Tag Archives: science education

Donald Trump, Education, Foreign Relations, Government spending

In Remarks to NASA Astronauts, Trump Reacts to “International Cooperation,” “Discovery” & “Science Education” By Pointing to Military Application of Space

Marchers at the March for Science pass Trump International Hotel, New York City, April 22, 2017 © 2017 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

Only Donald Tweeter Trump could reply to a remark about how the International Space Station is “by far, the best example of international cooperation and what we can do when we work together in the history of humanity” with a statement about the “tremendous military application in space.  We’re rebuilding our military like never before.”

Following the astronauts’ inspiration message to the thousands of students participating in the video chat with Peggy Whitson, the commander on the international space station, who just hit a milestone as the American with the most time in space, and a discussion of all the scientific and medical achievements gained from the space station, Trump said:

“So well said.  And I have to say, there’s tremendous military application in space.  We’re rebuilding our military like never before.  We’re ordering equipment, and we’re going to have the strongest military that we’ve ever had, the strongest military that the world has ever seen, and there’s been no time where we need it more.  And I’m sure that every student watching wants to know, what is next for Americans in space.”

Then, after being told that a Mars mission is planned for the 2030s, Trump, again showing how clueless and uncaring he is about actual facts, says it would take place during his first term, or “at worst” his second term (apparently he intends to pull an Erdogan).

Here is the White House transcript which speaks volumes about the so-called Commander-in-Chief – Karen Rubin, News & Photo Features

10:00 A.M. EDT

NASA: White House, this is Mission Control, Houston.  Please call Station for a voice check.

THE PRESIDENT:  Do you hear me?

CMDR. WHITSON:  Yes, sir.  We have you loud and clear.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, that’s what we like — great American equipment that works.  And this isn’t easy.  (Laughter.)

I want to say it’s very exciting to be here today — very, very exciting — and to speak to you live with three brave American astronauts.  These are our finest.  These are great, great Americans, great people.  Two join us from orbit aboard the International Space Station:  Commander Peggy Whitson and Colonel Jack Fischer.  And Peggy Whitson has been setting records, and we’re going to talk about that very soon.

I’m here in the Oval Office, along with my daughter Ivanka and astronaut Kate Rubins, who recently returned from space and from the Space Station.  Together, we are being joined by students all across America, thousands and thousands of students who are learning — they’re learning about space, learning about a lot of other things — and they’re watching this conversation from the classroom.  And, all over, we have astronauts and we have everybody, who are flying right now, 17,000 miles per hour.  That’s about as fast as I’ve ever heard.  I wouldn’t want to be flying 17,000 miles an hour.  But that’s what you do.

Peggy, Jack, and Kate, I know that America’s students are thrilled to hear from you.  But first, I want to say that this is a very special day in the glorious history of American spaceflight.  Today, Commander Whitson, you have broken the record for the most total time spent in space by an American astronaut — 534 days and counting.  That’s an incredible record to break.  And on behalf of our nation and, frankly, on behalf of the world, I’d like to congratulate you.  That is really something.  And I’d like to know, how does it feel to have broken such a big and important record?

CMDR. WHITSON:  Well, it’s actually a huge honor to break a record like this, but it’s an honor for me basically to be representing all the folks at NASA who make this spaceflight possible and who make me setting this record feasible.  And so it’s a very exciting time to be at NASA.  We are all very much looking forward, as directed by your new NASA bill — we’re excited about the missions to Mars in the 2030s.  And so we actually, physically, have hardware on the ground that’s being built for the SLS rocket that’