‘poverty of aspiration’ or...having the ‘wrong’ knowledge, attitudes or values, particularly in relation to education.” 33 This idea is further supported by researchers Ebony McGee of Vanderbilt University and Margaret Beale Spencer of the University of Chicago whose study of 24 high-achieving Black students underscores the important role that their parents played as “advocates, motivators, and even early teachers of mathematics for their children,” in contrast to the stereotype of “passivity, disinterest, and lack of effort” amongst Black parents.34 The blame the victim mentality (with racist underpinnings) is clearly counterproductive to building equitable STEM pipelines. Instead, as the CEO of the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) makes clear, it is critical for educational leaders to actively create new processes and systems to demystify STEM education pathways and career pipelines and provide support for Black and Latinx parents, especially recent immigrants. The strategies identified include:

Better training and utilization of parent coordinators around school system navigation and offering ‘parent university’;

Raising awareness of STEM coursework and careers through institutions like libraries and museums and tools like the Urban League’s STEM Guide for parents;

Engaging parents and their children simultaneously in STEM-focused project-based learning;

Using multiple platforms, especially digital tools to elevate parental voice and listen and respond to parent concerns.35

Relatively few students of color have support systems that develop their STEM skills or empower them with the knowledge, social capital and encouragement needed to prepare for success in careers in the STEM industries. Racist attitudes about the capabilities of Black and Brown youth and a lack of digital social capital and mentors/role models who look like them undercut students’ ambition. In addition, teachers, paraprofessionals and business leaders often are underprepared or underqualified to teach STEM subjects. Underfunded urban school systems too frequently fail to provide sufficient professional development opportunities needed to broaden tech knowledge. These factors help explain why Blacks and Latinxs remain underrepresented in STEM and STEM-related jobs.39 In fact, “only 2.2 percent of Latinxs, 2.7 percent of African Americans...have earned a first university degree in the natural sciences or engineering by age 24.”40 Unfortunately, as the opportunities in the STEM fields grow, the racial inequities also appear to be growing simultaneously.

For example, the 2016 U.S. News & World Report/Raytheon STEM Index demonstrates how, “The number of White students who earned STEM degrees grew 15 percent in the last five years [while] the number of Black students fell by roughly the same margin.”41 Locally, The Boston Foundation has pointed out that there are tremendous racial opportunity and achievement gaps in science education for Black and Latinx students in the Boston Public Schools. These youth of color score dramatically

66%

OF HIGH SCHOOLS SERVING THE HIGHEST PERCENTAGES OF BLACK AND LATINX STUDENTS [EVEN] OFFER CHEMISTRY.

65%

OF AFRICAN AMERICANS PASSED ALGEBRA 1 COMPARED TO

85%

OF WHITE STUDENTS lower on the statewide standardized tests in comparison to their White and Asian peers within district, as well as students from across the state.

In the Boston Public Schools (BPS), the percentage of White and Asian BPS students in Grades 5 and 8 scoring proficient or advanced on MCAS science is three times higher than for Black and Latinx students. In high school, Asian and White BPS students score twice as high as Black and Latinx BPS students on these state standardized tests. BPS students (70% of whom are Latinx and African American) also score dramatically lower than statewide scores on standardized science exams. In 2017, the gap for Grade 5 MCAS Science scores was 27 percentage points and in Grade 8, BPS students scored 25 percentage points lower than statewide results.42

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RACIAL DISPARITIES IN STEM EMPLOYMENT The failure to provide equitable STEM education for African American and Latinx students in-turn shuts out far too many youth of color from the high-quality, high-paying STEM careers. This is a major problem which has long-term implications for the U.S. economy and in particular, the Greater Boston regional economy that is so STEM-centric. Nationally, the racial disparities in STEM representation are underscored by the Pew Research Center’s statistics which show that “Blacks and Hispanics made up around a quarter (27%) of the overall U.S. workforce as of 2016, but together they accounted for only 16% of those employed in a STEM occupation.”43 Another study showed that “Whites were 2.4 times more likely than were African Americans and 4.5 times more likely than Hispanics to be employed in STEM occupations.”44 At Google, the numbers are particularly dismal with just two percent of tech jobs filled by Latinx people and just one percent by African Americans as recently as 2014.45

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These disparities are also reflected in Massachusetts’ hightech economy. In the Commonwealth, 71% of computer and mathematical professionals are held by Whites, 22% are filled

by Asians, and Black and Latinx, respectively, represent only 3% each.46 If we do nothing about diversity, according to the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, (MassTLC) it will take Black and Latinx workers until 2085 and 2045, respectively, to reach parity with White males in the tech field.

Boston is a majority-minority city. Unfortunately, there are vast racial disparities in the growing employment sectors in the city and region that require STEM skills. Without intervention, the lack of access to adequate STEM education and entryways into high-quality, high-wage jobs in rapidly growing sectors will exasperate tremendous income and wealth disparities that produce dramatic disadvantages for Latinxs and African Americans.

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OVERVIEW

RACIAL EQUITY AS A BUSINESS ADVANTAGE Utilizing a racial equity lens, the BPS STEM factor is focusing on STEM, not only because this is the sector where the good jobs are now (and where they will be in the future) but also because it offers the best opportunity to foster transformative racial and economic justice. In order to create fair and equitable pathways to the high-skilled, high-wage jobs of the new economy, BPS STEM Factor takes the approach that we must directly address racial disparities as we devise solutions.

2 STEM SOLUTIONS REQUIRE A RACIAL EQUITY LENS & APPROACH

With tremendous demographic changes in the United States, “people of color will become the majority by 2044 [and] with demand for STEM professionals high and supply dwindling as demographics shift, broadening the participation of underrepresented groups [e.g. African Americans, Latinxs, Native Americans, and women] in STEM education and professions” must be prioritized.47 In fact, in the next decade alone, the U.S. will have over 1,000,000 STEM jobs that cannot be filled because of a lack of talent in the workforce.48 Improving education and workforce preparation of Black and Brown youth will be key to meeting that demand. As Joseph P. Williams points out, “In order to fill the tech- and sciencefocused jobs of the future, STEM industries need to focus on becoming more diverse now.”49 In principle, GE supports BPS’ efforts to diversify Greater Boston’s STEM workforce and its assets-based approach in which “racial equity” is viewed “as a source of corporate competitive advantage.” As a recent PolicyLink report underscores: For companies, a focus on racial equity is critical in order to innovate, to create products and services that serve a more diverse consumer base, and to cultivate a strong workforce. Communities of color can open up new markets by providing a significant consumer base for existing businesses and by innovating new enterprises.

Research shows that more diverse teams are better able to solve problems and that companies with more diverse workforces have higher revenues, more customers, and greater market shares.50

other social structures, society has not been providing equitable STEM opportunities to the Black and Brown young people in the Boston Public Schools – the very youth who can help meet the growing STEM demand if given proper education, training and support. Through significant, smart investment in Boston Public Schools’ students, we can reduce racial achievement, income and wealth gaps over the long-term, while feeding business demand for skilled workers. Without this investment, these racial disparities will grow.

The importance of an equity approach to high-quality internships is highlighted by Sheena Collier, Director of Economic Growth for the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, who says: We are getting companies to look at access to internships through an equity lens – redefining who’s seen as a valuable candidate. We just had a Redefining Talent Summit to discuss how internships change people’s pathways and to highlight companies that are paving the way in providing good-paying internships to students from diverse backgrounds.51 The Boston Foundation specifically has described the importance of boosting the educational levels and workforce readiness of the Latinx community (currently overrepresented in low-wage jobs) as a key to this group accessing and accelerating the region’s high-skilled/high-wage employment opportunities. Given the exponential growth of the Latinx community, its skewed youthful demographic and its importance to the state’s population growth, employment pipelines that are culturally and linguistically responsive must be prioritized not only for the economic well-being of this demographic but for the prosperity of the region as a whole. The Foundation specifically argues that the importance of supporting the region’s Latinx community will become even more pronounced in the near future “as an increasing share of well-paying jobs will require advanced training, especially in STEM fields.”52

In the Greater Boston region, the employment sectors that are growing also have high wages and require high-tech (STEM) skills. Unfortunately, due to systemic racism, poverty and

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CORPORATE PHILANTHROPY & STEM: RESEARCH ON SIMILAR STEM INITIATIVES In 2010, the Obama administration helped facilitate the launch of a $5 million public-private STEM education partnership called Change the Equation. Founded by leaders of Intel, Xerox, Time Warner and Eastman Kodak with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the project was designed to inspire the corporate world to invest in a targeted effort to improve STEM education, and increase excitement in the field, especially amongst people of color and female identifying students.53 This effort was part of the administration’s broader Educate to Innovate initiative that they designed “to [provide] students at every level with the skills they need to excel in the high-paid, highly-rewarding fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).”54 Building upon this foundational effort, GE’s partnership with the Boston Public Schools (BPS STEM Factor) is at the forefront of a recent trend in corporate philanthropy to address the lack of diversity in high-tech employment fields by supporting STEM education in urban districts. Recently, major corporations (e.g. Facebook, Salesforce, Google, Amazon and General Motors) have invested over $300 million in STEM education.55 The movement has been spurred by a growing recognition by corporate leaders that investing in STEM education not only is in the interest of fairness and equity but also supports a company’s bottom line.

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In setting up a donor-advised fund at the Boston Foundation in 2017, their CEO Mohamad Ali recognized that this philanthropic investment strategy not only served the interest of corporate social responsibility but also was a business-critical action. He said, “Carbonite depends on a highly skilled workforce to remain competitive and serve our customers...We’ve experienced firsthand the tech talent gap caused by unequal access to education, and we are committed to reversing this trend.”57 Similarly, Cambridge, MA-based Akamai Technology’s 2018 investment of $50 million for STEM education is based upon an understanding that equity and business growth are inextricably interwoven. Inside Philanthropy points out, “Investing in STEM education is seen as part of a long-term solution for tech’s diversity problems,” but it also will “ensure that tech companies can meet their 21st century labor needs.”58 While Akamai’s philanthropy focuses on supporting nonprofit organizations, other corporations have echoed GE’s strategy of directly investing in urban public school districts.

For example, Salesforce has committed $12.2 million to support the implementation of a universal K-12 computer science curriculum in the San Francisco public schools and also is investing $500,000 for the development of a new IT academy within an Indianapolis public high school.59

In praising GE’s partnership with the Boston Public Schools, Don Seiffert, Managing Editor of the Boston Business Journal summarizes this sentiment in arguing that “an investment in the future of the Boston schools is an investment in [corporations’] own futures.”56 In partnering with the Boston Public Schools, GE is on the right philanthropic and business sustainability path by focusing on equity in STEM.

Like GE, Texas Instruments also has made a massive investment in urban STEM education through a 2015 grant of $4.8 million to help the Lancaster Independent School District which became Texas’ first school district “to offer a K-12 STEM curriculum to all of its students.”60 This corporation also provided an $8.1 million grant in 2018 to boost STEM education for underrepresented minority students and girls in disadvantaged North Texas communities.61

Companies understand that given demographic trends, their future workforce will be a majority people of color and if they don’t rapidly improve urban STEM education, they will lack the workforce with the skills needed to effectively fill their jobs. Carbonite is one Massachusetts high-tech firm that is putting its philanthropic resources in support of education and training initiatives aimed at reducing disparities in technology access and achievement.

Other major corporations have paralleled GE’s decision to focus on creating pipelines for diverse populations from STEM education to careers. For example, tech giants Intel ($300 million) and Apple ($50 million) committed major funding in 2015 to support initiatives designed to increase diversity in the high-tech field.62 L.S. Hall summarized Apple CEO Tim Cook’s belief in the need for “stimulating interest in STEM careers among women and people of color [as a strategy] to attract more women and minorities into the tech industry, which is largely dominated by White and Asian men.”63

Like GE, other organizations also are recognizing that they must provide supports in addition to philanthropic dollars in order to create large-scale impact. Buttressing BPS STEM Factor’s strategy to create multi-sectoral, coordinated partnerships between the Boston Public Schools, corporations and community-based organizations, Alex Hicks writes, “In order to remain competitive in STEM fields, the U.S. is relying more and more on the partnerships evolving between companies and education. STEM education may start in the classroom, but leading technology and innovation companies are paving a new path for K-12 students to excel in these fields.”64 Given Greater Boston’s role as a leader in diverse fields (life sciences, IT, medicine, higher education) it is unsurprising that BPS STEM Factor is not the only large-scale, STEMfocused philanthropic initiative in the region. For example, the United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley has leveraged investment from corporate partners (Vertex, Gilbane, Digital Guardian, KPMG, IBM, Linde Family Foundation, JetBlue, and the Mass Biotech Council) and a 5-year, $3.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to launch BoSTEM. The United Way launched this initiative in partnership with Boston After School and Beyond, and community-based organizations (e.g. Sociedad Latina, Breakthrough Greater Boston, Citizen Schools, Latino STEM Alliance, and Thompson Island Outward Bound Education Center).

Their goal is to serve 10,000 predominantly AfricanAmerican and Latinx students in grades 6-8 by 2022 and prepare them to become the future STEM workforce by integrating in-school and out of school STEM instruction with industry supported experiential learning.65

INVESTING IN STEM EDUCATION IS SEEN AS PART OF A LONG-TERM SOLUTION FOR TECH’S DIVERSITY PROBLEMS,” BUT IT ALSO WILL “ENSURE THAT TECH COMPANIES CAN MEET THEIR 21ST CENTURY LABOR NEEDS. – Mohamad Ali,

CEO, Carbonite

Recognizing its challenges with racial and gender diversity and equity at the company, Google also has stepped up by not only giving funding to support the nonprofit organization Black Girls Who Code, but also by providing the organization with highly valuable office space in their Manhattan headquarters as an in-kind contribution. The partnership has been described as providing a “way for Google to create a pipeline for future hires and for the girls taking classes with BGC to gain the experience they need to access the kinds of jobs Google offers. Sharing the same office building allows Google employees and BGC participants to learn from each other every day.”67

TUGG (Technology Underwriting Greater Good) is another group of Boston’s tech corporations that support experiential programming for under-resourced youth offered by nonprofit organizations and other social enterprises. Its corporate partners include: Accomplice, Carbon Black, Hopper, Vera Code, Lola, BostInno, Polachi and EY.66

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A PATH FORWARD: GE, BPS & STEM Current research suggests that a pipeline approach – cross-sectoral partnerships between education and business – is a key strategy for cultivating future success in classrooms and careers. In Achieving Racial Equity Through Cross-Sector Partnerships, Michael Gee describes how the Congressional Black Caucus’ CBC Tech 2020 Initiative has prioritized STEM education and job training as one of its key principles for reducing disparities for African Americans in the tech industry. 68 The Congressional Black Caucus argues that “The lack of African American representation in tech means that many of our best and brightest – the problem solvers, critical thinkers, and those that challenge conventional thinking – are not included, and America’s global competitiveness suffers as a result.”69 A recent Boston Foundation study also contends that pathways programs are a promising practice for reducing dramatic disparities in a time of prosperity. The authors write that “With Boston’s economy increasingly shifting toward high-skill, high-wage jobs...Part of the equation needs to be providing strong workforce training opportunities so that people with an industry-specific credential...are given the opportunity to receive more training and progress upward within a given sector.”70 In addition, the Federal Reserve Bank of Greater Boston identifies school-to-career pipeline programs as one important strategy to reducing the racial wealth gap in the Boston region.71 Other research supports our belief in the importance of providing experiential learning through internships at business sites. Jennifer Stiles writes, “For students from underrepresented groups especially, this connection to the real world can help mold a STEM identity and encourage further participation in STEM fields.”72 Finally, BPS STEM Factor also is influenced by research showing “that when studentsview math or science favorably, their academic achievement in those subjects is higher, which further encourages them to pursue potential STEM careers.” 73

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WHEN STUDENTS VIEW MATH OR SCIENCE FAVORABLY, THEIR ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN THOSE SUBJECTS IS HIGHER, WHICH FURTHER ENCOURAGES THEM TO PURSUE POTENTIAL STEM CAREERS. – Jennifer Stiles

3 PROGRAM DESCRIPTION THE BPS STEM FACTOR: A PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN THE BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS & GE

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OVERVIEW

STRATEGIES

BPS STEM Factor launched in 2016 as a partnership between the Boston Public Schools’ (BPS) Office of External Affairs (OEA) and GE in connection with the corporation’s decision to move its corporate headquarters from Connecticut to Boston, MA. As part of the overall agreement between the City of Boston and GE, the corporation committed to making an investment of $25 million (through its philanthropic arm) to enhance, improve and accelerate STEM education for students in the Boston Public Schools. BPS STEM Factor recognizes that a successful pipeline of skilled STEM professionals requires intentional investment in programming that is integrated across school curricula, community projects and business internships that can inspire the majority of students.

Project-Based Learning (PBL) & Work-Based Learning (WBL): The initiative’s primary strategy to achieve its goals is to build pipelines to the high-skilled, high-wage careers in growing STEM fields by thoughtfully integrating STEM-focused Project-Based Learning (PBL) that models near-peer teaching and learning focused on understanding the basics of STEM through coding with Work-Based Learning (WBL) offered through partnerships with area corporations.

The overarching long-term objective of BPS STEM Factor is to ensure that BPS students, Black and Brown, become the future workforce for STEM careers in Boston and a priority for those at GE. Through this collaboration, we believe that BPS students, particularly African Americans and Latinxs, will be ready to explore serious, high-quality STEM internships that lead to employment in STEM careers. In order to achieve this goal, BPS STEM Factor will work to leverage a long-term, philanthropic investment from GE to radically reimagine STEM education in the city as the partnership works to achieve three primary goals:

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1

Accelerate opportunities for STEM-focused, Work-Based Learning (WBL) by engaging students, teachers and industry leaders in the creation of pipeline programs by establishing a new definition of high-quality STEM internships.

2

Accelerate opportunities for STEM-focused, ProjectBased Learning (PBL) by engaging students, teachers and industry leaders in the creation of pipeline programs by modeling near-peer teaching and learning focused on the basics of STEM competencies.

3

Create a foundation (modeled on an ethos of racial equity) in which Black and Brown BPS students will become the future workforce for Boston STEM careers and a priority for careers at GE.

This two-fold approach will create a sea of change in the way that STEM is delivered in the Boston Public Schools.

Specifically, BPS STEM Factor will help transform STEM education from siloed, one-off experiences that students forget the moment they leave class to a hands-on approach in which all students (especially non-academic stars) have the opportunity to engage with science, technology, math or engineering. The programming will thoughtfully interweave STEM boot camps, technical coaching and robust internships in order to achieve success.

Through collaboration between better trained teachers, corporate partners, community-based organizations (e.g.

The Young People’s Project) and workforce intermediaries (The Boston Private Industry Council, PIC), BPS STEM Factor not only will boost students’ aptitude in courses like mathematics, computer science, and biology, but it also will accelerate student opportunities to apply their newly developed 21st century skills in real-world situations.

Racial Equity Lens: Approaching the STEM opportunity gap from a racial equity lens, BPS STEM Factor challenges the assumption that the typical (Black and Brown) BPS student does not have the knowledge, skills or aptitude to successfully complete high-quality, STEM-focused classes or internships. Unlike many science programs for “gifted and talented,” BPS STEM Factor prioritizes “second and third row” students.

This strategy works to enhance equity and increase the scale of impact, while benefiting corporations by producing a diversity of thought leadership. This process will enhance future perspective and productivity which is at the foundation of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Prioritizing Partnerships: With the help of committed teachers from participating Boston Public Schools, the Boston Plan for Excellence (BPE), career specialists from the Boston Private Industry Council (PIC), community-based organizations and industry partners, BPS STEM Factor will foster robust partnerships in order to help prepare students to gain the specific knowledge, social capital and technical skills vital to working in a STEM profession.

GE, a key partner, shares the Boston Public Schools’ vision of the BPS STEM Factor. It sees this initiative as a way to empower high school STEM teachers to: better prepare students for college and future careers in STEM; assist students through career planning and the development of STEM social capital; offer hands-on experience with advanced manufacturing technology and software (e.g. through GE Brilliant Career Labs); and provide internships in STEM fields.

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PROGRAMMING TO DATE

STEM social capital; offer hands-on experience with advanced manufacturing technology and oftware (e.g. through GE Brilliant Career Labs); and provide internships in STEM fields.

Overview Definitions 3. Programming To Date BPS STEM Factor has made important strides in its st Project-Based Learning (PBL) efforts better Factor prepare has teachers engage students 21efforts Overview: BPStoSTEM made to important strides ininits to better prepare immersive (Science, Technology, and Offering eachers century to engageSTEM students in 21st century STEMEngineering (Science, Technology, Engineering and classroom-based STEM education, including boot camps; Mathematics) while givingreal-life students real-life that Mathematics) education,education, while giving students experiences providecoding hands-on application of STEM. At theprovide end of hands-on the third year of programming, BPS experiences that application of STEM. At theSTEM Factor will have erved 2,178 Public (BPS) students and trained end Boston of the third yearSchool of programming, BPS STEM Factor 112 will BPS teachers through Work-Based Learning (WBL) nnovativehave STEM programming at over 21 public schools in Boston. served 2,178 Boston Public School (BPS) students and Providing real-life, hands-on STEM internships at local trained 112 BPS teachers through innovative STEM programcorporations and other organizations; ming at over 21 public schools in Boston.

BPS STEM Factor Reach: 2016-19 BPS STEM Factor Reach: 2016-19 Year

Students Participating

Teachers Trained

Schools Involved

Year 1: 2016-17

10 WBL students

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2

Year 2: 2017-18

39 WBL students placed in internships, 1,500 PBL students

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11

Year 3: 2018-19

59 WBL students placed in internships

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15

+ 150 students in workforce readiness professional development 410 PBL students *2,000 non-BPS students: BPS students (under the guidance of the Young People’s Project) also helped facilitate trainings for 2,000 non-BPS students at the National Math Festival in Washington D.C.

TOTAL

2,178 BPS students * 118 WBL students placed in internships

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List of Schools Participating in BPS STEM Factor: Another Course to College Boston Green Academy Boston International Newcomers Academy Brighton High School Burke High School Clarence R. Edwards Middle School Dearborn STEM Academy

Fenway High School James P. Timilty Elementary School

New England Blacks in Philanthropy (NEBiP)

John W. McCormack Middle School

East Boston High School Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers

Be savvy system navigators

TechBoston Academy

The mission of NEBiP is to inform, reform and transform the practice of philanthropy. We are bringing forth a paradigm shift in philanthropy from focusing on Black deficits to shining a light on our considerable potential and financial leverage in order to increase the assets in our communities with the power of Black philanthropy. We are doing this by creating a strong alliance between funders and Black communities.

Along the way, we provide tools and resources to help foundations and other giving organizations make informed grantmaking decisions about their support in our communities.

Yet have clear or focused interests

Winthrop Elementary School

The STEM Happens Network (former partner)

“Students in the Second Row” Second row students are those who have strong potential to thrive in work-based learning contexts but may not come to the attention of Career Specialists. This pilot was designed to identify, engage and support students who may not: Proactively seek out internship opportunities

Murphy K-8 School New Mission High School O’Bryant School of Math & Science Perkins Elementary School PJ Kennedy Elementary School Snowden International High School

Be polished in how they present themselves and their ideas

Organizational Partners of BPS STEM Factor (2016-2019)

Connect strongly to academic work

Young People’s Project (YPP) The mission of YPP is to use Math Literacy Work to develop the abilities of elementary through high school students to succeed in school and in life, and in doing so involves them in efforts to eliminate institutional obstacles to their success.

YPP envisions a day when every young person – regardless of ethnicity, gender, or class – has access to a high-quality education and the skills, attributes, and community support s/he needs to successfully meet the challenges of their generation.

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The Boston Private Industry Council (PIC) 18

*Note: The list includes schools that had teachers attend GE Conference during the summer.

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As the city’s school-to-career intermediary, the PIC convenes multi-sector collaborations, connects employers with schools and students with jobs and internships, measures progress on key indicators such as dropout rates and college completion rates, and sustains the effort to create career pathways for students and talent pipelines for employers.

In collaboration with the Boston Public Schools, the PIC deploys a highly motivated staff to generate workplace experiences for high school students. Other frontline staff reengage young adults who fall behind or drop out of school altogether. PIC postsecondary coaches support BPS graduates as they make their way through local colleges.

Excel High School Teacher Professional Development Enhancing BPS’ comprehensive STEM curriculum (through teacher training and the development of model playbooks);

belief that meaningful employment changes lives, lifts people out of poverty, and strengthens the local economy.

PIC is a nonprofit organization that strengthens Boston’s communities and its workforce by connecting youth and adults with education and employment opportunities that align with the needs of area employers. Their work is grounded in the

This is a group of consultants with a common vision to leverage school practices to result in high-quality STEM education. Each core content area – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – focuses on knowledge and skills essential for today’s jobs.The most recent and evolving area, technology, includes Computer Science as an essential discipline. Computer Science brings a new language that incorporates the knowledge of science and mathematical algorithms to design programs that help analyze and model problems, finding viable solutions.

Our work includes a personalized approach in these disciplines and preparation of youth, especially African American and Hispanic students, for career and readiness for college. The STEM Happens Network (SHN) provides advisory services regarding the introduction and implementation of STEM, in any of its disciplines, for diverse groups of students regardless of their culture or abilities. All students can achieve great things.

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What we do – We begin with onsite visits where we conduct listening sessions with educators and district administrators. We conduct research, analyze, revise and advise school districts in their intentions and plans to incorporate STEM education in schools at all levels. All services are personalized and supported by years of experience implementing STEM in networks of schools.

Defined STEM Connecting classrooms to the real world, Defined STEM is a K-12 project-based learning solution that provides engaging, authentic lessons built around careers. Our cross-curricular projects provide opportunities for students to deepen understanding and apply their knowledge in real-world scenarios.

Agncy Agncy is an organization that uses design to reduce structural inequalities in this country. Our work falls generally into the following thematic areas:

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System vision: Developing or making explicit a common vision that an ecosystem can rally behind to move towards a shared picture of success.

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System mapping: Making clear system levers and connections, both the formal and the invisible, so that system leaders and players can understand points of leverage and coalesce disparate energy.

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Co-creative design: Engaging communities to honor all stakeholders’ agency in the process of designing programs, services, or system-wide solutions.

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Storytelling: Telling the story of an organization, program, or strategy so that a system can learn from itself, engage those it serves, and share its practices.

Project-Based Learning (PBL) Programming BPS STEM Factor provided second and third row BPS high school students with the opportunity to participate in an “Intro to STEM” course and then prepared them to host coding boot camps for younger students through in-school programming offered in partnership with the nonprofit organization, the Young People’s Project (YPP). During the 2017-18 academic year, the course introduced 12 freshmen to core STEM competencies, including coding and selected math topics. At the end of the session, the high school students hosted STEM boot camps for nearly 1,500 BPS middle school students. These boot camps were co-designed by the high school students, with the support of YPP instructors and teaching staff. During the 2018-19 academic year, BPS STEM factor replicated the project, while we also reached additional students through a partnership with Defined STEM. Work-Based Learning (WBL) Programming With the help of committed teachers from participating Boston public schools, career specialists from the Boston Private Industry Council (PIC) and industry partners, Boston Public Schools (BPS) students have gained invaluable Work-Based Learning (WBL) experiences related to STEM careers through internships offered during the summers of

Creating manual and automated software tests.

Conducting ethnographic research, secondary research, collaborative analysis and documentation design in InDesign.

Coding modules, using data loggers for measuring light and temperature, using 3D printers and other equipment, conducting analyses, and making decisions on things that could impact their school.

Participating in student-led-and-designed workshops to teach younger students various computer science and mathematical concepts.

Participating in quality assurance planning and execution, receiving firsthand experience working in systems development life cycles (SDLC) and software testing life cycles (STLC), and software development techniques.

P R O JECT-BA S E D L E A R N I N G ( P BL ) C H A RT YEAR

NUMBER SERVED

SCHOOLS SERVED

YEAR 2: 2017-18

1,500 PBL students (18 high school students and 1,482 middle school students)

Excel High School, James P. Timilty, Clarence R. Edwards and John W. McCormack Middle Schools in Boston

YEAR 3: 2018-19

410 PBL students

Excel High School, Tynan Elementary School, New Mission High School, Umana K-8 School, and the Oliver Hazard Perry School

AdWater Media AdWater’s mission is to create memorable marketing campaigns and brand experiences that are relevant, engaging, and inspire our consumer’s behavior. We believe in the work that we create. We’re a family, we work as a team, we collaborate with our clients, we respect the multicultural consumer, and connect with them in meaningful, relevant ways.

2017, 2018 and 2019. The host sites included Boston area corporations, such as State Street, Mass General Hospital, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Reebok. The types of STEM experiences and job duties that the students experienced according to their internship employers, included:

35 teachers trained - Defined STEM (BPS STEM Factor partner) provided professional development for BPS teachers who in turn had the opportunity to incorporate lessons into their classroom practice 2,000 non-BPS students: BPS students (under the guidance of the Young People’s Project) also helped facilitate trainings for 2,000 non-BPS students at the National Math Festival in Washington D.C.

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DEVELOPMENT OF STEM PLAYBOOKS

WORK-BASED LEARNING (WBL) CHART Phase

Date

# of Students

Schools Served

Internship Sites

1.0

Summer 2017

10 placed in internships

Dearborn STEM Academy

City Hall OIIT BPS Communications BPS Science Children Service of Roxbury/Youth Police Partnerships Freedom House Summer Kaymbu

2.0

Summer 2018

39 placed in internships

Dearborn STEM Academy Excel High School Jeremiah E. Burke High School John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science

3.0

Summer 2019

59 placed in internships 150 students in workforce readiness professional development

Dearborn STEM Academy Excel High School Jeremiah E. Burke High School John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science Another Course to College Boston Green Academy New Mission High School Snowden International High School TechBoston Academy

Overview Taking lessons learned from the initiative, the BPS STEM Factor’s team has created STEM Playbooks in Work-Based Learning (STEM Internships Playbook) and Project-Based Learning (Coding Bootcamp Playbook). Amplifying impact, these user-friendly tools will help educators benefit from lessons learned during the BPS STEM Factor pilot. The Playbooks offer school leaders the opportunity to replicate BPS STEM Factor’s methodology and successful strategies without a significant infrastructure investment. The Playbooks offer the potential to effectively expand implementation of STEM curriculum and internships with BPS students throughout the system with increased level of fidelity.

Agncy Boston Bar Association Boston Red Sox Blue Cross Blue Shield Brigham and Women’s Hospital Cannon Design Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation General Electric Harvard Medical School Mass General Hospital Northeastern University/ Massachusetts Clean Energy Center Reebok Santander Bank State Street Corporation The Nelson Fellowship Program The Young People’s Project/Massachusetts Institute of Technology WeWork AB Corp.

American Meteorological Society Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Bloomberg Arts Initiative Blue Cross Blue Shield BonLink Boston College Boys and Girls Club BPS Science Department BPS Strive Brigham and Women's Hospital Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Freedom House Gallivan Community Center General Electric Harvard University JF Condon K-8 School John Hancock Financial Services Mass Eye and Ear Mass General Hospital/ STEAM Ahead Massachusetts General Hospital Microsoft Garage Mildred Ave Community Center

WORK-BASED LEARNING Playbook 1: STEM Internships Playbook

National Parks Service Thompson Island Neighborhood Network Center New England Sports Center New England Aquarium New England Baptist Hospital New Mission High School Reebok Roslindale Community Center Sanofi Genzyme Square Tech Program Tech Internship @ Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology The Designery Tufts Teachers and High School Students Program (TAHSS) Vertex Pharmaceuticals oung Project YoungPeople's People’s Project

Background: Stakeholders across Boston’s education and industry ecosystem broadly recognize the value of work-based learning experiences for high school students. Boston Public School (BPS) Central Office administrators, high school leaders, and teachers see work-based learning as an opportunity to engage students in real-world applications of the knowledge and competencies shared in classrooms. Internships are a way to expose students to professional environments and help them develop comfort and fluency in professional practices, build confidence and agency, and better understand a range of career paths.

connecting the two, the Work-Based Learning Playbook seeks to help key decision makers (especially education administrators) better understand the independent and interdependent players in the STEM summer internship ecosystem. The idea is that these Playbooks will guide the development of strategies that provide improved summer job experiences that are meaningful, equitable and helpful for the career development of young people, especially second row students who are too frequently short-changed.

The Playbooks highlight the ways in which relationships frequently serve as a primary proxy for the qualifications of students (most of whom do not have an established employment track record) and their potential for success. In other words, established relationships between individual schools and an employer, along with the recommendation of a teacher or staff member, often determines which students get internships. To level the playing field, the Playbook provides recommendations for maximizing the uneven role of career specialists whose role is to prepare, screen, and vet students for interest and qualifications for specific summer jobs.

Industry leaders across Greater Boston also find value in student engagement. In addition to the benefits to students, these experiences help employers to build employee pipelines, and identify/nurture emerging talent. For some employers, student internships are connected to objectives around diversity and inclusion, as they seek to develop a workforce that better reflects the demographics of the city of Boston. These connections with students and schools also offer ways to connect to the Boston community through the lens of real work.

Purpose of Work-Based Learning Playbooks: Given the complexity of a system that includes schools and their students, employers and a workforce intermediary (The Boston Private Industry Council, PIC) that is charged with

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4. Development of STEM Playbooks

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The Playbooks also break down the attributes of high-quality summer STEM internships that include: Exposing students to professionals and the norms of work environments; Empowering students to understand the variety of occupations and roles within a STEM field; Providing students with exposure and/or access to STEM tools (hardware, software, problem-solving models, etc.); and Engaging students in a project (or set of projects) that are facilitated by these tools. In an uneven system, these recommendations can become baseline standards for what quality looks like.

One of the Playbook’s key recommendations is to make summer internships year-round experiences that better prepare youth by connecting in-class work to what they will experience on the job. These guides specifically offer strategies for connecting college and career readiness with workplace preparation not only to increase the likelihood for internship success but also to build a strong foundation for young people’s career development. The Playbook provides a road map for year-round activities – from goal setting and identifying interests, strengths and challenges to job shadowing, career fairs and applications. The guidelines serve to help understand the type of long-term and sustainable preparation that BPS needs to implement in order to boost students’ STEM social capital, and help them to better envision the ways in which internships can serve as a stepping stone to long-term academic and career growth.

The Playbooks also help visualize new student-centered relationship structures that prioritize improved coordination that more effectively bridges the working world with schools.

While recognizing the importance of integrating Career Specialists as thoroughly as possible into each school’s college and career programming, the Playbooks also describe the importance of a new Centralized Coordinator, and Teacher Leaders (positions piloted in BPS STEM Factor) and their role in bringing more in-depth understanding of students’ talents, needs and potential.

The Playbooks describe the archetype for the best Teacher Leader, as someone who already focuses on work-based learning, such as guidance counselors – those who know students well enough to be able to draw out qualities and experiences (especially in a resume or interview) that they may not know to highlight themselves.

These TL’s ideally understand what employers seek and help the students translate this need to their own strengths and experiences. They should be proactive and highly responsive to student needs in order to meet the responsibilities of the role, which include: scouting and recruiting students, especially those with potential that others might miss; supporting them throughout the process; and providing meaningful reflection on BPS STEM Factor’s function and utility from an insider’s vantage point.

From an organizational standpoint, the Playbook identifies the critical need for there to be a clearly identified person or team responsible for Work-Based Learning throughout the year, which includes: providing support and tracking progress; communicating both student and school strengths; managing relationships with employers; and communicating with students and families about the responsibilities and opportunities of an internship.

Based upon our experience with BPS STEM Factor, we also identify key supports (spanning knowledge-building, employability skill development, mentorship, and logistics) that schools should adopt as best practices to prepare “second row” students to become “ready student interns.”

One of the most important strategies that schools must undertake is helping students develop both the 21st century skills (e.g. communication and collaboration) that most employers emphasize as very desirable, as well as the software fluency that some employers prefer. The Playbook specifically offers a concrete process map for preparing students to successfully complete a resume and prepare for an interview – the two opportunities that they have to demonstrate their strengths to employers.

Finally, the Playbook articulates the six professional development sessions that BPS STEM Factor piloted to both prepare students for their summer internships and to support their engagement in STEM careers. These workshops can serve as a strong framework for schools to emulate as they develop their STEM work-based learning programs.

They are comprised of: Workshop 1 MS Office basics Workshop 2 Soft skills (listening, teamwork, etc.)

Workshop 3 Relationships/Team-Building Workshop 4 STEM professionals (TED-style event connecting students with industry leaders and creatives who showcase innovative ways that they use STEM education in the workplace) Workshop 5 STEM workplaces (visits to STEM work environments, including Reebok and Autodesk) Workshop 6 STEM careers. This session highlights STEM pathways and potential careers. Danielle Wood from the Space Enabled Research Group at the MIT Media Lab blew students’ minds with a description of her work in the design of space technology, talking about how her lab uses satellite data to improve communities on Earth.

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PROJECT-BASED LEARNING Playbook 2: Coding Bootcamp Playbook Background: This Playbook shares the approach developed

by Excel High School in partnership with the nonprofit organization, Young People’s Project (YPP) with support from the GE Foundation. The guide provides recommendations for schools that are interested in the approaches explored by Excel, as well as a case study of the program pilot.

Purpose of Project-Based Learning Playbook: The Excel team used a model of high school students teaching younger students to reinforce their own knowledge, to reflect on the process of learning, and to develop 21st century college, career, and life readiness competencies.

Each semester, the high school students designed boot camps to deliver to middle school students. These boot camps translated their own semester’s learning into an educational experience for 6-8th graders. The first semester boot camp focused on STEM basics and computational thinking elements. The second semester boot camp was focused on coding. The two boot camps – one in each semester – reached over 1,500 middle school students across the district.

The purpose of these boot camps was to:

1

Deepen high school students’ mastery of content

2

Build high school students’ college, career, and life readiness competencies

3

Engage middle school students in STEM learning and pathways

4

Increase interest in Excel High School for rising 9th graders

The Playbook describes the strategies and methods used to engage the public school students in using a design process for the boot camps that included developing the conceptual framework, overall flow and the creation of specific activities.

It describes a student-centered approach that followed five key steps: 1. Learning, Exploring; 2. Prototyping, 3. Refining, 4.

Delivering and 5. Debriefing as a central methodology in the learn-to-teach / teach-to-learn model.

It also outlines the roles and responsibilities of the adult educators, including coordinating logistics, scheduling, partnership development and ensuring that the space, technology and materials would meet the needs of the student-designed

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activities. The adults also offered a guide to ensure that the middle school students would be able to effectively navigate the boot camp independently.

The Playbook details the core elements that comprised each of the boot camps. For the first boot camp, the guide describes the process and practice of high school students running stations that offer specific interactive activities and games (the Flagway Game, Factor Tree Race, Fermi Problems, Coding and STEM mini-games) to help middle school students’ grasp of foundational elements of computational thinking and STEM basics.

The Playbook describes the second boot camp, which focused on the coding language Python. It also details the four stations that the middle school students passed through, each of which focused on one of the four core components of the Python language (Print, Strings, Variables, Input functions).

It goes on to explain the ways in which the students put this new knowledge to use at the Testing Station with additional scaffolded, project-based learning activities and then real-world application of the coding concepts through a Robotics Station staffed by the high school’s robotics club.

In addition to the project overview and basics for building out the boot camps, the Playbook helps frame the projects’ alignment with BPS’ definition of college, career and life readiness.

It goes into the details around the theories and pedagogical practices that ground Excel’s work with YPP. The Playbook details how computer science is used as an approach to

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problem-solving rather than merely a subject through which students gain knowledge and skills. It highlights key elements of BPS STEM Factor’s near-peer teaching model in which college STEM Literacy Workers teach high school students, who in turn train middle school students.

The Playbook also stresses the practice of ensuring that STEM content and projects are integrated with the ways in which STEM professionals work (collaboratively, adaptively, and in a self-directed manner) in order to boost 21st century skills and STEM social capital. It outlines the paradigm-shifting practices required to transform a classroom to function in ways that more closely resemble the STEM organizations for whom the initiative would like students to work in the future.

The guide describes the process of changing both instructor and student roles as the teacher becomes more of a coach who centers student voice, and guides and supports their collaborative team-based work on concrete projects.

This Playbook concludes with a brief case study of how Excel High School specifically designed this course to meet both the institution’s Linked Learning approach to high school and the specific needs of its students. It describes the pilot’s core principles, as well as the lessons learned (around logistics, student experience, continuity and growth) that can inform future iterations of the program at the school, and other schools seeking to adapt elements of the programmatic model.

4 EVALUATION OF BPS STEM FACTOR

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OBJECTIVE

DESIRED OUTCOMES

CRITICAL QUESTIONS

The objective of New England Blacks in Philanthropy’s multi-tiered, mixed method evaluation is to assess the effectiveness of Boston Public Schools’ partnership with GE in building the foundation for a pipeline from public education to the high-skilled, high-wage careers in the Greater Boston region’s rapidly growing STEM employment sector(s). We will evaluate the strengths, challenges and opportunities related to BPS STEM Factor’s dual strategy of helping students to increase STEM knowledge and skills through Project-Based Learning (PBL) and then empowering them to apply what they have learned in practical ways through Workforce-Based Learning (WBL) internships.

In the simplest and most immediate of terms, we are assessing BPS STEM Factor’s ability to meet its desired outcomes, which are to:

Overview

Prepare “second and third row” BPS students through high-quality STEM-focused, Project-Based Learning (PBL); Provide robust employment experiences through Workforce-Based Learning (WBL) internships that help these students develop STEM knowledge and 21st century skills and the opportunity for hands-on application of learnings in workforce settings; Train teachers to effectively engage students through Project-Based Learning (PBL) programming that develops practical 21st century skills that can be applied in real-world settings; Establish a replicable model of STEM pedagogical practices and programming that is flexible and adoptable within most BPS high schools; and Use a blueprint from Linked Philanthropic Equity that changes the narrative about what urban students are capable of achieving in the world of STEM.

New England Blacks in Philanthropy launched our work by asking a series of questions regarding BPS STEM Factor’s program implementation. The answers will help provide a broad understanding of the pilot program’s curriculum and initial outcomes achieved, such as students’ knowledge of STEM and intent to choose STEM career pathways. Answers to these questions also will help provide guidance for the direction of future STEM programming in the BPS system.

Overall, we are interested in answering whether the initiative has shifted beliefs about what types of students can achieve academic success in STEM. More specifically, we are seeking to describe the initiative’s impact upon multiple stakeholders (student participants, parents, partners/community-based organizations). We use these questions to help determine to what level and extent the BPS STEM Factor project has been able to successfully foster STEM success.

D E TA I L S Students

1

Attitudinal and Knowledge Change Does participation in BPS STEM Factor change students’ perception of their ability to succeed in STEM? Does the project increase educational aspirations and/or career expectations around STEM? Does participation in STEM workforce environments (including exposure and connections to mentors) increase students’ understanding of STEM education and career pathways? What role have internships played in the process of increasing social capital?

2

Aptitude, Achievement and Core Proficiency Are the second and third row students able to handle challenging STEM PBL work?

Students in the YPP coding project – Were participants able to gain core proficiency in the STEM Skills required by the Project-Based Learning (PBL) intervention?

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3

Workforce Readiness Skills Were students prepared with the knowledge, skills and supports needed to apply what they’ve learned to real-world STEM projects on job sites?

Did participants have the opportunity to apply skills through real-world, STEM-based internships offered in partnership with corporate partners and workforce intermediaries?

Does BPS STEM Factor boost students’ employability skills?

Does participation in BPS STEM Factor impact soft skills, including: showing up on time; working cooperatively; resolving conflicts; dressing and behaving professionally; communication skills; understanding the process of applying for jobs; and knowledge of different STEM jobs and career pathways?

Teachers Instructional and coaching ability in STEM: Were teachers effectively trained to engage students in 21st century, STEM-based learning?

Expectations of BPS students’ STEM capabilities – What do teachers believe their students can achieve in STEM in high school, college and careers? Has BPS STEM Factor shifted their attitudes?

Grasp of new definition of STEM – Did they become ambassadors for a new definition of STEM in which instruction is linked with partnerships that go beyond classroom walls?

Increased knowledge – Do teachers have a better understanding of STEM careers, educational pathways and employment pipelines (including skills that employers demand)?

Partners/Community-Based Organizations Did the partners help produce a new definition of what comprises a high-quality STEM internship?

Did they advance soft skills of future workers?

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Parents Has BPS STEM Factor increased parents’ motivation and accountability around supporting their children’s STEM participation?

Does BPS STEM Factor increase parents’ understanding of STEM’s real-world applicability?

BPS - School System Did the initiative showcase STEM programming that is flexible and adoptable within most BPS high schools?

What is the school system’s readiness to use the “Playbooks” developed by BPS STEM Factor to better train teachers to effectively teach STEM?

ASSESSMENT TOOLS & METHODOLOGIES To truly understand the broader programmatic impact(s) of BPS STEM Factor’s student-centric STEM engagement strategies, New England Blacks in Philanthropy’s (NEBiP) current report uses surveys, focus groups and other data points to measure impact at multiple levels of the interdependent STEM ecosystem (students, teachers, partners, employers, parents, etc.) to determine how the initiative is meeting its desired outcomes. Our analysis incorporates data from three distinct evaluations conducted between October 2018 and January 2019:

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In what ways did teachers find the Playbook useful in their implementation of STEM programming and activities for students?

Corporations Has BPS become a desired educational partner/employee pipeline partner for corporations?

Did GE’s investment change the narrative regarding high-quality STEM programming and leveraging that knowledge to build the much-needed pipeline of highly skilled local employees?

GE’s experience and outcomes (goals vs. actual)

Assessment 1: Young People’s Project Evaluation – Evaluation of PBL BPS STEM Factor’s YBL partnership with the Young People’s Project, Excel High School and Boston Middle Schools: By Frank E. Davis Ed.D. Consultant & Mary West Ed.D. National Research Coordinator of the Algebra Project Inc. (October 2018);

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Assessment 2: Critical Program Review of BPS STEM Factor by Dr. Yndia Lorick, PhD (December 2018);

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Assessment 3: Agncy Evaluation: A detailed assessment of BPS STEM Factor from Agncy, a consulting firm that applies design to complex systems as a strategy to help eradicate structural inequalities in America (January 2019)

Our evaluation predominantly focuses on the second year (2017-18) of the BPS STEM Factor initiative for which we currently have the most complete data and analysis.

FINDINGS OF ASSESSMENTS 1

Assessment 1: Evaluation of Young People’s Project

by Davis and West – Project-Based Learning (PBL) – Oct. 2018

DETAILS In October 2018, Frank E. Davis Ed.D. Consultant & Mary West Ed.D. National Research Coordinator of the Algebra Project Inc. conducted an assessment of the first year of an intensive, year-long, in-school BPS STEM Factor program that the Young People’s Project (YPP), a nonprofit organization provided at Boston’s Excel High School, a state-designated “turnaround school.” Through Project-Based Learning (PBL) activities, the program used a “learn-to-teach, teach-to-learn” pedagogy, in which participants first learned to practice computational thinking and then were taught to use coding languages. Using these skills, they then helped design and teach coding boot camps to middle school students.

Comprised of 18 high school students who reflect the diverse population of their historically low-performing BPS school; the participants specifically learned to write and test code in a variety of languages (e.g. Scratch, JAVA and Python) using Code Studio and an Integrated Development Environment (IDE). MCAS 10th Grade Mathematics Test 2017 showed that for their school, 75% of African Americans and 50% of Hispanics fell in the needs improvement or failing category in this subject area.75 The students, who reflected these demographics, also were introduced to the wide variety of STEM careers available to workers with advanced math and technology skills. They then were trained as “STEM Literacy Workers” who designed and led STEM focused project-based learning activities for younger students in Boston middle schools.

The mix-methods evaluation used observations, surveys, focus groups, staff interviews and student work to assess the project. Davis & West concluded that “The Excel HS Computer Science course has achieved the goal of introducing students in a low-performing high school, who may not typically have access to computer science courses or find themselves eligible for such courses at higher grades, to computer programming and computer science concepts, particularly aspects of computational thinking.”

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Strengths Davis and West found evidence supporting the project and identified a number of key successes, which included: 70% of the participants demonstrated computational thinking skills across multiple domains;76 79% of the students demonstrated understanding of Python coding, with their skills described as “beginning mastery of programming”; Confidence in producing code grew dramatically (a change from 18% to 54%); and Students could confidently code various procedures that were algorithms.

Challenges The researchers also noted that participants actually lost confidence in a number of key skills that are important for 21st century jobs in STEM fields. The concerning declines from the pre-test to post-test survey, in students’ perceptions of their own abilities, included: Leading others to accomplish a goal (from 38% to 25%); Encouraging others to do their best (50% to 25%); Producing high-quality work (63% to 25%); Managing my time wisely (63% to 38%); Helping my peers (75% to 38%); When having many assignments, choosing which ones to do first (50% to 38%); and Working well with students from other backgrounds (50% to 38%).

While at least 63% believed that they “could do advanced work in math,” about the same as the start of the project; students’ perception of their science ability declined dramatically. Participants who agreed with the idea that “I am sure I could do advanced work in science,” decreased from 50% prior to participation in the project to only 37% afterwards. This is particularly concerning given the strong connection between attitude and achievement in STEM.

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Moreover, participants expressing interest in a career in mathematics (63% to 50%) and science (63% to 38%) declined.

Given the goal of showing second and third row students that they can succeed in STEM, this is particularly worrisome.

One positive note in this area was that participants’ interest in engineering careers grew from 50% to 75%.

The STEM boot camps (led by high school students) were offered over multiple sessions to about 1,500 students at the James P. Timilty, Clarence R. Edwards and John W. McCormack Middle Schools in Boston. The result of the boot camps showed that about half of middle school students were “able to catch on to at least one of the various coding formats,” while a higher percentage of participants were able to gain a basic understanding of the concept of computer programming.

C O N CLUS IO N The initial results of YPP’s work with second and third row African-American and Latinx Boston Public Schools students were paradoxical. Given the opportunity, training and support, it is clear that participants can both understand computational frameworks (a foundation for successfully completing STEM work) and actually do the complex work that society usually deems only achievable by students with the highest academic achievement. Specifically, participants’ confidence in coding grew dramatically, as nearly 80% were able to demonstrate the early stages of mastery in the coding language, Python.

Unfortunately, the growth in STEM ability did not translate into their own ideas about their place in the world and future careers in STEM. At the conclusion of the project, just a little bit more than a third of the participants believed that they could do advanced science, which was down from half at the project’s launch. There also was a parallel decline in interest in science (63% to 38%) and mathematics (63% to 50%) as future careers. Students’ perceptions of their own abilities to produce quality work, achieve goals, manage time effectively, and collaborate with others – all important 21st century skills – also declined from the start to the end of the project. Given BPS STEM Factor’s objective to empower second and third row students to believe that they can succeed in STEM, their attitudes about STEM and their lack of ability to see themselves in STEM careers in the future is worrisome and a call for additional intervention.

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Assessment 2: Critical Program Review by Yndia Lorick, PhD – Work-Based Learning (WBL) and PBL – Dec. 2018

DE TAI LS In December 2018, Dr. Yndia Lorick, PhD produced a Critical Program Review of BPS STEM Factor based upon quantitative and qualitative data culled from survey instruments, one-on-one interviews, qualitative reflections and focus groups that captured the experiences of students, teachers, coaches, facilitators and employers as they observed them.

Strengths The Critical Program Review findings revealed that students, teachers, employers and professionals lauded the program, articulating the strong need for such programming in the BPS system. They said they felt inspired by the investment of resources in such an initiative as a means to challenge the prevailing assumptions regarding BPS students as uninterested and underachievers.

Nearly 79% of the WBL participants identified their STEM experiences as useful or very useful and specified the connection with mentors and the work content as key programmatic strengths. While most (77%) of the WBL students surveyed had prior knowedge of different types of STEM-related careers and professions, nearly 40% had their first STEM workforce learning opportunity through BPS STEM Factor. This exposure is particularly important given that most participants surveyed identified careers in engineering or medicine as their dream jobs.

In focus groups, employers expressed their support for providing internship opportunities to BPS students, especially those who typically do not have access to diverse STEM-related fields. Several described the importance of working with young people of color, including the impact internships have on corporate culture and climate.

Teachers, staff and coaches for WBL and PBL opportunities expressed their support of and cited the need for continued high-quality STEM opportunities for students, with many eager to continue to participate in future activities.

Challenges The Critical Program Review identified a number of obstacles to success, which included: Over half of participants said that they were no longer interested in pursuing a career in STEM after their WBL experience.

Many PBL students felt unclear what they should do with the experience in terms of career directions, whether in STEM or other sectors.

Students from both WBL and PBL experiences also expressed the sentiment that the teachers, coaches and the employer mentors need to develop new skills to enhance their ability to better prepare them for STEM learning opportunities.

43% of teachers did not feel adequately prepared to teach STEM classes, echoing student sentiment. Several teachers and coaches did express a strong interest in receiving more professional development and training.

Employers expressed the need for a clearer idea of what “high-quality” STEM programming and activities are supposed to “look like.”

Several participants pointed to systemic challenges related to the program’s commencement, delivery and organization.

Issues identified as critical to the future success of BPS STEM Factor included: Participants articulated that Boston Private Industry Council does not provide equity of opportunity for desirable internships for students who are not high academic achievers.

PBL students (62%) did not enjoy teaching younger children, with several saying classroom environments were too noisy.

Participants, teachers and coaches agreed that there was a need to provide additional preparation during the school year in order to ensure that students would have the “soft” skills needed to be ready to succeed in Work-Based Learning experiences.

62% of PBL students experienced their first STEM coding class through this pilot program and 84% identified the coding class to be useful, moderately useful or very useful. 62% of PBL students were interested in future opportunities to participate in the STEM programming offered through the project. The researcher also identified some additional positive aspects to the program, including: Across the Work-Based Learning (WBL) and Project-Based Learning (PBL) experiences, students expressed their appreciation for the opportunities presented, particularly the ways in which real-world applications of STEM were readily seen in the projects and activities they were engaged in.

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Teachers, staff and coaches emphasized the need to have clear, transparent and more-frequent communication among themselves, other teacher leaders, site supervisors and Boston PIC staff. They cited the important and interconnected role that each group plays toward ensuring all students have an opportunity to participate.

Teachers, staff and coaches identified recruiting and securing sites as a significant challenge for implementing aspects of the STEM program and its accessibility for BPS students.

A significant challenge was obtaining consent from students and their families.

While employer partners expressed their overall satisfaction with the experience, they said communication with BPS, teachers and staff was a challenge. Several employers view communication as paramount to their ability to be active partners and play meaningful roles in the students’ STEM learning experience.

Teachers, coaches, staff and employers agree that future evaluations of this program should include an effort to improve the Playbook’s content and format of the curriculum so the objective, outcomes and deliverables are measurable and replicable for future success.

C O N CLUS IO N Overall, Lorick identified high favorability of the BPS STEM Factor from across the multiple stakeholders. About 80% of students rated their participation in STEM summer internships and coding initiatives as useful or very useful.

Teachers, staff and coaches supported continuation of both program branches (WBL and PBL) and workforce hosts believed the program positively impacted not only students but also corporate culture.

The initiative’s ability to recruit Black and Latinx “second and third row” students is demonstrated by the fact that more than 40% of PBL and over 62% of WBL participants identified BPS STEM Factor programming as their first opportunity to participate in this type of STEM experience.

We also had moderate success in achieving the goal of retaining Black and Latinx students in STEM programming, as demonstrated by 62% of PBL students indicating interest in continuing with BPS STEM Factor programming in the future.

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BPS STEM Factor had difficulty demonstrating the realworld applicability of the program and inspiring students to pursue STEM careers. At the end of the program, over half of WBL students indicated a lack of interest in a STEM career and many PBL students felt a lack of connection between programming and future career opportunities. One reason for this feeling may be that many students and nearly half of the educators themselves felt that the teachers in the program were not adequately prepared to teach the classes.

They also urged improvement in the Playbooks.

Overall, there also was an overwhelming consensus that BPS STEM Factor needed to be more organized in its planning and implementation. The primary critique was a lack of communication and collaboration at the sectoral (BPS, Boston PIC, and Employer hosts) and programmatic levels (e.g. teacher leaders, site supervisors and Boston PIC staff).

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Assessment 3: Agncy Evaluation of Internship Ecosystem and BPS STEM Factor: July 2018 – Jan. 2019

OV E RV I E W BPS STEM Factor also received a detailed assessment from Agncy, a consulting firm that applies design to complex systems as a strategy to help eradicate structural inequalities. Understanding the critical importance of providing meaningful STEM internships to Boston Public School students as a strategy for creating a STEM pipeline, Agncy worked (from July 2018-January 2019) to analyze how Boston’s internship ecosystem currently worked as it related to three distinct entities, the Boston Public Schools, employers and Boston PIC, an intermediary whose task is to connect BPS students with internships at local employers.77 Agncy then conducted a process-oriented assessment to help provide a systems improvement map for BPS STEM Factor.

D E TA I L S Internship Ecosystem for High School Students in Boston – Strengths and Challenges Strengths Agncy supported the contention that the current internship ecosystem has provided many successful matches between students and employers, although the system’s lack of organization has prevented many other students from gaining important career development opportunities.

Challenges While a student-centered collective should have been collaborative, coordinated and supportive, Agncy instead found the existence of a disjointed system that was often described as incoherent and impenetrable. It identified a lack of clear processes for delineating the specific role that each entity should play, and who to engage with for key decisions.

Agncy described how individual and direct relationships between school and employers often were the most important factor in lining up internships rather than a systematic and coordinated approach to developing career pipelines.

BP S ST E M FACTOR: ST R E N GT H S & C H ALLEN G ES Strengths of BPS STEM Factor Identified: Agncy identified the utilization of a Centralized Coordinator and Teacher Leader to intentionally recruit and place students as a key systems improvement achieved by BPS STEM Factor. By better dealing with “the many parts and pieces beyond anyone’s direct control,” BPS STEM Factor was able to identify, match and place 39 of the 79 students initially identified for internships during the summer of 2018. More than half (22) of the positions (e.g.

Reebok, Northeastern University, and Mass General Hospital) came without PIC’s direct support, while about a quarter (11) of these internships were paid for by the host employers and did not require subsidy from the initiative.

Their analysis identified some encouraging best practices that focused on engaging participants in project-based learning.

For example, through partnerships with MIT and Northeastern, BPS student interns had the opportunity to learn and practice coding within high-quality programming in the STEM fields of mathematics (MIT) and clean energy (Northeastern).

Challenges of BPS STEM Factor Identified: Agncy identified an inconsistency in the type of internships offered and thus the experiences of the BPS students. They pointed out a number of challenges with BPS STEM Factor internships during the summer of 2018 that included: Late Start to Pilot program preventing involvement of employers in program design; PIC’s lack of clear and consistent communication around opportunities, and decision making processes for placement. Agncy highlighted the intermediary’s inability to effectively facilitate conversations between the employers and BPS (including BPS STEM Factor) as factors that could inhibit student success;

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Lack of role clarity within positions (e.g. distinction between Centralized Coordinator, Career Specialists and Teacher Leaders) of BPS STEM Factor; Lack of common tools and language (across decentralized BPS) to assess standards (students’ interest, preparation and qualification) for internships that could help gauge potential for their success; Unclear concept of what comprises a true “STEM internship.” While a student might have an internship in a STEM sector they might never get a hands-on opportunity to develop or use STEM knowledge or skills;78 Difficulty in building a true cohort in BPS STEM Factor that would prepare and support students for their summer internships during the school year.

S UM MA RY BA S ED U PON ALL T HREE E VALUATIO NS Strengths Responding to research that consistently calls for improving STEM education as a strategy to better prepare students for the high-wage, high-tech, high-skill jobs that drive the 21st century regional economy, the Boston Public Schools launched the BPS STEM Factor as a pilot program to help ameliorate the STEM achievement gap. By the summer of 2019 the BPS STEM Factor will have reached 2,178 students. During this time, BPS has taken a major leap in offering coordinated and innovative STEM programming through Project-Based Learning (PBL) coding initiatives and Work-Based Learning (WBL) internships.

Overall, BPS STEM Factor has received high favorability from teachers, staff, coaches, and students. 80% of the student participants rated their participation in STEM summer internships and school-year coding initiatives as useful or very useful and 62% wanted to continue with the programming.

The initiative was able to achieve its racial equity goals by serving “second and third row” Black and Latinx students as 62% of students in the WBL programming and over 40% of those in the PBL programming indicated that they had their very first STEM experience through the BPS STEM Factor initiative. In addition, nearly 1 in 4 participants did not have prior knowledge of different types of STEM-related careers and professions prior to participation in the programming.

BY THE SUMMER OF 2019 THE BPS STEM FACTOR WILL HAVE REACHED

2,178 STUDENTS

Most importantly, the BPS STEM Factor programming demonstrated that students who are often doubted because of racial prejudice, and/or attendance at underperforming schools can succeed in rigorous, STEM-focused academic courses and in the STEM workforce. In fact, the pilot coding program showed that about 70% of high school participants demonstrated computational thinking skills across multiple domains and nearly 80% of the participants showed a foundation for mastery in the Python coding language. As a result of these successes, the initiative also dramatically grew participants’ confidence in coding (from 18% to 54%). This shows that BPS can positively impact students’ perception of their ability to succeed in STEM, as it works to boost skills, increase social capital and open pipelines to careers.

expressed a decreasing interest in a career in mathematics (63% to 50%), and science (63% to 38%) after completion of the year-long project. Many PBL students felt a lack of connection between programming and future career opportunities. Similarly, over half of WBL students indicated a lack of interest in a STEM career at the conclusion of their internship.

The assessments also identified the lack of organization of the initiative, especially around communication and collaboration as a particular problem that needs to be overcome.

The primary critique was a lack of coordination between the sectors (BPS, Boston PIC, and Employer hosts who were typically not involved in program design) and at the programmatic level (e.g. lack of role clarity and between teacher leaders, site supervisors and Boston PIC management). We also identified a lack of a structure and process ownership (i.e. who does what, how they do it and by when it will be completed).

Understanding the importance of 21st century skills for success in STEM fields, the assessments highlighted the need to provide better training and preparation for participants around soft skills. As indicated by a decline in students’ perceptions of their abilities in a wide variety of areas, BPS leaders must be more intentional in providing access to life-skills workshops in areas like goal setting, time management, collaboration and problem solving. It is important to re-emphasize that corporate leaders in STEM fields highly value these skills in their employees rather than the purely technical skills. Another key area of improvement identified by both students and educators alike is the need to better prepare teachers to effectively provide STEM education.

BPS STEM Factor also succeeded in placing typical Black and Brown BPS students in internships that are often only targeted to high achievers. In fact, it successfully placed 39 of the 79 students initially identified for internships during the summer of 2018 at companies like Reebok and Mass General Hospital. While the internships had various levels of STEM engagement, the initiative fostered some exciting new partnerships that offer best practices in STEM-focused WBL, including with MIT (mathematics) and Northeastern (clean energy).

Challenges Unfortunately, the initiative did not make enough placements in STEM fields. Other internships, while located at corporations that focus on STEM, did not actually give students real opportunities to apply STEM learnings or gain STEM skills through real-world, tangible STEM-based projects.

BPS STEM Factor also had challenges in making an impact upon one of its essential goals – inspiring participants to pursue STEM careers. In fact, students in the coding program

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Eddie Glaude, a professor of African-American studies at Princeton University described to MSNBC

A KIND OF SOFT BIGOTRY WHERE THE IDEA OF EDUCATING AFRICAN-AMERICAN CHILDREN IS OFTEN THOUGHT OF AS A PHILANTHROPIC ENTERPRISE, AS A CHARITABLE GIFT.

5 IMPLICATIONS FOR GE & ITS PHILANTHROPIC APPROACH

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The Need to Apply a Racial Justice Lens to Philanthropy

While researchers (Brennan, 2016; Cohen, 2014; Sharkey, 2016) have found that many of the U.S.’s social justice challenges (e.g., its income and wealth inequality, unemployment, educational and health disparities) disproportionately affect African-Americans and other communities of color, very few philanthropic organizations have explicitly and strategically focused upon racism as the crucial factor driving inequality, nor have they prioritized a racial justice approach to devising solutions for social disparities.

According to the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity, despite dramatic growth of people of color in the United States “and increased awareness of the impacts of systemic racism, there has been no progress on expanding funding for people of color.” In fact, only 7.4% of total giving in 2014 was designated for people of color and most of this support focused on social services rather than projects focused explicitly on racial justice.79 In spite of foundations’ desire for a “post-racial America,” and the push for policies that use class as a proxy for race, the reality is that inequities continue to manifest through systemic racism which undergirds the very injustices that foundations attempt to address (e.g. poverty, educational achievement gaps, etc.). By not naming racism, they are unable to get to the root causes of the issues of inequity both in the philanthropic sector and society as a whole. In addition to failing to frame vast present day power imbalances within a historical context that centralizes the ways in which structural racism is

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inextricably interwoven into the fabric of our nation’s democracy, foundations also too frequently conduct grantmaking in ways that actually reinforce racial inequities.80 Philanthropic organizations need to have deeper, more nuanced conversations about equity in their giving practices and the factors that impact access to power and capital (social, human, economic and cultural), namely who has it, who does not have it and why. Research has found that the sector of philanthropy has a problematic understanding about equity as evidenced by the paltry number of community grants funded to racial-ethnic and marginalized communities.

As organizations with significant power, wealth and privilege, foundations often espouse the value of humility and advocate for solutions to come directly from the communities they serve, however, their actions often are paternalistic. Due to the lack of diversity amongst foundation trustees and executives, those who have the wealth and interest to work with specific communities are often the most distant/disconnected from them, tend to overlook the assets that already exist within them, and frequently will engage the community only as part of the problem and rarely as a part of the solution.

Julie Quiroz, in her article “Walking Forward: Racial Justice Funding Lessons from the Field,” powerfully describes the ways in which philanthropic entities fail to be “structurally accountable to our communities [of color], yet have tremendous influence over our collective future by dictating which organizations, issues and/or strategies will be funded.

This is ultimately racialized given that much of power within philanthropy is still [and only perceived as] White, wealthy and insulated.”

To be clear, this is more than a call to action for philanthropies to consider implementing cultural competency metrics both within and across their organizations, per se. When it comes to developing programs and funding streams, the staff at philanthropic organizations must examine their own understanding about the intersectionality of race and equity, including the root causes for their biases, and the various cultural meanings they hold about wealth that informs their institutionalized grantmaking processes and decisions. Engaging in this process includes unpacking what it means to be “X” (racial-ethnic group; class status; gender identity; disability; age; religious affiliation and so on), the privilege and perceptions that are attributed to each of those identity categories, and how individuals reify them in their organizational practices.

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Linked Philanthropic Equity

OVE RV IEW Developed by New England Blacks in Philanthropy, Linked Philanthropic EquityTM (LPETM), is a new framework/proprietary approach that employs a racial justice lens to philanthropic equity research and practice. Providing both empirically-rich research and practical philanthropic investment tools, LPETM will help individuals and organizations better understand the philanthropic sector and incubate strategies that better reflect and support equity in diverse communities.

In order to maximize impact and achieve long-term social, political and economic change, New England Blacks in Philanthropy will develop and implement LPETM as a new philanthropic model that:

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Employs a racial-class-gender equity lens in research, advocacy and philanthropic investment work;

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Examines the impact of race (and racism) across all areas of social justice;

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Supports the powerful work of building deep networks within and across diverse communities (especially communities of color); and

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Devises strategies, goals and metrics/outcomes that explicitly seek to document and remedy racial disparities.

C O N CE PTUA L FRAMEWORK LPETM demands a paradigmatic shift in foundations’ approach to social justice challenges by prioritizing an interrogation of racism both within society and the philanthropic sector itself. Changing prevailing narratives of race and wealth equity, LPETM will push the sector of philanthropy to more deeply consider the underlying reasons that some communities experience (im)mobility and how these communities (especially communities of color) can or should be helped outside of the practice of “charity.”

Understanding that foundations play an important convening role in equity-focused philanthropic thinking, LPETM insists that grantmaking institutions develop well-planned philanthropic campaigns that demonstrate an understanding of the way intentional philanthropy works, both theoretically and practically, in racial-ethnic and diverse communities.

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As such, the theoretical and tool development work of LPETM is undergirded by two key concepts:

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Foundations must understand the potential of intentional (and racially just) philanthropic investments to be integrated robustly into all activities that seek to solve endemic social problems.

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Philanthropic entities must build assets and provide a return to the people their charitable investments are intended to empower. To that end, foundations’ systematic incorporation of LPETM research can enhance overall capacity among their grantees, which, in turn, accrue value across all communities.

Our model contends that philanthropies must examine and interrogate the ways in which outdated (and racist) cultural models about both race and wealth influence decision-making processes around which communities need their support or are deemed as “deserving” of their charity and the amount of funding that goes to which communities. LPETM directly confronts prevailing views on poverty and welfare that are framed by the myth of “American meritocracy,” the belief that economic opportunity is widespread to anyone who tries hard enough to succeed. For those who perceive abundant opportunities, poverty itself becomes presumptive evidence of personal failure as opposed to being rooted in endemic structural constraints that privilege the few and marginalize the most.

It is an undisputed fact that disparities in wealth and income are endemic problems in the U.S. However, by obscuring the practices and impacts of structural racism, the higher overall rates of poverty among Blacks and Latinx comparative to their population size become distorted and create the false perception that poverty is ubiquitous among Blacks and Latinx people only. The result is that poverty has become branded as a problem of individuals of color.

LPETM facilitates positive, transformative social change by driving donor philanthropic giving, philanthropy stewardship and programming through intentional giving that challenges racial injustice. Our strategies center the ways in which race and wealth equity are directly connected to individuals’ strong sense of personal and community obligations/expectations and the overall mission and goals of nonprofits and foundations that link their activities to community ties and racial equity.

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Connective Tissue: Linked Philanthropic Equity and Its Relationship to the Boston Public Schools and BPS STEM Factor

BAC KGR O UN D Led by Dr. Makeeba McCreary, Ed.D. (Former Managing Director & Sr. Advisor of External Affairs, Boston Public Schools) the BPS STEM Factor was designed as an initiative to leverage philanthropic investment to promote racial equity in STEM education. The initiative sought to take concrete and coordinated action to help reduce the vast educational and economic inequity produced by systemic racism that has caused debilitating harm to Black and Brown youth in the city of Boston.

Boston is a city of innovation and entrepreneurship and STEM is fueling this movement. The Boston Public Schools’ Office of External Affairs (OEA) understood the ways in which STEM skills not only illuminate the golden road to the jobs of the future but also pave the way to the careers of today. At the same time, OEA observed the lack of representation of people of color (especially BPS graduates) in employment within the city’s high-tech economy and STEM sectors (e.g. life sciences,

IT, medicine, higher education) that are growing exponentially.

OEA leaders saw the lack of concrete connections between the school system and the city’s STEM employers as a prominent factor that hamstrings Boston’s Black and Brown youth, precluding the advancement of 77% of the city’s public school students.

Most importantly, the initiative was envisioned as a way to transform the multiple and often interlocking ways in which the Boston Public Schools, nonprofit organizations and the region’s corporations were failing our Black and Brown youth.

More than calling them out for failing to provide effective investment in educational pathways that help the second and third row students acquire 21st century knowledge, skills, and experiences, the initiative was designed with the expressed goal to prepare under-represented Black and Brown students to succeed in STEM fields.

Through ingenuity, political acumen and energy, OEA was able to overcome numerous bureaucratic obstacles within both the school system and the city to secure a $25 million commitment from GE, and lead a process to implement an innovative and racial justice focused STEM pilot initiative (BPS STEM Factor). The program was designed to bridge the gap between public schools and their second and third row students of color, corporations and STEM careers. With a steadfast commitment to racial justice, and a gift for collaborative community building, OEA’s leadership refused to allow the American Dream to continue to be deferred for an entire generation of Boston’s Black and Brown public school students.

Unfortunately, current policy “solutions” around race far too frequently are driven by these skewed public perceptions.

The persistence of the false and problematic cultural model “black = poverty and depravity” has a profoundly negative impact on philanthropy. If donors believe in the myth of American meritocracy, and negative stereotypes of African Americans, then they are less likely to support private and government spending on programs that would benefit individuals who they believe are not deserving of assistance. This is why it is so critical to explore equity in philanthropy in the context of race, racism and the power imbalances between foundations and the communities they serve.

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D IS C USSIO N The linkage of philanthropic resources with educational equity should prioritize the environmental experiences and academic acumen of all children (especially those most impacted by the deleterious effects of structural racism) to actively participate in the community, rather than focus on the “good students” in the front row. The stability of a community and the prosperity of its people can best be achieved when energy and resources are targeted broadly (within educational, political and economic arenas) utilizing both human capital and economic material improvements from within and outside of the community. These multifaceted efforts have the potential to produce corresponding improvements and enhancements in all students’ lives and an equitable distribution of opportunities.

A Linked Philanthropic Equity approach calls for all philanthropic investments, especially those that are seeking to create more equitable solutions, to ask three important questions:

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How is my organization, company, or brand linked to the problem we are trying to solve?

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What are we willing to sacrifice in order to achieve the outcomes we are seeking?

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If the project fails, what is the impact on my company, organization or brand?

If all three answers are unclear or answered in the negative, then the foundation, organization or corporation must reexamine the purpose of the philanthropic investment. If the desired impact has not risen to a level of a value proposition for the philanthropic entity, it will fail to yield sustainable outcomes that foster equity.81 It is for this reason that we must foster a stronger bond between equitable outcomes, perceived future value and self-interest. If the well-being of an organization, a teacher’s future, or corporate profitability is linked to students’ educational achievements, then more equitable practices (and impacts) will emerge due to the link between selfinterest and community interest. Corporations need to more directly consider their connections with the students for whom their funding is intended to support and re-conceptualize urban youth of color from public schools as their future employees.

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B O STO N P U B LI C SCH O O LS AN D L I N K E D P H I L AN TH R O P I C EQ U I TY The Boston Globe’s recent The Valedictorian Project, a study of the lives of 113 top students from the Boston Public Schools’ classes of 2005, 2006 and 2007 showed the challenges of transforming academic success in high school into life achievement. We view the statistics, such as 1 in 4 valedictorians failing to earn a BA within 6 years and 40% making less than $50,000 as structural issues rather than individual problems. If this is happening to the top students in BPS, then we ask, what about the second and third row students? How do we better prepare them for life’s opportunities? Given the structural obstacles to life success, a Linked Philanthropic Equity approach requires structural and integrated solutions that both better link BPS schools, businesses, community-based organizations and philanthropic entities with each other and link their individual success to the achievements of BPS students.

Currently, corporations (and their philanthropic arms) too frequently do not value BPS students beyond perfunctory charity and teachers/instructors do not see their livelihood as dependent on producing critically thinking leaders.

Instruction, philanthropic investment (charity), and outcomes are often seen as separate entities and leaders across various sectors too frequently fail to see the necessity of their linkage towards meeting the desired community impact.

and reinforcing extreme racial income and wealth gaps in the city. While the city, along with a number of philanthropic organizations, has pushed to remedy the general “racial achievement gap” through programs like the Boston Opportunity Agenda, which have achieved some success in boosting test scores, BPS leadership has yet to implement an intentional, large-scale and racially just program district-wide that links philanthropic investment with STEM instruction and concrete employment.

BP S ST E M FACTO R A N D L I N K E D P H I L A N T H R O P I C EQ UI T Y Despite the absence of this STEM strategic plan, the pilot BPS STEM Factor initiative has created an incubator to link philanthropic efforts to more equitable STEM practices and results.

It seeks to create a deeper sense of community to counteract the bigotry of low expectations for second and third row African-American and Latinx students. Most profoundly, it repositions student achievement as the link to the future well-being of the teachers and corporations.

The effort of Dr. McCreary and the BPS Office of External Affairs to shift the narrative about Black and Brown BPS students through the BPS STEM Factor is an example of Linked Philanthropic EquityTM. BPS STEM Factor’s program design has showcased the interdependence of the student, instructor, and corporate interest. In order for us to achieve more equitable philanthropic outcomes, it is necessary for philanthropic endeavors, especially in our public schools, to be tied to the future success of the city, particularly the economic and social engines of our communities.

BPS STEM Factor has fostered a cultural and environmental change by linking philanthropic equity with student equity.

It required both the student and teacher to see that they are interdependent and that their futures are inextricably linked.

It has called for philanthropic funding to go beyond doing what is right to doing what is necessary to undo past wrongs, including philanthropic wrongs. The initiative has pushed to fund not just achievement of the American dream but a more equitable American community that provides a foundational education for all, prioritizing students whom society has systematically disadvantaged.

At the start of the BPS STEM Factor’s pilot program in 2016, the Boston Public Schools lacked a concrete STEM Strategic Plan and had no dedicated, city-wide STEM leader (never mind team) to shape educational policy, pedagogy and practice for the city’s 60,000 students. Three years later, in 2019, Boston still lacks a “STEM czar,” or any STEM Strategic Plan in a city whose innovation economy demands solid STEM skills. The lack of a coherent and comprehensive STEM framework along with the idea of moving forward with a philanthropic plan without addressing underlying issues of equity, environment and ecosystem, raises questions about the ability to achieve equitable impact. These factors also dramatically reduce the potential for education to produce a transformative impact upon the lives of the young people of color that BPS predominantly serves.

It is clear that until we provide innovative STEM-focused educational pathways and career pipelines for all BPS students, we will continue to see vast underrepresentation of people of color in high-wage STEM jobs, reifying racial inequity

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G E N ERA L E L ECT RIC (GE) AND LINKED P HIL A NTHRO P I C EQU IT Y The success and prosperity of a community can only be maintained when all of its students are valued and where energy and resources are targeted to them and their communities.

GE’s general funding of STEM programming that targets BPS students at an early age with frequent and consistent dosages needs to be recognized as an important and intentional attempt to invest in the future of Boston beyond today’s employees. However, mere investment is not enough if it is not linked to a clear strategy and vision for the future. The lack of an overarching BPS STEM strategy continues to present a challenge in how best to engage large-scale philanthropic support (including but not limited to GE) and leverage its impact for Boston Public Schools students.

During our interviews and conversations about BPS STEM Factor, almost all of the discussion with adults focused on the present – the here and now. There were only superficial conversations about students as future employees and a clear need to more fully conceptualize and operationalize linkag-

es between today’s students and tomorrow’s employees.

Moreover, there was little understanding of the ways in which the process of scaling up programs like BPS STEM Factor could both contribute to educational equity and strengthen the city and regional economy.

One of the primary problems during the first phase of the BPS STEM Factor was that both BPS and corporate leaders did not establish clear and measurable linkages between GE’s philanthropic giving and internal business goals with metrics for racial justice in hiring (e.g. how many public school students it would hire from the city as interns and as part of its permanent future workforce). Under the leadership of Ann Klee, this shifted significantly, as she pushed to connect the initiative more directly with GE’s business proposition and encouraged the BPS STEM Factor leaders to use GE’s Fastworks model of Pivot or Persevere, which they adopted. Klee’s consistent message was that she wanted to see the STEM Factor participants as employees in her GE career pipeline.

New England Blacks in Philanthropy believes that the next step for GE will be to embody Linked Philanthropic Equity in practice by continuing to aggressively and consistently employ a significant number of STEM Factor participants (second and third row Boston Public School students) in meaningful STEM internships at their corporation. Given demographic trends, it is important that GE (and other corporations) understand that equity and business growth are directly connected and take action accordingly. By promoting racial equity now, they will increase their odds of being competitive in the near future.

able boundaries of engaging “good students.” The consistent mantra of this initiative has been to reach second and third row African American and Latinx students which in turn has served as catalyst to move funders to re-think their outcomes and prioritize racial justice. By reaching beyond the proactive, first row students, BPS STEM Factor has sent the message that everyone is valued, important and linked in a community.

This value proposition was integrated into all its activities and increased the communal assets of the group by ensuring that all Black and Brown students felt that they truly mattered.

Teachers, educational administrators and philanthropy often espouse the ways in which STEM education serves as a beacon of the future, yet there is an absence of information regarding performance and impact. To be serious about meeting equity outcomes in STEM, corporations must shift their thinking from philanthropy as charity to investment that can produce social and economic impact grounded in an ethos of racial justice.

While the initiative has effectively changed the narrative around who is deserving of high-quality STEM education in Boston and how it should be delivered, it also has presented an opportunity for BPS to reflect upon the initiative’s successes, challenges and opportunities for change. It offers the chance to re-examine its outputs, outcomes, and expectations regarding STEM instruction for Boston’s youth of color.

GE should be recognized for allowing the Boston Public Schools to directly use their philanthropic dollars to support BPS STEM Factor’s focus in design and implementation on increasing STEM opportunities for Black and Brown second and third row students. We are hopeful that GE will amplify the impact of its investment by hiring BPS students participating in the initiative.

C O N C LUS I O N There is tremendous potential for well-designed STEM programs that link project-based instruction with real-world employment experiences to boost racial equity, reduce inequality and help transform unjust power dynamics that have produced debilitating results for Black and Brown children. By partnering with GE, the BPS STEM Factor has sought to present new, more effective models for STEM education in urban districts that would simultaneously address the lack of diversity in high-tech employment fields. BPS STEM Factor has created a framework for partnership that has the potential to guide GE (as well as other corporations) to directly link their philanthropic goals with more equitable outcomes that are both student-centric and geared toward remediating race- and class-based injustices. This initiative has provided a place where the academic and corporate communities are better able to create an empathetic space where shared values are united, as opposed to being separate and unequal.

One of the BPS STEM Factor’s key innovations has been its ability to push BPS, and other sectors, beyond the comfort-

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Many of the adults (educators, administrators, philanthropic leaders, parents) that we interviewed have unfortunately confused the act of offering STEM as a STEM strategy.

Similarly, corporate philanthropy should not be focused on the surface level desire to provide the opportunity for students to acquire skills, but instead should be squarely linked to dismantling the racist and classist systems that produce vast educational and employment disparities.

With this in mind, BPS STEM Factor should be more intentional in establishing measurable metrics for STEM success for participants, teachers, corporate partners and the district as a whole as it works to answer questions, such as: How does the lack of adequate preparation, knowledge, skills and performance by STEM teachers impact students’ likelihood of future success? What types of teacher retraining programs will help them to better prepare students for the critical thinking, collaborative problem solving and STEM skills that employers demand?

What academic and attitudinal gains in science, technology and math will be considered truly impactful? How will these be measured?

How many students placed in STEM employment at area corporations will qualify as successful? How many jobs will be internships and how many will be full-time permanent jobs? What are the deadlines for achieving these goals?

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OV E RV I E W

RECOMMENDATIONS FROM NEW ENGLAND BLACKS IN PHILANTHROPY New England Blacks in Philanthropy offers four primary recommendations to improve BPS STEM Factor (and the Boston Public Schools as a whole) in the provision of more equitable and impactful STEM programming.

6 SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS

1

Educational leaders must present Boston Public Schools students with a clear line of sight between what they are learning today and how the lessons are linked to their future, including education pathways, career opportunities and income potential.

2

Philanthropic efforts must be linked to all (not just exceptional) students’ educational well-being, while ensuring that foundation investments are supported by rigorous outcomes regarding teacher accountability, and employment of BPS students by corporations. This effort will demonstrate philanthropic institutions’ true commitment to the young people and racial equity.

3

4

We propose the creation of a significant fund that is led

by GE but co-funded by peer corporate entities ($75 million to $150 million), STEM/STEAM Fund for the Boston Public Schools, that will only be activated when BPS presents a truly comprehensive, district-wide STEM/STEAM strategy. GE should provide the seed funding and the district could leverage their investment by urging other corporations to match both GE’s grant and their commitment to both STEM education and racial justice employment practices.

This BPS STEM Fund should be used to: Fund a STEM Teacher Training Institute for BPS teachers developed and implemented by an external partner; Scale-up a city-wide STEM internship program that sets a challenging but achievable goal for internships (e.g. 1,000 BPS students placed by 2022); and Challenge GE to hire 10 Boston Public School students per campus every summer.

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SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BPS STEM FACTOR TO PIVOT Need for Improved Program Coordination through Cross-Sectoral Planning The BPS STEM Factor launched as a direct response to promising practices in the field of STEM that prioritized collaboration across multiple sectors to produce an integrated delivery model that best serves the interests of students.

To strengthen what has worked in the pilot initiative and remedy BPS STEM Factor’s overall challenges with communication and coordination, BPS and GE should pause and reflect on their experiences during the initiative’s first three years of programming and the results presented here before making decisions for how to pivot the initiative.

Overall, there is a clarion call for BPS STEM Factor to improve its program coordination. New England Blacks in Philanthropy has identified a number of opportunities for each of the key stakeholders (BPS, PIC and employers) to improve their practices individually and collaboratively, in order to strengthen the entire BPS STEM Factor, especially the internship ecosystem.

A critical strategy to better align all of the partners’ interests, capacities and desired outcomes would be to increase cross-sectoral planning. With Dr. Brenda Cassellius PhD starting as the Boston Public Schools’ new superintendent in the Fall of 2019, now is the perfect time to bring together all of the operational partners (GE, BPS, PIC, host companies, etc.) through a professionally facilitated retreat that focuses on reflection, refinement and reinvention of the BPS STEM Factor. This effort should serve as the launch of regular, sustained and structured planning sessions. The goal would be to have leadership from all of the sectors work together in a more cohesive, comprehensive and supportive manner to improve STEM education and career development in order to better prepare the second and third row students for the jobs of the new economy.

BPS should convene conversations between the public school system leadership and educators, PIC and employers to clarify expectations and roles and better align academics with internship work in order to improve student preparation for success in STEM pipelines. There is a need for the district to

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do a better job in uniformly documenting both schools’ programs and students’ readiness so that employers will better understand the young people’s potential capability (knowledge, hard and soft skills) for specific internships.

Ultimately, the central office should play a more important role in equitably designing and distributing internships across the district rather than the current decentralized system. BPS STEM Factor has demonstrated that second and third row students can successfully complete challenging work and the staff has pushed hard to recruit and retain these students in the programming. Leadership from BPS and the PIC must be proactive and intentional in providing equity of opportunity and racial justice practice as core values as the initiative grows.

B E T TER CO MMU NICATION WITH PAR E N TS It is clear that boosting parent engagement is one important strategy for steering more students into STEM academic pathways and career pipelines. Our assessment recommends fostering stronger communication with parents as a key program improvement strategy that will benefit students.

Better parent engagement will help students to better understand the real-world applicability of BPS STEM actor’s programming, while increasing guidance and support as they travel on STEM pathways.

This idea is supported by research that frequently cites parents’ knowledge of STEM’s importance and their engagement with their children as factors that positively influence students’ perceptions of STEM’s utility, their likelihood to enroll in advanced science and math classes, and even their chance to enter STEM career pipelines. Given participants’ declining interest in STEM careers after participation, it seems clear that improving parental intervention would be a simple and cost-effective strategy for improving outcomes.

New England Blacks in Philanthropy’s recommendations reinforce research that calls for implementing concrete strategies to demystify STEM education and career pipelines in order to better support Black and Latinx families, especially recent immigrants. Our analysis calls for providing culturally and linguistically responsive program materials, as well as offering evening information sessions to raise parent awareness about the program and STEM’s importance, while providing strategies for supporting their children’s learning.

We also call for ongoing, two-way communication between the initiative’s team and parents in order to best serve the students’ social-emotional and academic needs.

ESTA BL I S H EX T E R N A L ST E M T R A I N I N G I N ST I T UT E TO I M P R OV E P R O F ESS I O N A L D E V E LO P M E N T FO R BP S T E AC H E R S New England Blacks in Philanthropy’s assessments make a cogent argument that BPS STEM Factor must take concrete steps to boost teacher professional development. BPS needs to better prepare teachers to understand the importance of using integrated, collaborative and problem-solving pedagogies and help provide them with the tools and methodologies needed to empower students to develop the 21st century skills that STEM employers demand. Our call for improved teacher preparation is supported by critiques by student participants, as well as the STEM teachers themselves. While BPS STEM Factor has been working to improve teacher readiness through the Playbook tools, New England Blacks in Philanthropy has come to recognize the need for BPS to radically re-shape the ways in which it educates its STEM teachers.

We envision a formal, systematic and integrated STEM Teachers Training Institute that will support this process.

Given BPS’s lack of capacity to provide this type of largescale Teacher Training Program, New England Blacks in Philanthropy strongly recommends that BPS STEM Factor (and the school system as a whole) engage an external partner with more technical capacity and expertise to design and implement this teacher training institute. Supporting a racial justice ethos, NEBiP also argues for training teachers and educators to spot implicit bias in STEM education and make this a formal part of the training.

In order to make this recommendation a reality, BPS should first prioritize a detailed, robust, forward-thinking and actionable STEM Strategic Plan for the district. The new school superintendent must prioritize STEM teaching and learning at the higher levels of leadership throughout the school system and cultivate and secure major funding resources to support transformative school-to-career STEM programming.

The recommendation to pivot and focus on teacher training in this comprehensive way is supported by research that calls for a seismic shift in pedagogical practices that will push STEM teachers away from lectures and towards hands-on, interactive activities that appeal to student interests, have real-world applicability and offer collaborative opportunities for problem solving. Given the complexities of transforming STEM education toward student-centered and interdisciplinary teaching practices, BPS must provide long-term comprehensive and sustainable STEM professional development and teacher technical assistance.

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NEBIP STRONGLY RECOMMENDS THAT BPS STEM FACTOR ENGAGE AN EXTERNAL PARTNER WITH MORE TECHNICAL CAPACITY & EXPERTISE TO DESIGN & IMPLEMENT THIS TEACHER TRAINING INSTITUTE. Our research describes a number of cross-sectoral, real-world centered STEM teacher education model programs in large urban districts that BPS STEM Factor could learn from as it plans the next phase of its implementation. These initiatives include the UrbanSTEM program, the Baxter Center for Science Education, and TechMath. Inspired by these programs, we believe that the involvement of STEM employers in collaboration with education professionals should be prioritized as an important strategy to ensure that the program will effectively prepare teachers to better understand the type of skills (hard and soft) and practices that are actually required and desired in STEM workforce settings.

BO L ST E R ST UD EN T PREPARAT ION New England Blacks in Philanthropy calls upon BPS to develop new policies and implement new practices during the school year to better prepare students for both the coding and summer internship programming. Recommended strategies include: Inviting students from WBL and PBL to a forum which would explain the overarching goals of the entire BPS STEM Factor program, not just the component that they are engaged in; Boosting social capital by connecting students (through forums, panels or site visits) with employers from a variety of STEM sectors in order to boost social capital and introduce them to new career pathways and pipelines; and Developing processes to formally integrate summer internship preparation into the curriculum during the school year (e.g. offering experiential exercises that include soft- and hard-skills training).

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T RA NSFO RM THE BOSTON PRIVAT E IND USTRY CO U NCIL (PIC) With its focus on ensuring that students walking through the door of a company are capable of handling the newness of an employment experience in a professional environment, The Boston Private Industry Council often is placed in a position of needing to behave as gatekeeper rather than an opportunity provider. Given these circumstances, we recommend that this intermediary shift its focus from being “employer-centric” to “student-centric,” by emphasizing student learning as the core objective for all stakeholders across the ecosystem.

Our remedy encourages PIC to build bridges and improve relationships between schools and employers that have been structurally divided (with Career Specialists in schools, and Employer Engagement teams with industry).

New England Blacks in Philanthropy recommends bringing these entities together more intentionally and frequently to improve communication and cooperation. It also calls upon PIC to modernize its system by using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) to increase transparency so that all stakeholders (employers, schools, and students) have better access to information (about internship opportunities, schools’ programs and students’ capabilities).

Finally, BPS can improve its role as a conduit between schools and employers by better mapping strategies to develop and nurture students’ multi-year trajectory through school and the working world. Connected with this recommendation is the need for BPS to partner deeply and intentionally with PIC to innovate by finding best practice solutions that integrate work and high school to better meet the needs of all of its constituents.

We believe that much of this transformation is under way and well within the priorities of the PIC leadership at this time.

E N H ANCING E MPLOYERS’ ABILIT Y TO S UP P O RT B P S ST U DENTS New England Blacks in Philanthropy’s analysis reveals that employers of BPS student interns should have a dedicated manager who is prepared to: supervise and design meaningful projects for student participants with clearly demarcated roles and responsibilities (clearly defined short job descriptions for the students); integrate them into the department and organizational culture; and provide ongoing support.

While this is currently a stated practice of the PIC, it should be intensified by including BPS in the initial communication, thus creating a stronger connective tissue.

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In order for the managers of interns to be successful, we recommend making sure that they understand the amount of time and resources that they will need to dedicate to these students/employees. They should be provided with guidelines for communicating with teens (including clear expectations) and strategies for providing support and overcoming challenges to help students thrive at work.

For example, BPS STEM Factor could provide a networking event for prospective employers and an orientation process for committed employers who will be hosting teens. These strategies will help align expectations, roles and responsibilities and give managers an opportunity to learn about best practices for inspiring students to pursue STEM careers.

Perhaps the most important factor for achieving this goal is to ensure that the companies and organizations offer engaging projects with clearly defined objectives that incorporate STEM tools and professional skills, such as communication and collaboration. Other best practices identified include: offering wrap-around supports and life skills workshops (from financial literacy to self-care and managing workplace stress); and committing to engaging with interns for an entire year, rather than just the six weeks during the summer.

SECTO R - SP ECI FI C E M P LOY M E N T P I P E LI N ES In addition to our call for a STEM Teacher Training Institute, another potential future direction for BPS STEM Factor is to design sector-specific employment pipelines and more intensive STEM programming that intentionally engages employers or industry associations in the process of curriculum design. The idea is to provide an accelerated pathway to develop the education and skills needed to gain employment in STEM careers that pay high wages.

There are a number of programs that we should investigate as potential models to emulate because of their remarkable success in using STEM education to pull people out of poverty. For example, a March 15, 2019 New York Times article, “Income Before: $18,000. After: $85,000. Does Tiny Nonprofit Hold a Key to the Middle Class?” describes the success of Pursuit, a technology-focused nonprofit workforce development program with the primary goal of providing those without a 4-year college degree with pathways to economic success. Could their model be adaptable at the high school level? Their remarkable success should push us to look closer as:

ABOUT 85 PERCENT OF PURSUIT’S 300 GRADUATES HAVE LANDED WELL-PAYING TECH JOBS WITHIN A YEAR. THEY WORK AS SOFTWARE ENGINEERS BOTH AT MAJOR CORPORATIONS LIKE JPMORGAN CHASE AND AT START-UPS LIKE OSCAR HEALTH. THEY EARN $85,000 A YEAR ON AVERAGE, COMPARED WITH $18,000 BEFORE THE PURSUIT PROGRAM. Still, while they focus on public housing developments and libraries for recruitment, they are extremely selective, which makes us question scalability, especially given BPS STEM Factor’s focus on second and third row students. We should further research successful local and national projects that focus on the T in STEM in order to propel resource-challenged students into the middle class. These organizations include Year Up and Per Scholas, as well as the Markle Foundation’s Skillful, and Opportunity@Work’s TechHire.

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Understanding that forms of oppressions (such as racism and sexism) are often intersectional, and that there is both a racial and gender achievement gap in STEM education and employment fields, we must consider gender equity in the design of the BPS STEM Factor program and in measuring its impact.

The initiative must prioritize questions of gender and racial justice, such as: Does BPS STEM Factor (and the district as a whole) provide the same opportunities for young women and young men?

Understanding that girls have been systematically steered away from STEM careers, what is it doing to intentionally overcome hurdles placed in front of young women and prioritize their education?

Has the initiative been recruiting female role models (especially women of color) from various STEM fields to mentor BPS students?

7 FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS

What is BPS STEM Factor doing to specifically recruit Black and Brown girls into math and science programming?

Several important research hypotheses could further support the design elements of the PBL course implemented by BPS’ partner, the Young People’s Project (YPP). For example: How does an introduction to elements of computational thinking through an experiential learning approach affect students’ understanding of and application of computer programming languages, as well as learning in other STEM courses?

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Does a teaching and learning environment using young people who more closely mirror students’ lives enhance the achievement of course goals?

How does the idea of “teach to learn, learn to teach” affect students’ understanding of computational thinking, computer programming, and their potential role as knowledge workers and youth social agents of change?

Dedicating additional resources for evaluation of the BPS STEM Factor’s PBL programming could serve as a platform for advancing research on computer science education, and research focused on populations of (African American and Latinx) urban students who are considered underserved in public education.

In the future it might be more informative for researchers and course designers to hypothesize what aspects of this course might have an impact on students’ attitudes and confidence (independent exploration, mathematics activities, computer science work in STEM arenas, etc.) and to design ways to ask these particular students how they perceived these aspects as changing their attitudes and confidence. For example: did the independent work exploring engineering change their attitudes about engineering, and why?

This exploratory research could serve as the foundation for developing new surveys or other tools that are valid and reliable for the course goals and for the target population of students, which was a challenge for those assessing the YPP project. The research should include exploring how students underrepresented in STEM education and careers assess their

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own “confidence.” Being confident (“you can do it”) is strongly promoted by teachers and counselors of underserved students, but we need to know how to guide students as they gain more information about their own performance.

Educators and counselors need a better understanding of how these students are motivated and how their talents are best developed along these key educational pathways.

GE brought to its partnership with BPS a sprinter’s energy and the spirit of collaboration – supporting the district’s efforts to take on the challenging dilemma of equity, access and the need to bring innovation to students most marginalized from the careers requiring STEM competencies. Critical to this partnership was BPS’ ability to accept a new way of thinking about its decision-making processes and its decision to adopt a “pivot” or “persevere” mentality for analyzing whether a program is worth pursuing and the changes needed for its approach (some significant and others trivial but necessary).

It is evident that the BPS STEM Factor has much to teach in its learnings and New England Blacks in Philanthropy recommends that the district, the PIC and employment partners prioritize a pivot around the overall constructs of communication; specifically instituting formal planning times and processes that allow for concrete distinctions between each stakeholder’s desired outputs and necessary inputs in order to achieve desired outcomes sought by all.

Care should be taken that in the inclusion of Black and Brown and second/third row students, we do not exclude students for whom English is not their first language, girls, students who identify as LGBTQ and even those students who do not identify as having STEM as a primary interest.

8 FOOTNOTES AND APPENDIX

Families play a critical role in ensuring that STEM is introduced as a viable career pathway and furthermore are essential in coordinating the supplemental time and study that is necessary to close the STEM opportunity and achievement gaps. Approaches to STEM instruction must include real-time, on-site experiences that require evenings, weekends and vacation programming interventions. Caregivers need to be included in the process of presenting these opportunities so that they can understand their importance and support their prioritization. Finally, we encourage the Boston Public Schools and the Boston Private Industry Council to consider further transparency about where their competencies begin and end as a strategy to encourage partnerships that fill gaps for both organizations.

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59

BPS STEM Factor was developed by the office formerly known as the BPS Office of External Affairs (OEA).

1

Education Commission of the States, Vital Signs. Source: Economic Modeling Specialist International, 2017.

2

3

Ibid

22

Ibid.

23

Ibid

4

United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley, The Future of STEM in Greater Boston and What You Need to Know. April 3, 2018.

24

Boston Foundation and the Boston Planning and Development Agency. Powering Greater Boston’s Economy: Why the Latino Community Is Critical to Our Shared Future. June 2017. P. 15-16.

25

5

Education Commission of the States, Vital Signs. Source: Economic Modeling Specialist International, 2017.

6

Carbonite launches fund to help close tech skills gap in Boston. By David L. Harris – Associate Managing Editor, Boston Business Journal. Mar 28, 2017.

7

Tech Is Booming In Mass., But Diversity And Hiring Remain A Challenge. Zeninjor Enwemeka. WBUR. November 17, 2017.

8

Carbonite launches fund to help close tech skills gap in Boston. By David L. Harris – Associate Managing Editor, Boston Business Journal. Mar 28, 2017.

9

10

U.S. students’ academic achievement still lags that of their peers in many other

countries. By Drew Desilver. Pew Research Centers. February 15, 2017. Note: Based upon analysis of the common Programme for International Student Assessment.

Students Shouldn’t Live in STEM Deserts: We need to address disparities in access to high-quality math and science education in the U.S. By Matthew Randazzo. U.S. News and World Report. May 10, 2017.

11

National Science Teachers Association. NSTA Reports. Exploring STEM Professional Development. By Debra Shapiro. 3/2/2012.

Implementing Real-World STEM Curriculum in the Classroom Proves Vital to Students’ College and Career Success. Baxter.com.

Mathematics and Science Teachers Professional Development with Local Businesses to Introduce Middle and High School Students to Opportunities in STEM Careers. By R Miles, PJ Slagter van Tryon, FM Mensah. Science Educator. 2015.

26

Developing Effective STEM Professional Development Programs. Journal of Technology Education. Volume 25, Number 1. By Zanj K. Avery and Edward M. Reeve.

Fall 2013.

16

Ibid

In-service Teachers’ Implementation and Understanding of STEM Project Based Learning. By Sunyoung Han Sungkyunkwan University, KOREA; Bugrahan Yalvac Texas A&M University, USA; Mary M. Capraro, & Robert M. Capraro, Aggie STEM & Texas A&M University, USA. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science & Technology Education, 2015, 11(1), 63-76. International Society of Educational Research. October 2014.

20

Partnership Building as a Broadening-Participation Strategy: Helping Researchers and Developers Bridge the Gaps in STEM Education. CADRE Brief. By Jennifer Stiles.

April 2016.

46

72

Partnership Building as a Broadening-Participation Strategy: Helping Researchers and Developers Bridge the Gaps in STEM Education. CADRE Brief. By Jennifer Stiles.

April 2016.

73

75

The Competitive Advantage of Racial Equity. By Angela Glover Blackwell, Mark Kramer, Lalitha Vaidyanathan, Lakshmi Iyer, and Josh Kirschenbaum. Policy Link.

American, 23% Asian (primarily Vietnamese), 31% Hispanic and 7% White. 85% of the students are identified as “high need” and 65% “economically disadvantaged.” Participating students’ academic backgrounds were unavailable to evaluators.

Boston Chamber Opens Doors: Opportunity Director Works to Advance Economic Inclusion: Bay State Banner. October 4, 2017.

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Ibid.

Kasetsart Journal of Social Sciences. Volume 39, Issue 2. Pages 190-196. The roles of parents in cultivating children’s interest towards science learning and careers.

May–August 2018. By Lilia Halim, Norshariani Abd Rahman, Ria Zamri and Lilia Mohtar.

30

31

Ibid.

Science Daily. Talking to children about STEM fields boosts test scores and career interest. January 18, 2017. Source: University of Chicago.

Understanding Young People’s Science Aspirations: How students form ideas about ‘becoming a scientist.’ By Louise Archer, Jennifer DeWitt. August 12, 2016. Quote is from the abstract of Chapter 5. The role of families, social class and science capital in young people’s aspirations.

Note: This conception is also supported by a study that showed the important role that parents play in urban African American and Latina teenage girls’ STEM persistence and career plans.” Investigating STEM Support and Persistence Among Urban Teenage African American and Latina Girls Across Settings. Urban Education.

By Melissa Koch, Patrik Lundh, Christopher J. Harris. December 8, 2015.

“Black Parents as Advocates, Motivators, and Teachers of Mathematics.” The Journal of Negro Education, vol. 84, no. 3. 2015. pp. 473–490. By Ebony McGee, and Margaret Beale Spencer.

34

A Parent’s Role in STEM Education. NY Hall of Science. By Margaret Honey. Sep 21, 2016.

35

Education Commission of the States, Vital Signs. Source: Economic Modeling Specialist International, 2017.

36

38

National Science Teachers Association. NSTA Reports. Exploring STEM Professional Development. By Debra Shapiro. 3/2/2012.

Reducing Racial Wealth Inequalities in Greater Boston: Building a Shared Agenda.

Boston Federal Reserve Bank. By David Bryant, Ginger Haggerty, Cynthia Parker, Mimi Turchinetz, and Esther Schlorholtz. May 31, 2017.

71

Bringing STEM Education to Underserved Communities. By Joseph P. Williams. US News and World Report. May 29, 2014.

Making sense of “STEM education” in K-12 contexts. By Tamara D. Holmlund, Kristin Lesseig and David Slavit. International Journal of STEM Education. August 24,2018.

19

Boston’s Booming... But For Whom? Building Shared Prosperity in a Time of Growth. The Boston Foundation. Boston Indicators. October 2018.

70

49

29

STEM Teacher Education and Professional Development and Training: Challenges and Trends. American Journal of Applied Psychology. Vol. 6, No. 5, 2017, pp. 93-97.

By Aregamalage Sujeewa Vijayanthi Polgampala, Hong Shen, Fang Huang. October 18, 2017.

18

Tech Is Booming In Mass., But Diversity And Hiring Remain A Challenge. By Zeninjor Enwemeka. WBUR November 17, 2017.

Congressional Black Caucus

74

37

17

Google Discloses the White-male-ness of its Workforce; Vows to Do Better. By Ruth McCambridge. Nonprofit Quarterly. May 29, 2014.

45

69

United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley, The Future of STEM in Greater Boston and What You Need to Know. April 3, 2018.

33

15

Racial/Ethnic and Gender Equity Patterns in Illinois High School Career and Technical Education Coursework Asia Fuller Hamilton University of Illinois Joel Malin Miami University Donald Hackmann University of Illinois. 2015. p.33.

44

Achieving Racial Equity Through Cross-Sector Partnerships. Michael Gee. Philanthropy News Digest. October 3, 2018 68

48

*Note: Boston Public Schools has made us aware that students were tested on the old STE standards from 2001 rather than the new standards from 2016. BPS students in Grades 5 and 8 were tested on the new standards in Spring of 2019 and in Spring 2020 Grade 9 will be tested using the new standards. Teachers are concerned over this shift because they believe that they have not had adequate training on the new standards. Please see: http://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/tdd/sci.html?section=transition

Ibid.

Blacks in STEM jobs are especially concerned about diversity and discrimination in the workplace. By Cary Funk and Kim Parker. Pew Research Center. January 9, 2018 43

Black Girls Code Partners with Google in NYC Headquarters. Nonprofit Quarterly.

By Jeanne Allen. July 1, 2016.

Commentary: To Hook Students on STEM, Start With Their Parents- Parents are an untapped resource, research suggests. Education Week. By Judith Harackiewicz. May 22, 2018 28

Getting It Right: Problems and Progress Raising Science Achievement in Boston.

The Boston Foundation. January 23, 2019.

14

Getting It Right. Progress and Problems in Raising Science Achievement in Boston.

The Boston Foundation.

42

67

47

32

Brian Kennedy, Meg Hefferon and Cary Funk, “Half of Americans think young people don’t pursue STEM because it is too hard,” Fact Tank (blog), Pew Research Center, January 17, 2018, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/17/half-of-americans-think-young-people-dont-pursue-stem-because-it-is-too-hard/.

new-stem-index-2016, May 17, 2016.

Pew Research Center. Social and Demographic Trends. Most Americans evaluate STEM education as middling compared with other developed nations. By Cary Funk and Kim Parker. January 9, 2018.

27

12

13

60

Enhancing Teacher Efficacy for Urban STEM Teachers Facing Challenges to Their Teaching. Seals, Christopher; Mehta, Swati; Berzina-Pitcher, Inese; Graves-Wolf, Leigh.

Journal of Urban Learning, Teaching, and Research, v13 p135-146 2017.

21

Advancing Equity through More and Better STEM Learning. Leadership Conference Education Fund. February 2015. Note: This is in comparison with “Seventy-eight percent of high schools serving the lowest percentages of Black and Latino students” that offer high-level chemistry. There are similar statistics for math.

Latino, African-Americans have less access to math, science classes, new data show. By Carolyn Jones. EdSource. May 22, 2018 See for example, Partnership Building as a Broadening-Participation Strategy: Helping Researchers and Developers Bridge the Gaps in STEM Education. CADRE Brief. By Jennifer Stiles. April 2016. Page 2. And Latino, African-Americans have less access to math, science classes, new data show. By Carolyn Jones. EdSource. May 22, 2018.

39

Advancing Equity through More and Better STEM Learning. Leadership Conference Education Fund. February 2015.

40

Alan Neuhauser and Lindsey Cook, “2016 U.S. News/Raytheon STEM Index Shows Uptick in Hiring, Education,” https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-05-17/the41

50

The Future of STEM in Greater Boston and What You Need to Know. By Brigid Boyd.

United Way. April 3, 2018.

For details on the Young People’s Project work with BPS students through BPS STEM factor, please see Appendix B. The racial and ethnic categories represented by students was quite diverse, reflecting the racial characteristics of the school in the 2017-18 school year: 39% African

51

Boston Foundation and the Boston Planning and Development Agency. Powering Greater Boston’s Economy: Why the Latino Community Is Critical to Our Shared Future. June 2017.

52

Changing the Equation in STEM Education. By Katelyn Sabochik. September 16, 2010 53

Education: Knowledge and Skills for the Jobs of the Future. Educate to Innovate.

The White House.

54

Who’s Driving STEM Education? By Alex Hicks. MHT Partners. Education Investment Bank. March 1, 2018 55

5 Things You Need to Know About Stem in Roxbury. By Don Seiffert – Managing Editor, Boston Business Journal/ Aug 24, 2018 56

Carbonite launches fund to help close tech skills gap in Boston. By David L. Harris – Associate Managing Editor, Boston Business Journal. Mar 28, 2017.

57

Another Tech Company Steps Up Its Giving for K-12 STEM Education. By Caitlin Reilly. Inside Philanthropy. April 24, 2018.

58

Ibid. The author does note that many funders are cautious about putting philanthropic dollars directly into the public school because of “mixed results.”

59

Behind Intel’s Big Give for Diversity and STEM. By Tate Williams. Inside Philanthropy. January 13, 2015.

60

Texas Instruments Awards $8.1 Million for STEM Education. Philanthropy News Digest. September 16, 2018.

61

Behind Intel’s Big Give for Diversity and STEM. By Tate Williams. Inside Philanthropy. January 13, 2015.

62

Look Who’s Behind the Latest Push for STEM Diversity. By L.S. Hall. Inside Philanthropy. March 17, 2015.

63

Who’s Driving STEM Education? By Alex Hicks. MHT Partners | Education Investment Bank. March 1, 2018.

64

The Future of STEM in Greater Boston and What You Need to Know. By Brigid Boyd.

United Way. April 3, 2018. And U.S. Department of Education Awards $3.9M to Expand BoSTEM, a Citywide Initiative to Increase STEM Programming. United Way. January 18, 2018.

65

66

Review of Python course lab exercises provides evidence that students understood and could use variables and data types (strings, integers, floats), input and output instructions, conditional if/then/else instructions, operators (logical and arithmetic) and list and array representations in computer programs. This was also confirmed in observation of classroom work on programming and the work preparing a boot camp for younger students.

PIC has Career Specialists within BPS to help prepare students for the world of work and also is charged with identifying, facilitating and supporting best practices of employers hosting interns.

77

For example, one student placed in architecture firm did not learn to use CAD, and “had not worked on making physical models, or done any hand drawing: all essential skills for architects.”

78

Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity. 2017. Infographic: What Does Philanthropy Need to Know to Prioritize Racial Justice? Developed in partnership with Race Forward and Foundation Center.

79

In his Atlantic essay “The Case for Reparations,” Ta-Nehisi Coates, the brilliant public intellectual, describes the multiple ways in which the U.S. government – from slavery and Jim Crow to the Federal Housing Administration, the GI bill and even progressive legislation like Social Security during the New Deal – has codified racism into legal structures that have disadvantaged African Americans by denying them equal access to housing, education, health, and isolated them through legalized segregation that remains too firmly implanted. Coates uses the historical record and individual case studies (with a focus on state-sanctioned residential segregation in Chicago) to powerfully argue how our nation has endorsed acts of violence against Black people and makes a strong case for why reparations are necessary.

80

Although society often touts children as our greatest assets, the intentional educational instruction of children (especially those not deemed to be “good students”) is informed by a perceived lack of future value. The lack of future value for Black and Brown youth too frequently permeates every facet of their educational journeys, which harms them individually and undercuts their communities’ ability to achieve equity for all.

81

Making learning student-centric is also one of the primary shifts in pedagogical practice that research on STEM calls for.

https://tugg.org

61

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

CRITICAL PROGRAM REVIEW OF BPS STEM FACTOR BY DR. YNDIA LORICK, PHD – (DECEMBER 2018)

Details of Young People’s Project’s CRITICAL PROGRAM DETAILS OF YOUNG PEOPLE’S Project-Based Learning Work with BPS Students (2018-19) PROJECT’S PROJECT-BASED LEARNING WORK WITH BPS STUDENTS (2018-19)

For this Critical Program Review, three parts of work were completed.

PA RT 11 The first part conducted an environmental scan, and the draft STEM Internship Playbook, which focused on the pilot WorkBased Learning program. Twenty-one 60-minute, in-person, 1-1 interviews were conducted with: seven principals, five employers, one staff person from BPS central office, five teacher leaders, one career specialist, one employment engagement specialist and one program funder.

DATE

EVENT

DESCRIPTION

October 2018

Sophomore Boot Camp for Freshmen - Excel Sophomores taught Excel freshmen

Modeling content and format (50 students)

November 2018

Freshman Boot Camp for Sophomores (2) - Excel Freshmen taught Excel Sophomores

Design #1 with Feedback Loop (50 students)

December 4, 2018

Sophomore Mini Boot Camp for Department of Youth Services Staff

Mini Boot Camp Train the trainer model at DYS conference (30 adults served)

January 23, 2019

Freshman/Sophomore Boot Camp for GE, Partners & Teachers

Design #2 with Feedback Loop (30 attendees)

May 2nd 5th, 2019

Pop-Up Coding Boot Camp at National Math Festival in Washington DC - Excel students went to the conference under the YPP partnership at Excel (Please see video - https://youtu.be/IFVIU0tuFqk)

Freshman & Sophomore facilitators - 2,000 attendees

May 31, 2019

EOY Elementary/Middle School Hybrid Pop-Up Coding Boot Camp (Participants were students from The Tynan Elementary School )

60 students grades 4 and 5

June 7, 2019

EOY Elementary/Middle School Hybrid Pop-Up Coding Boot Camp New Mission, Umana, Perry - New Mission High School, Umana K-8 School, and the Oliver Hazard Perry School are the schools

250 students (2 sessions)

PA RT 22 The second part included a 15-minute online post-survey administered to a sample of the program’s participants: 13 BPS high school students who participated in WBL opportunities, 13 BPS high school students who participated in PBL opportunities, 14 teachers, three coaches and six employers.

The surveys were intended to solicit feedback and identify positive outcomes and challenges experienced during their participation in the pilot program.

PA RT 33 The third part of work included four focus groups, which lasted approximately 75 minutes each. The participants were 22 students, 17 from the PBL program and five from WBL; five teachers and coaches; and eight people from employer-partner organizations. These focus group interviews were also designed to solicit participants’ feedback about their needs, interests and challenges faced during the summer learning experience.

Appendix C Works Cited

62

59

63

APPENDIX C Works Cited 1. Allen, Jeanne. Black Girls Code Partners with Google in NYC Headquarters. Nonprofit Quarterly. July 1, 2016.

2. Archer, Louise and DeWitt, Jennifer. Understanding Young People’s Science Aspirations: How students form ideas about ‘becoming a scientist. August 12, 2016. Quote is from the abstract of Chapter 5: e role of families, social class and science capital in young people’s aspirations.

3. Avery, Zanj K. and Reeve, Edward M. Developing Effective STEM Professional Development Programs. Journal of Technology Education. Volume 25, Number 1. Fall 2013.

4. Baxter.com. Implementing Real-World STEM Curriculum in the Classroom Proves Vital to Students’ College and Career Success.

5. The Boston Foundation. Boston Indicators. Boston’s Booming... But for Whom? Building Shared Prosperity in a Time of Growth. October 2018. P. 34.

6. The Boston Foundation and the Boston Planning and Development Agency. Powering Greater Boston’s Economy: Why the Latino Community Is Critical to Our Shared Future. June 2017. P. 15-16.

7. The Boston Foundation. Getting It Right: Problems and Progress Raising Science Achievement in Boston. January 23, 2019.

8. Boyd, Brigid. The Future of STEM in Greater Boston and What You Need to Know . United Way. April 3, 2018. And U.S. Department of Education Awards $3.9M to Expand BoSTEM, a Citywide Initiative to Increase STEM Programming. United Way. January 18, 2018.

9. Bryant, David; Haggerty, Ginger; Parker, Cynthia; Turchinetz, Mimi; and Schlorholtz, Esther. Reducing Racial Wealth Inequalities in Greater Boston: Building a Shared Agenda. Boston Federal Reserve Bank. May 31, 2017.

64

12. Education Commission of the States, Vital Signs. Source: Economic Modeling Specialist International, 2017.

13. Enwemeka, Zeninjor. Tech Is Booming In Mass., But Diversity And Hiring Remain A Challenge. WBUR. November 17, 2017.

14. Funk, Cary and Parker, Kim. Most Americans evaluate STEM education as middling compared with other developed nations. Pew Research Center. Social and Demographic Trends. January 9, 2018.

25. Holmlund, Tamara D.; Lesseig, Kristin; Slavit, David. Making sense of “STEM education” in K-12 contexts. International Journal of STEM Education. August 24, 2018.

26. Honey, Margaret. A Parent’s Role in STEM Education. NY Hall of Science. Sep 21, 2016.

27. Jones, Carolyn. Latino, African-Americans have less access to math, science classes, new data show. EdSource. May 22, 2018

15. Funk, Cary and Parker, Kim. Blacks in STEM jobs are especially concerned about diversity and discrimination in the workplace. Pew Research Center. January 9, 2018

28. Kennedy, Brian; Hefferon, Meg and Funk, Cary. “Half of Americans think young people don’t pursue STEM because it is too hard,” Fact Tank (blog), Pew Research Center, January 17, 2018.

16. Fuller, Asia; Malin, Joel; Hackmann, Donald. Racial/Ethnic and Gender Equity Patterns in Illinois High School Career and Technical Education Coursework. University of Illinois. 2015. p. 33.

29. Koch, Melissa; Lundh, Patrik; Harris, Christopher J. Investigating STEM Support and Persistence Among Urban Teenage African American and Latina Girls Across Settings. Urban Education. December 8, 2015.

17. Gee, Michael. Racial Equity Through Cross-Sector Partnerships. Philanthropy News Digest. October 3, 2018

30. Larson, Sandra. Boston Chamber Opens Doors: Opportunity Director Works to Advance Economic Inclusion: Bay State Banner. October 4, 2017.

18. Glover Blackwell, Angela; Kramer, Mark; Iyer, Lakshmi; Kirschenbaum, Josh. The Competitive Advantage of Racial Equity. Policy Link.

19. Halim, Lilia; Abd Rahman, Norsharian; Zamri, Ria; Mohtar, Lilia. The roles of parents in cultivating children’s interest towards science learning and careers. Kasetsart Journal of Social Sciences. Volume 39, Issue 2. Pages 190-196. May–August 2018.

20. Hall, L.S. Look Who’s Behind the Latest Push for STEM Diversity. Inside Philanthropy. March 17, 2015.

21. Han, Sunyoung; Yalvac, Bugrahan; Capraro, Mary M. & Capraro, Robert M. In-service Teachers’ Implementation and Understanding of STEM Project Based Learning. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science & Technology Education, 2015, 11(1), 63-76. International Society of Educational Research. October 2014.

31. Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. Leadership Conference Education Fund. Advancing Equity through More and Better STEM Learning. Leadership Conference Education Fund. February 2015.

32. McCambridge, Ruth. Google Discloses the White-maleness of its Workforce; Vows to Do Better. Nonprofit Quarterly.

May 29, 2014.

33. McGee, Ebony and Spencer, Margaret Beale.“Black Parents as Advocates, Motivators, and Teachers of Mathematics.” The Journal of Negro Education, vol. 84, no. 3. 2015. pp.

473–490.

34. Miles, R.; Slagter van Tryon, PJ; Mensah, FM. Mathematics and Science Teachers Professional Development with Local Businesses to Introduce Middle and High School Students to Opportunities in STEM Careers. Science Educator. 2015.

math and science education in the U.S. U.S. News and World Report. May 10, 2017.

38. Reilly, Caitlin. Another Tech Company Steps Up Its Giving for K-12 STEM Education. Inside Philanthropy. April 24, 2018.

39. Sabochik, Katelyn. Changing the Equation in STEM Education. September 16, 2010.

40. Seals, Christopher; Mehta, Swati; Berzina-Pitcher, Inese; Graves-Wolf, Leigh. Enhancing Teacher Efficacy for Urban STEM Teachers Facing Challenges to Their Teaching. Journal of Urban Learning, Teaching, and Research, v. 13 p. 135-146.

2017.

41. Seiffert, Don. 5 Things You Need to Know About Stem in Roxbury. Boston Business Journal. Aug 24, 2018.

42. Shapiro, Debra. National Science Teachers Association.

NSTA Reports. Exploring STEM Professional Development.

March 2, 2012.

43. Stiles, Jennifer. Partnership Building as a Broadening-Participation Strategy: Helping Researchers and Developers Bridge the Gaps in STEM Education. CADRE Brief. April 2016.

Page 2.

44. Sujeewa, Aregamalage; Polgampala, Vijayanthi; Shen, Hong; Huang, Fang. STEM Teacher Education and Professional Development and Training: Challenges and Trends. American Journal of Applied Psychology. Vol. 6, No. 5, 2017, pp. 93-97.

45. Technology Underwriting Greater Good.

46. United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley, The Future of STEM in Greater Boston and What You Need to Know. April 3, 2018.

47. University of Chicago. Talking to children about STEM fields boosts test scores and career interest. Science Daily.

January 18, 2017.

48. The White House. Educate to Innovate. Education: Knowledge and Skills for the Jobs of the Future.

10. Congressional Black Caucus.

22. Harackiewicz, Judith. COMMENTARY: To Hook Students on STEM, Start With Their Parents - Parents are an untapped resource, research suggests. Education Week. May 22, 2018

35. Neuhauser, Alan and Cook, Lindsey. 2016 U.S. News/Raytheon STEM Index Shows Uptick in Hiring, Education. May 17, 2016.

11. Desilver, Drew. U.S. students’ academic achievement still lags that of their peers in many other countries. Pew Research Centers. February 15, 2017.

49. Williams, Joseph. Bringing STEM Education to Underserved Communities. US News and World Report. May 29, 2014.

23. Harris, David L. Carbonite launches fund to help close tech skills gap in Boston. Boston Business Journal. Mar 28, 2017.

36. Philanthropy News Digest. Texas Instruments Awards $8.1 Million for STEM Education. September 16, 2018.

50. Williams, Tate. Behind Intel’s Big Give for Diversity and STEM. Inside Philanthropy. January 13, 2015.

24. Hicks, Alex. Who’s Driving STEM Education? MHT Partners. Education Investment Bank. March 1, 2018.

37. Randazzo, Matthew. Students Shouldn’t Live in STEM Deserts: We need to address disparities in access to high-quality

65

APPENDIX D BPS STEM FACTOR: Program Timeline, 2016-2019 2016-17: GE makes $25 million commitment to BPS after moves headquarters to Boston.

Fastworks workshop held for secondary schools to learn about the model.

Dearborn STEM Academy and Excel High School chosen to model two new pilot programs, Work-Based Learning (WBL) and Project-Based Learning (PBL).

Reach: 10 WBL students served. 35 teachers attended the GE Conference during the summer of 2017.

2017-18: Excel High School launched partnership with Young People’s Project (YPP) to implement a computer science class at the school for 9th graders. Using a peer-model of teaching, they also brought coding boot camps to middle school students.

STEM internship programming expanded from students at Dearborn STEM Academy to include students from Burke High School, Excel High School, and John D. O’Bryant School of Math and Science.

Professional development opportunities were introduced to better prepare students for internships.

BPS STEM Factor brought on new partners as the initiative ramped up. These new partners included:

AdWater Media (communications firm);

New England Blacks in Philanthropy (evaluation partner); and

STEM Happens Network (STEM training and consulting)

Reach: 39 WBL students, 1,500 PBL students, 11 schools. 27 teachers attended the GE Conference during the summer of 2018.

2018-19: BPS STEM Factor launches communications campaign.

The initiative’s Work-Based Learning programming is expanded to students from additional schools, including: Another Course to College, Boston Green Academy, New Mission High School, Snowden International High School, and TechBoston Academy.

Project-Based Learning: YPP starts teaching a second class for tenth graders, while continuing to offer coding boot camps.

STEM Happens Network starts providing professional development workshops through “STEM Saturday Academies” in November 2018.

December 2018 - Kelli Wells leaves GE and David Barash and Jennifer Edwards take over education portfolio, while Dr. Makeeba McCreary leaves BPS. January 2019 - Full partnership meeting held at DSA to on-board new GE Foundation leadership.

Jan Manfredi takes over GE Portfolio for BPS. STEM Happens Network partnership ends in February 2019.

Defined STEM becomes a new BPS professional development partner, and begins to offer new “STEM Saturday” workshops.

BPS’ Office of External Affairs is dissolved and distributed into different departments. The Office of Academics & Extended Learning Time takes over the GE work. The new team overseeing the GE Work includes Jan Manfredi, Charles Grandson, Andrea Zayas, and Sara Mejias Gonzalez.

Bi-weekly meetings commence between GE’s David Barash and Jennifer Edwards, and the BPS team.

66

Reach: 57 WBL students placed in internships, 150 students in workforce readiness professional development, 410 PBL students and 50 teachers trained. 15 schools served. BPS students (under the guidance of the Young People’s Project) also helped facilitate trainings for 2,000 non-BPS students at the National Math Festival in Washington D.C.

67

1

2018

9 PLAYBOOKS

STEM internships playbook

GE Foundation 68

STEM INTERNSHIPS PLAYBOOK

Table of Contents 4

Backdrop

10

Internships are a year-round job

14

New structures

20

Preparing students

28

Making your school’s work visible

30

Building strategic relationships

3

4

STEM INTERNSHIPS PLAYBOOK

Backdrop

WORK-BASED LEARNING: A SHARED OBJECTIVE

Stakeholders across Boston’s education and industry ecosystem broadly recognize the value of work-based learning experiences for high school students.

Boston Public School (BPS) Central Office administrators, high school leaders, and teachers see work-based learning as an opportunity to engage students in real world applications of the knowledge and competencies shared in classrooms. Internships are a way to expose students to professional environments and help them develop comfort and fluency in professional practices, build confidence and agency, and better understand a range of career paths.

Industry leaders across the greater Boston area equally find value in student engagement. In addition to the benefits to students, these experiences help employers to build employee pipelines, to identify and to nurture emerging talent. For some employers, student internships are connected to objectives around diversity and inclusion, as they seek to develop a workforce that better reflects our city. And these connections with students and schools are ways to connect to the Boston community through the lens of real work.

5

BACKDROP

STEM INTERNSHIPS PLAYBOOK

In 2018, supported by a grant from GE, four BPS schools worked with the Private Industry Council (PIC) and the BPS Office of External Affairs to pilot a new approach to high school STEM internships. This playbook is a result of the lessons learned through this pilot.

A SYSTEM THAT LOOKS FOR PROXIES

In today’s system, relationships are currency. The schools and students who are less-equipped to build and manage relationships are left under-served.

Relationships are essential because they are a primary proxy that the PIC and employers have to understand the qualifications of students who to date have not established an employment track record.

The pilot was designed to remove barriers to internships for students not current accessing these opportunities. The pilot’s hypothesis was that there are “second row” students within BPS who could thrive at STEM internships if opportunity and supports were available to them. These students are not accessing these internships today because they may not be as visible in the way the system currently serves students and schools.

Second row students are those who have strong potential to thrive in work-based learning contexts but may not come to the attention of Career Specialists.

These are students who: •

May not proactively seek out internship opportunities

•

May not be savvy system navigators

•

May not yet have clear or focused interests

•

May not be polished in how they present themselves and their ideas

•

May not connect strongly to academic work

This means, however, that it can be difficult to assess student readiness prior to interviewing. The best proxy for a high school student’s qualifications becomes a real person — a teacher or other adult who understands the student’s academic background, experiences, and qualities.

Each element in the system connecting employers to students seeks informed channels and proxies that can help them access appropriate candidates efficiently.

Each time that the system makes decisions about students based on these proxies — their schools, their schools’ relationships, their proactive outreach to the PIC — there are students missed and risk of an equity breakdown.

ry dia m e o ls r te in scho an to sly. or iou v re

Employ ers t urn with the sch to th o eP they hav e w ols/s IC t ork ed ude as wi nt th s p

“Students in the Second Row”

High school students have minimal relevant experience, and that’s ok. Employers are clear that they are looking for interns who have enthusiasm and curiosity.

They don’t expect them to have the hard skills; that’s what they’re coming to work to begin to learn.

This pilot was designed to identify, engage and support these students.

er E Sp nga gem e ent team fo cial ists ri n te to prep are, res t and qualifications.

THE PILOT: PURPOSE AND HYPOTHESIS

No op t al in por l stu t m ern tuni den e ge ssa ship ty a ts re th tter ging s. W nd v cog es e c stud ma hile alue nize om en y r ma of th m ts, eac rke sum e un th h t ica ere op ing me tio ar en an r ns e m or d pa an go ss y by wh . o

6

y lo mp eer E r s C The PI ts Ca ent i d o t u looks t st & ve n e e r sc

At times, the Employer Engagement team pushes specific employer opportunities directly to specific schools that the employer has prior experience with.

School utilization of PIC Career Specialists is uneven.

In the best cases, career specialists are integrated into pathways and/or are a resource that students are required to utilize. In other schools, the CS resource is not integrated and one-step removed from students’ academic and extra-curricular work. As such, they are only able to access those students who respond to opportunities rather than proactively reaching out to all students to explore potentials together.

7

8

STEM INTERNSHIPS PLAYBOOK

BACKDROP

COMMON LANGUAGE

Through the pilot, a common language emerged that can unite the district and its partners in delivering high quality STEM internships.

A HIGH QUALITY STEM INTERNSHIP HAS THE FOLLOWING ATTRIBUTES:

A high quality STEM internship In the school context, STEM and its content areas and instructional approaches are fairly well understood, if still emergent in many BPS schools. It’s not as clear how these academic experiences translate to the working world, where STEM content areas bleed into each other and cross over into non-STEM endeavors.

Enables students to understand the variety of occupations and roles within a STEM field

During the pilot, we faced questions like...

TEM S n i a role ut doing t? d l u Wo nt b oun e c m s n e i l. enviro EM activit service at a hospita ood ST non- student working in f

Provides students with exposure and/or access to STEM tools (hardware, software, problem-solving models, etc.) that they may not normally have access to or practice with

le, a

xamp

For e

Exposes students to professionals and the norms of work environments

Woul d STEM a role cond ucting STEM activities i n a no enviro For e n xamp m ent co nle, a s tuden t wor unt? king in IT f

or an

arts n

on-pr ofit.

Engages students in a project (or set of projects) that are facilitated by these tools

9

10

STEM INTERNSHIPS PLAYBOOK

Internships are a yearround job Although internship placement begins in the spring, student preparation must be a year-round activity for schools that make work-based learning part of their strategy for student success. Build a coherent experience for students that connects their in-class experience to their internships...and ladders these to longer-term goals.

STUDENT READINESS ALL YEAR ROUND

Create iterative cycles for student preparation throughout the school year. Help students see that their readiness is something that they build and improve through their activities, whether class projects or out-of-school experiences. By identifying gaps early in the year, they have the opportunity to pursue experiences that will help them to fill these. By the time that PIC internship preparation starts in late winter/early spring, your students will be ready to engage in these discussions.

BUILDING CAREER READINESS INTO COURSEWORK

Based on the pilot experience, we believe that the more career/internship preparation activities can be integrated into the school day, the higher the potential for student attendance and attention. As much as possible, build career readiness habits and protocols into coursework.

TALK ABOUT INTERNSHIPS HOLISTICALLY

Make work and internships part of larger conversations about college, career and life readiness. Help students place internships within a broader context and to see internships as a stepping stone to their longer-term goals and growth. Help them to understand the palette of STEM careers and pathways into these: job shadow day is an existing PIC resource; this can be supplemented by events such as career fairs (live or virtual), TED-like talks from professionals, or the Road Trip Nation tool on Naviance that provides videos from professionals in a host of fields.

Use the experience of the previous summer’s interns to everyone’s advantage. Students can make meaning of their own experiences by communicating them to their peers; students in lower grades can begin to see themselves in roles and industries by hearing about the direct experiences of their peers.

11

12

STEM INTERNSHIPS PLAYBOOK

INTERNSHIPS ARE A YEAR-ROUND JOB

SUGGESTED TIMELINE

Sept

Oct

Nov

Dec

Jan

Feb

Goals

Identify strengths and opportunities

Match students to activities

Identify strengths and opportunities

Assess interests

Match students to activities

Identify strengths and opportunities

Sample Activities

ELA/humanities classes often begin the fall with identity work. Integrate resume writing into this, supported

by Career Specialists (CS).

Teacher Leaders (TL) work with CSs to catalogue students’ readiness levels and potential areas of interest.

Naviance’s Road Trip Nation feature has stories from professionals in a range of fields.

TLs and CSs work with students to explore a range of internship opportunities.

TLs and CSs work with students to revise resume based on fall goal and accomplishments.

Last year’s interns share their experiences.

TLs and CSs work with students to reflect on their goals from the start of school year and to discuss growth based on classwork and extracurriculars.

Use the district's college, career, life readiness framework to help students identify strengths and areas for improvement.

TLs and CSs work with students to identify how to grow through classwork or out-of-class activities.

Bringing professionals to school for conversations connected to classroom work.

College students can serve as near-peer models to talk about internships.

Develop goal for fall semester resume building.

Mar

Apr

May

June

July

Aug

Job shadow

Applications

Interviews

Internship preparation

Internship support

Internship insights

Students participate in job shadow opportunities, tailored to the interests that have been identified

Use CCLR framework to help students identify strengths and highlight examples from their work.

Support student reflection on interviews.

TLs and CSs coordinate employment paperwork with students.

TLs support students in first weeks, ready to talk about on-the-job issues.

TLs and school leader integrate internship insights into school start-of-year PD.

Offer a financial literacy activity and opportunity for students to open bank accounts

CSs & TLs available to employers for special issues.

Support student research into companies to prepare interview questions

CSs or TLs seek interview feedback from employers.

TLs connect with employers to understand role and to be able to support students throughout summer

13

14

STEM INTERNSHIPS PLAYBOOK

NEW ROLE: TEACHER LEADER

New Structures

The pilot introduced a new role: the Teacher Leader. These Teacher Leaders supplemented the work of the Career Specialists and brought a more in-depth understanding of their students into the process.

15

16

STEM INTERNSHIPS PLAYBOOK

NEW STRUCTURES

CRAFTING THE TEACHER LEADER ROLE

The Teacher Leader is a new role that emerged through the pilot. This role supplements the PIC Career Specialist in identifying students, particularly the “second row” students, and in supporting their preparation for the world of work.

Look for Teacher Leaders with the following characteristics:

In a current role with responsibilities that overlap with the Teacher Leader role Some schools in the pilot had positions already focused on work-based learning, guidance counseling, or related.

Because the responsibilities were complementary to their core job, these individuals were high effective Teacher Leaders

Know students well enough to be able to draw out qualities and experiences they may not know to highlight To be able to help a student capture their story in a resume or interview, strong Teacher Leaders have enough ongoing exposure to students to know them and their work

Connected to the world of work Able to understand what employers seek and to help students translate this to their own strengths and experiences

Proactive and highly responsive Opportunities come and go quickly and Teacher Leaders can be effective promoters to get students to apply and also to advocate for students for these positions

Able to wrangle students effectively Teacher Leaders were the best mechanism to get students to show up for supplemental activities

TEACHER LEADER PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES

1 Scouting students The Teacher Leader role provides greater insight into student preparedness and a supportive personal relationship throughout the internship experience. Teacher Leaders help to identify students early in the process, sussing out whether students are interested, available, and appropriate for these STEM internship positions.

Teacher Leaders are a channel into the “second row” students who may not seek out the Career Specialist.

2 Knowing students As students complete PIC paperwork and, eventually, applications and interviews, Teacher Leaders work alongside them to coach and prepare, highlighting aspects of their experience to surface in their resumes or applications. Because Teacher Leaders have a deeper relationship with students than Career Specialists typically do, they are more aware of relevant classwork, extracurriculars, or personal traits and are able to help students emphasize these.

3 Supporting students Finally, Teacher Leaders work leading up to and throughout the internships to support their students.

Teacher Leaders are the point of connection between student participants, responsible for communicating information about PD and wrangling student participation. They check in with students by text/phone as well as in-person during the internship period.

4 Bridging insights Teacher Leaders help the broader school community integrate lessons from its student internships. The Teacher Leaders can share internship insights with relevant teachers, inform PD, or shape events on the school’s internship prep calendar.

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STEM INTERNSHIPS PLAYBOOK

NEW STRUCTURES

INTEGRATE AND BUILD ON YOUR CAREER SPECIALIST

Regardless of how your school chooses to structwwww`ure your work-based learning approach, we recommend the following:

1 Make summer internships someone’s clear responsibility There are limits to what the Career Specialist’s role encompasses, and these activities are essential to nurturing work-based learning opportunities for all students. It is necessary for schools with this objective to have a person or team that is responsible for:

BUDGET PLANNING School Expense

Description

Budget

Teacher Leader Stipend

1 TL at a school for 122 hours of work through December - August at BTU contract rate

$6,000

District Expense

Description

Budget

•

knowing students’ strengths and interests

•

helping them identify areas for growth and access resources to support this growth

•

actively tracking and monitoring their objectives and progress

Catie's Closet

Catie's Closet for one school if they do not already have.

$10,000

•

considering how best to position and communicate both student and school strengths

MBTA M7 July & August

$60 for two months of M7's for 10 students at each school

$600

•

managing relationships with employers or other post-secondary opportunities

Transportation to PD's

$630

•

communicating with students and families about the responsibilities and opportunities of an internship so that conflicts (e.g. vacations) can be avoided

This can range from $90-$0/session depending if students already have an M7 or S-card for 20 students. $90x7 sessions = $630

PD Sessions

A PD session for one school can range from $2000 - $0.00 depending on the type of session and how many students can attend. It is assumed that PD sessions will happen with multiple schools to keep costs low. Based on the current type's of PDs, it would cost schools $2600 each to provide the PD's on their own to pay the vendors/program partners.

$2,600

Food/snacks for students

$100 of snacks & water for 20 students at 1 PD session. $100 x 7 days = $700

$700

Employer Expense

Description

Budget

Student Summer Internship

For one student: 5hr/day x $11/hr = $55/day x 5 days/wk x 6 weeks = $1650. This cost is assumed to be taken on by the employer.

$16,500

•

managing workflow across students and adults so that energy is focused on the appropriate opportunities

2 Schools benefit from integrating their Career Specialist as closely as they can into the work that the school is doing to prepare students for college and career Career Specialists benefit from opportunities to more deeply understand the range of courses, extracurriculars, class projects, and other activities that students are engaged in. Recognizing that personal relationships with students allow Career Specialists to be able to help them to more powerfully represent their strengths, give Career Specialists ways to engage with students in multiple modes and spaces.

10 students x 1650 = $16500

TOTAL

It is hoped that in the future schools would take on the cost of the TL (16% of the program cost)

$37,030

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STEM INTERNSHIPS PLAYBOOK

THE GOAL: A READY STUDENT INTERN

Preparing students

College, career, and life readiness competencies Of the CCLR competencies, employers most often emphasized the following: •

Communication: students who are able to express themselves clearly, ask for direction when needed, and articulate perspectives in speaking and writing

•

Curiosity: students who care about the work that the employer organization does and who are interested in learning more

•

Collaboration: students who can work in teams, work together to solve problems, and take both direction and initiative

Hard skills that some employers seek

To meet the needs of “second row” students, schools should recognize that additional development may be necessary to get these students ready for internship experiences.

Based on the pilot, we suggest here a set of supports for students, spanning knowledge-building, employability skill development, mentorship, and logistics.

Though less common, some employers did seek hard skills, mostly in ability to navigate some basic office tools and platforms.

•

Software fluency, such as ability to navigate Microsoft Office suite, Adobe suite, database softwares, or basic programming languagew

What makes a great student intern?

While technical skills and content knowledge may be important to some roles, the majority of employers emphasized that they do not expect these from their high school interns. Instead, they are looking for students who expressed soft skill competencies.

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STEM INTERNSHIPS PLAYBOOK 23

22 PREPARING STUDENTS

THE RESUME AND INTERVIEW

Students have two primary avenues with which to express these strengths and to connect with employers. In both resumes and interviews, students should be coached to be concrete and authentic to themselves. Trying to say the “right” thing is less impactful than genuinely expressing their interests and stories of the work that they have cared about.

THE RESUME

INTERVIEW READINESS

Resumes are a place for students to highlight their strengths. Again, these strengths can relate to both hard skills and content interests as well as soft, employability skills. Things to consider might include:

1 Relevant or unique classes taken For example, one student in the pilot had taken a video game design class, which was unique enough to start a more general conversation about design.

2 Extracurricular activities, including non-school sponsored For example, one student in the pilot was working independently with a friend to design and produce their own clothing line.

The interview is an opportunity for students to connect with the employer and to express some of their personality and passion. Interviews are typically brief, around 20 minutes in length. To prepare students to do well interviewing, it is useful for them to have:

1 Some amount of knowledge about the employer organization or field of work Employers want to know that the student is interested in their organization specifically, not just any job.

2 Ability to talk about strengths It can be hard and abstract to talk about what you are good at, especially when these are soft skills. We recommend the City’s College, Career, and Life Readiness definition as a way for students to identify strengths.

3 Examples of projects they are proud of For example, one student in the pilot participated in BUILD and was able to speak about the product her team had created.

3 Specific example(s) of how these strengths have been demonstrated Students can prepare a story of a project, class, or extracurricular activity that brings to life each of their strengths.

4 Articulation of student’s interests For example, one student in the pilot was able to describe her love of stories and storytelling.

4 Questions about employer and/or role These questions should demonstrate that the student has interest in the employer and/or the specific role.

They are an opportunity to show their curiousity. They can be about the day-to-day aspects of the internship, or broader questions about the work the organization does.

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STEM INTERNSHIPS PLAYBOOK 25

PREPARING STUDENTS

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SESSIONS

The pilot designed six professional development sessions intended to prepare students for their summer internships and to support their engagement in STEM careers.

WORKSHOP 1

Office basics Students were given hands-on experience with typical office software and learned communications best practices. Content areas included the Google Suite of products, Microsoft Office, email and calendar etiquette and management, and web research.

This bootcamp was taught by members of the BPS Office of Instructional and Information Technology.

Staff conducted workshops at each of the participating schools.

WORKSHOP 2

Soft skills Through the techniques of improv comedy, students learned about listening, teamwork, when to speak, when not to speak, and how to think quickly on their feet. Skills were taught in a fun, interactive atmosphere.

This bootcamp was hosted by the Improv Asylum, a comedy theater that also uses improv as a tool for corporate skills training.

WORKSHOP 3

Relationships To build the group’s identity as a STEM program cohort, the students were brought together for a rapport building event.

This bootcamp was held at Fenway Park. Red Sox employees spoke with students about how they apply their STEM skills in their jobs as baseball and business analysts. Students toured the park, watched batting practice, and enjoyed the game.

26 PREPARING STUDENTS

STEM INTERNSHIPS PLAYBOOK

LOGISTICS

Logistical barriers to a summer internship can stand in the way of students’ appetite for and ability to access work.

WORKSHOP 4

STEM professionals This TED-style speaking event placed students in front of industry leaders and creatives who showcased the innovative ways that they use STEM education in the workplace. Speakers included Jen Briselli, an experience designer at the consultancy Mad*Pow, Doug Ruuska, an artist and maker who brings his physics background to his art installations, and Leonie Manshanden, who works in video game development at Ghost Story Games.

1 Transportation M7 passes for the months of July and August enable students to get to work. These should be delivered to students directly — at schools or via workplaces.

2 Clothes Work-appropriate clothing can be made available to students via Catie’s Closet.

3 Bank account Lack of a bank account can be an issue for students, either because of concern carrying cash or fees charged by check cashing institutions.

4 Identification WORKSHOP 5

STEM workplaces To expose the group to STEM work environments, students toured two innovative office spaces at the Innovation & Design Building in Boston’s Seaport. Reebok highlighted how its newly designed office supports its focus on fitness and innovation — and gave students a taste of its fitness programs. Autodesk toured students through its BUILD space, a collaborative research and development workshop.

WORKSHOP 6

STEM careers This event highlighted STEM pathways and potential careers. Danielle Wood from the Space Enabled Research Group at the MIT Media Lab blew students minds with a description of her work in the design of space technology, talking about how her lab uses satellite data to improve communities on Earth. Beforehand, students participating in a Young People's Project MIT Learning Lab program shared with their peers their summer coding work and activities.

Applying for a state ID card takes some time and paperwork. Some students may need support with this.

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STEM INTERNSHIPS PLAYBOOK 29

Making Making your school’s school’s work visible visible Because nuances of student strengths and experiences can be hard to suss out, employers often look to understand school programs and strengths. Across BPS, schools can use the same language to mean different things, so it can be hard for employers to level-set as they look across the schools, programs and courses.

BE CLEAR ABOUT WHAT YOUR SCHOOL IS DOING WELL

Build communications that speak loudly about the programs you have in place, what hard and soft skills they build, and why you think they empower your students to succeed. Talk about your rationale as an educator and the details of your programs that you think are differentiated and powerful.

CONSIDER THE EMPLOYER’S PERSPECTIVE

If you have opportunities to understand how employers frame what they look for in their interns, take them!

Opportunities to speak directly with employers, to visit workplaces, or to participate in industry-crafted PD are all chances to learn about what employers seek.

This will help you to position your school in ways that resonate with employers, to use the language of the industry rather than the educator, or to emphasize the elements that professionals find most compelling.

BUILD TOOLS THAT STUDENTS CAN USE

Imagine a one-pager that a student can append to their resume that describes their school’s philosophy, approach, and programs, or websites for key clubs or programs that a student can provide links to, or classroom work that feeds naturally into a shareable portfolio for students.

DON’T FORGET THE SOFT STUFF

The most common thing we heard that employers seek in their candidates were employability skills. At this level communications, collaboration, curiosity, and accountability count more than hard skills.

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STEM INTERNSHIPS PLAYBOOK

Building strategic relationships While these recommendations seek to provide more access to high-quality STEM internships for students, direct relationships between schools (or even teachers) and employers remain a consistent source of opportunities for students.

DIRECT RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SCHOOLS AND EMPLOYERS

Though the PIC is a resource for internship opportunities, many schools maintain direct relationships with employers, and it’s common for employers to return to known schools for interns year after year.

Building direct relationships with employers also provides your school with more ways to engage these professionals with your school and your students — over and above the internship.

These might include: •

Professionals co-teaching a unit with one of your teachers

•

A former intern and their manager speaking to the school about their workplace

•

Opportunities for your teachers or counselors to shadow professionals to more deeply understand the work world their students will enter

Insight from employers can help you to shape the pathways you design for students.

This insight can translate these pathways from academic pursuits to those grounded in the needs of today’s workplace.

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1

2018

DRAFT Coding bootcamps playbook

GE Foundation

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CODING STEM INTERNSHIPS BOOTCAMPS PLAYBOOK

Table of Contents

1

Preparing Students 6

2

3

The bootcamp experience

Recommendations for schools 16

Backdrop

18

A foundational approach to computer science

22

Learn to teach, teach to learn

24

Integrating college, career, and life readiness into coursework

Case Study: School Year 2017-2018 Pilot 28

Overview

30

Lessons learned

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CODING STEM INTERNSHIPS BOOTCAMPS PLAYBOOK

1

Preparing students

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CODING STEM INTERNSHIPS BOOTCAMPS PLAYBOOK

The bootcamp experience

PURPOSE

The students delivered two bootcamps to over 1500 middle school students across the district — one in each semester. The purpose of these bootcamps was to serve both the high school and middle school students.

1 Deepen high school students’ mastery of content 2 Build high school students college, career, and life readiness competencies 3 Engage middle school students in STEM learning and pathways 4 Increase interest in Excel High School for rising 9th graders

The process of developing the bootcamps was driven by the students.

The Excel team used a model of students teaching students to reinforce their own knowledge, to reflect on the process of learning, and to develop 21st century college, career, and life readiness competencies. Each semester, the students designed bootcamps to deliver to middle school students.

These bootcamps translated their own semester’s learning into an educational experience for 6-8th graders.

The first semester bootcamp was focused on STEM basics and the computational thinking elements described previously. The second semester bootcamp was focused on coding. Both bootcamps are detailed in the case study section.

1

High school students were first taught the content through classroom work directed by YPP and Ms. Kimsey.

2

They then designed the bootcamp, considering how to create experiences for middle school students to encompass the range of content. This process was highly collaborative and spurred debate in the classroom about how best to engage students in the topics they were teaching. Students wrestled with issues such as how linear vs. modular the experience should be and how to pace information.

3

4

5 6

While still onsite and/or back in their normal classroom, the class debriefed on the experience, reflecting on what went well and what didn’t.

The bootcamp was rolled out across middle schools.

Students arrived in advance to set up. Middle school classes rolled through across multiple periods, and then students packed up.

Once the basic architecture was determined, the students formed small teams, each focused on a content area.

These teams were responsible for developing the tools to teach this content to middle school students.

The students prototyped the bootcamps on their Excel peers and visiting adults. Prototyping helped them to understand opportunities for iteration — large and small, from how content was discussed to identifying tools needed.

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CODING STEM INTERNSHIPS BOOTCAMPS PLAYBOOK

THE BOOTCAMP EXPERIENCE

USE A DESIGN PROCESS TO CREATE BOOTCAMPS

Students are responsible for designing the bootcamps, from the overall flow and concept to the creation of specific activities. Students are engaged in developing the conceptual framework for each bootcamp down to developing content that they would deliver.

Learn

SUPPORT STUDENTS BY MANAGING BOOTCAMP LOGISTICS

While students own the content, the adults are responsible for supporting with logistics. This includes:

Coordination with schools Scheduling with middle schools, setting expectations, and ensuring that the environment can support the bootcamp. Be mindful of ELL classes where there may be additional support required to execute effectively.

Students engaged in their own learning of content.

Building relationships Explore Students develop ideas for the bootcamp models, including concepts to teach, potential activities to teach these topics, and overarching flow and models that represent how these concepts connect to each other.

Prototype Students prototype the bootcamp. It can be tested with their peers or adults who are not immersed in the coursework. Excel additionally developed a relationship with the Perry K-8 and prototyped both bootcamps with Perry middle school students. Create simple tools to capture feedback on the bootcamp prototype.

Refine Students refine the bootcamp design based on feedback on the prototype. The finalize their requirements for execution (e.g. supplies, technology) so that instructors can manage logistics.

Deliver Students deliver the bootcamp. They deliver content, guide students through the bootcamp, are responsible for answering questions, engaging students, and managing disruptions.

Debrief After each bootcamp, the class reflects on the experience and potential iterations prior to the next execution.

Partnerships with middle schools not only allow both schools to support bootcamps, but also provide the potential for stronger ties between the schools and progressive student development. For example, Excel’s relationship with the Perry K-8 has made it possible to develop one of the 8th graders who received the bootcamp last year into a leader in this year’s 9th grade CS cohort.

Technology For Excel, the bootcamp required consistent, stable internet access to enable the full range of activities. Be sure this is available in the middle school setting and in the space where the bootcamp will occur.

Space Excel designed bootcamps that flowed students across a series of stations. For this design, a large open space prevented bottlenecks. Make sure that the space at the middle school will work for the design of the bootcamp — or adjust as needed.

Materials Ask students to clarify what materials they will need to conduct their designed activities. Refine these after prototyping. Additionally consider the furniture necessary from the middle school to support the bootcamp.

Bootcamp guide Provide a map for middle school students to be able to navigate the bootcamp independently. This can also serve as scaffolding for learning and for demonstrating how the range of activities fit together into larger concepts.

Sample materials Samples of Excel’s materials are available at: https://www.excelhighsb.org/stem-curriculum

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CODING STEM INTERNSHIPS BOOTCAMPS PLAYBOOK

THE BOOTCAMP EXPERIENCE

BOOTCAMP ONE: STEM BASICS

The first bootcamp focused on STEM basics and computational thinking. In the course, as in the bootcamp, the goal was to expose students first to foundational elements of STEM that would inform their future coding work.

BOOTCAMP TWO: CODING

The second bootcamp focused on the coding language Python. Four stations ringed the bootcamp space (typically a gym), each focused on a component of the Python language:

Print Five bootcamp stations focused on:

Flagway The Flagway game is a flexible platform that makes math tangible for students. Based on the Mobius Function, which categorizes natural numbers into three mutually exclusive categories, the Flagway game lays out a branching tree structure on the floor with red, yellow, and blue pathways creating a lattice. Students physically explore this lattice with math functions as the driver.

Factor tree race In this game, two contestants were given white boards and markers to race each other in factoring numbers.

Simple in its intent and execution, the factor tree race inspired heated competition in participants.

At this station, students learned about the print function, which makes things appear on screen, as well as arithmetic operators.

Strings At the string station, students learned that a string is any characters or text between two quotation marks.

Variables Students learned that variables in programming can represent both numbers and words, a value that can change.

Input functions At this station, students learned that inputs are prompts for users to store values into the program.

Fermi problems Fermi problems ask students to use approximation and a series of estimations to make informed guesses on quantities. For example, in the bootcamp, students were asked to estimate how many animal crackers were in a large jug, and to guess how high a rocket would fly based on angle and force of launch.

Coding Using Code.org as the engine, this station gave students the opportunity to code, working towards an objective that the high school students had designed.

Drag and drop blocks make coding immediately accessible.

Students had cycled through each of the learning stations to learn the basic ingredients of Python.

They then put this to use at the Testing Station.

Testing station At the testing station, students were provided with three tiers of activities (from basic to more advanced) as well as high school students to support their work.

Badging center As students moved through the stations, they collected “badges” (stickers) at the badging center. Students who received three or more badges were entered into a raffle.

STEM mini games This station showcased games that the high school students had designed. Middle school students had access to a range of simple computer games created by the high school students.

Robotics station Finally, there was a station that highlighted the real-world applications of these coding essentials that the students were learning. Hosted by Excel’s robotics club, this robotics station allowed students to explore a handful of robots, from ready-made examples to a robot that the team had built itself.

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CODING STEM INTERNSHIPS BOOTCAMPS PLAYBOOK

THE BOOTCAMP EXPERIENCE

BENEFITS

High school students were enthusiastic about the bootcamps and were happy to share their experiences teaching other students. Using Boston’s definition of college, career, and life readiness, students reflected on where the bootcamps helped them to grow.

Many of these benefits are aligned in BPS' definition of college, career & life readiness

1 Work with others Students emphasized the challenges and uniqueness of the high degree of collaboration required by the bootcamp experience. Students said that communicating with peers and with middle school students was central to this. They also called out the need to relinquish control, allowing their peers to manage their piece of the work, even if their approaches didn’t align.

At the same time, the spoke about the challenges of collaborative work. In some groups, a leader naturally emerged, and this person talked about the need to look collectively across the work that individuals were doing, to be the connective tissue between this work, and to be the driver of the work. “I kind of interfered with everyone. [If they didn’t do their work] I have to remind them or do it for them,” said one of these group leaders.

Empathy was another quality emphasized here, especially for teachers. Students highlighted the challenges in teaching and in managing disrespectful and disengaged students.

2 Changing course Students reflected on the need to change course and adapt their approach in the flow of a bootcamp. Many highlighted an experience with an ELL class running through the bootcamp, which had not been anticipated in advance.

The two Spanish-speaking high school students were thrown into action. One was at a station and unable to flex. The other, however, was in a “helper” role, intended to float across stations. Students shared that this student “stepped forward” and did his best to fill in as a translator.

Though they didn’t feel this bootcamp was as successful as others, students highlighted their collective ability to receive unexpected events and respond to them.

3 Set a vision Students talked about the importance of vision-setting in this work. They worked to create a vision for what they wanted middle school students to learn and had clarity around what type of learning they sought for these students. “Seeing kids actually trying to code” or students asking questions, for example, demonstrated that their vision for learning was successful. On the other hand, students “just coming to copy” where they weren’t engaged in any coding or STEM insight was an example of when the depth of learning was not achieved.

Students shared ways that this experience helped them build confidence, as they practiced skills they may not have been comfortable with previously, such as public speaking.

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CODING STEM INTERNSHIPS BOOTCAMPS PLAYBOOK

2

Recommendations for schools

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CODING STEM INTERNSHIPS BOOTCAMPS PLAYBOOK

Backdrop

THE PILOT

Excel’s turnaround plan takes a Linked Learning approach, integrating rigorous academic work with work-based learning experiences. Within its Emerging Technologies career pathway, computer science is a critical ingredient.

With this backdrop, Excel and YPP crafted a new Computer Science elective for 9th grade students. This class brings together foundations of computer science with project-based learning opportunities provided through bootcamps in which 9th graders teach middle school students essentials of STEM and coding.

STEM and Computer Science are recognized as critical ingredients for students graduating into our innovation economy.

Approaches to these content areas are being explored independently by schools across the district with a range of partners, curricula and design principles. In this playbook, we share the approach developed

by Excel High School in partnership with the Young People’s Project (YPP) with support by the GE Foundation. We provide here recommendations for schools interested in the approaches explored by Excel as well as a case study of the program pilot.

PURPOSE

The pilot was designed to address a few key objectives:

1 Bringing together STEM content with the ways of working in STEM careers The course designers approached computer science not only as a set of knowledge and skills, but as an approach to problem-solving. They created projects that required students to work in ways that STEM professionals work: collaboratively, adaptive, and self-directed.

2 Engaging students through near-peer relationships The course was designed and taught by a YPP instructor with support from a team of YPP trained STEM Literacy Workers, current college students. This nearpeer model is central to YPP’s work, and it creates a different type of relationships between students and instructors. These relationships support the project-based approach to classwork described above.

3 Using teaching as a mechanism for learning This near-peer model was leveraged again in the course by providing opportunities for the 9th grade Computer Science students to teach the concepts they were learning to middle school students.

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BACKDROP

CODING STEM INTERNSHIPS BOOTCAMPS PLAYBOOK

A foundational approach to computer science “Everybody in this country should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think.�

Steve Jobs

In some classrooms, the emphasis in computer science becomes about creation, the satisfaction of being able to manipulate digital experiences or the tangible outcomes of digital artifacts. While the students in the Excel classroom explored these aspects, the focus was on the ways that computer science introduces students to a model for how to think.

Computer science is a powerful content area not only because of the hard skills it embodies but because of the foundational problem-solving capabilities it represents.

START WITH COMPUTATIONAL THINKING

The Excel course focuses on developing computational thinking skills as a platform for computer programming. Computational thinking is a problem-solving approach that undergirds programming languages. It is also applicable to fields and practices well beyond computer science or coding.

Computational thinking includes...

(Thinking broadly beyond computers)

Abstracting problems so that computers can work with them.

This requires analyzing ideas and challenges so that the core issues can be modeled.

Creating algorithms to manipulate these abstract representations

This is about creating models that allow data to be explored.

Identifying solutions

This problem-solving approach can be used to program computers or to tackle non-digital challenges.

FlaywayTM Game The Flagway Game is used by YPP to engage students across the country in mathematical thinking and computation. The game involves prime factorization of numbers categorized by the Mobius Function.

Fermi problems Fermi problems are difficult or impossible to solve exactly, requiring instead reasonable estimations.

Decomposition Process of breaking problems down into smaller parts or steps Pattern recogniztion Observing pattern or regularities in data Algorithm Thinking Developing the step by step instructions for solving a problem and similar problems Functions Understanding or finding function relationships in data Efficiency Examining if a set of steps is the most efficient to achieve a goal Human programming Instructing another person to complete a task as a metaphor for computer programming

For the Excel course, computational thinking was introduced through activities that allowed students to explore and become familiar with these practices of abstraction, data analysis, and modeling problems.

These included these elements of computational thinking (see left).

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CODING STEM INTERNSHIPS BOOTCAMPS PLAYBOOK

20 A FOUNDATIONAL APPROACH TO COMPUTER SCIENCE

MAKE LEARNING EXPERIENTIAL

The course uses a six-step process based on the theories of experiential learning:

step 1

Shared event a common formal or informal learning event

Application putting abstract concepts into use

step 2

Shared visual representation developing shared visualizations of the concepts

step 5

Symbolic representation providing symbolic representations

step 3

Reflections using “people talk� to reflect on the concept

Formal language introducing formal mathematical or CS language

This approach to computer science and to experiential learning lends itself to a consideration with students of how these core capabilities connect to a range of STEM fields. Allowing students opportunities to reflect on the potential applications of these core concepts can help them connect classroom work to a range of STEM fields and roles.

Additionally, the Excel team sought ways to integrate real-world applications of STEM into the bootcamps.

The second-semester bootcamp included a robotics station that highlighted how the coding concepts represented in bootcamp could be applied.

step 6

step 4

CONNECT CLASSROOM WORK TO STEM FIELDS

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CODING STEM INTERNSHIPS BOOTCAMPS PLAYBOOK 23

Learn to teach, teach to learn The Excel team used a model of students teaching students to reinforce their own knowledge, to reflect on the process of learning, and to develop 21st century college, career, and life readiness competencies. Each semester, the students designed bootcamps to deliver to middle school students.

These bootcamps translated their own semester’s learning into an educational experience for 6-8th graders.

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Albert Einstein

The first semester bootcamp was focused on STEM basics and the computational thinking elements described previously. The second semester bootcamp was focused on coding. Both bootcamps are detailed in the case study section.

APPROACH BOOTCAMPS AS A METACOGNITIVE OPPORTUNITY

Students teaching others is an opportunity for the students to examine their own learning. The need to articulate concepts to others helps students investigate the idea more thoroughly. Watching others understand, struggle, or skim over a concept highlights for students what meaningful learning involves.

Bootcamps are also an experiential way to represent concepts. Each bootcamp is comprised of a set of activities that allow middle school students to play with core concepts. By designing both the activities and the overall flow of how middle school students will move across these activities, the students wrestle with larger challenges of how discrete information fits together into bigger concepts or applied usage.

VALUE THE WORK OF THE STUDENTS

In the Excel pilot, students were paid for their work delivering bootcamps. The concept of students as STEM workers is an important part in the YPP model as well.

It demonstrates the value of STEM in the economy, introduces students to the world of work, and places monetary value on their contribution to classrooms.

Finding a way to tangibly value the work of students in designing and delivering bootcamps demonstrates that you recognize the contribution these students are making. It reflects that these bootcamps are both a part of their own learning and a commitment to the learning of other students.

24 CODING STEM INTERNSHIPS BOOTCAMPS PLAYBOOK 25

Integrating college, career, and life readiness into coursework Computer science is not only a content area, but a way of approaching problems and solving them. In this course, the Excel/ YPP team sought to integrate 21st century skill building into the class.

These 21st century skills were not layered on top of the STEM content; they were deeply integrated into how the course was structured, how students worked, and the role of adults in the process.

MAKE 21ST CENTURY TOOLS THE LANGUAGE OF THE CLASS

Use the tools of STEM workplaces as foundations for the course design and work. This can include the use of Google classroom to store work, collaborate and communicate. Authentically integrate this into the class workflow and use it as the engine for work.

MAKE LEARNING MIRROR THE WORLD OF WORK

Design a classroom that functions in ways that were similar to the STEM organizations where students may one day work. This means that students are asked to work in perhaps-new modes and the instructors’ roles are different from a traditional classroom. This includes:

1 Project-focused Ask students to solve problems and complete tasks towards larger project objectives. In the case of Excel, this was towards the objective of designing bootcamps for middle school students.

Provide students with opportunities to express preference around both overall course direction and particular areas of interest. This allows instructors to focus coursework and projects and to construct the teams of students.

2 Incorporate team-based work Ask students to think of their work both as part of a team and individually. This team-based approach to work requires that students develop collaborative skills, including the ability to communicate with peers, the ability to lead or be led, and to direct their own learning as part of a team.

Recognize the challenges of team-based work. Some students tend to naturally take on leadership or presentation roles and this may need careful design of teams to control for. Distribution of work across a group can be uneven, so there should be ways to account for both team and individual outputs.

3 Shift instructor roles The instructor and STEM Literacy Workers in the Excel course engaged students in part with their proximity to youth culture and near-peer relationships. But they also took on roles that were appropriate to this project- and team-based classroom culture, serving as coaches and guides for student-driven work.

4 Value student voice This project- and team-based work emphasizes an authentic approach to incorporating student voice and choice. For Excel, this included routinely inviting student feedback (primarily through surveys) and adapting the course focus based on students’ interests. For other schools, there are opportunities within each bootcamp to shape to student preference. For example, the station that provides an example of a real-world application of STEM or coding is highly adaptable according to student passions.

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CODING STEM INTERNSHIPS BOOTCAMPS PLAYBOOK

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Case Study: School Year 2017-2018 Pilot

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Overview

CORE PRINCIPLES

The pilot was designed around a handful of core principles:

1 Leverage “near-peer” learning The students were sandwiched by near-peer learning experiences. YPP’s model brings recent college graduates and college students into the classroom as teachers. And the high school students were put into teaching roles for middle schools students during the

Central to its turnaround strategy, Excel High School is pursuing a Linked Learning approach to high school. Linked Learning brings rigorous academics alongside career pathways, engaging students in learning by helping them to see how classroom work relates to the real world.

Excel’s Computer Science elective exemplifies the principles of the Linked Learning approach and pushes boundaries with an innovative approach to connecting students to content. With support from the GE Foundation, Excel partnered with the Young People’s Project to design and develop the course and to pilot it in the 20172018 school year.

Computer Science exposed 9th grade students to STEM essentials, computational thinking, and foundations of coding. Layered on top of this content focus was the expectation that students create and deliver STEM bootcamps for middle school students across BPS.

2 Engage students in real-world STEM experiences The course was designed to provide ways of understanding this STEM and coding content in modes that attempt to feel more like the world of work and less like a traditional classroom. For example, students were often given collaborative projects or tasks to complete.

3 Provide vehicles for student voice and choice Student agency was celebrated and designed for throughout the course. Tools such as online surveys and class discussions allowed instructors to guage student interests. With this insight, the focus of coursework and depth of learning in various units was adjusted and iterated throughout the year. For example, the going-in expectation was that these beginning students would not be prepared to dive deeply into the Python programming language. Python, however, became their primary interest and so the course turned to focus on this.

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CODING STEM INTERNSHIPS BOOTCAMPS PLAYBOOK

Lessons learned

LOGISTICS

STUDENT EXPERIENCE

The pilot of this course and the bootcamps revealed lessons that can inform future iterations of the program.

CONTINUITY AND GROWTH

The planning and logistics for the bootcamp were significant. At Excel, Tracey Kimsey, Director of WorkBased Learning co-taught the class and led many of these operational tasks.

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Technology was essential, as many of the bootcamp stations relied on stable wifi to be able to function smoothly.

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Consistent and reliable space was also essential.

The course needed tech-enabled space that could accommodate team-based work.

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Scheduling and coordination with the middle / elementary schools was a meaningful commitment of time and energy.

Students expressed positive reactions to the structure and experience of the class, as well as sharing opportunities to refine in moving forward.

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Students showed an appetite for more content to balance the time they spent executing bootcamps.

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The class was offered as an elective, and administrators at the school are considering how to market the class to incoming freshman to recruit more participants.

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The reflection and internalization of knowledge that the bootcamps allowed students to do for their STEM and coding know-how could be replicated for the college, career, and life competencies they were developing. For example, greater scaffolding on team-based work would help students be more effective and recognize their growth.

As a pilot, this program was experimental in nature, intended for learning and development. In this first year, students and adults were learning and shaping together in real time the details of the bootcamps.

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Now that a framework exists for bootcamp design and development, future classes can move more efficiently towards execution.

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High school and middle school staff in both highlighted opportunities to provide more bridges for middle schoolers before/after the bootcamps to investigate the content.

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Excel is building a 10th grade computing class so that these students have a trajectory to continue on.

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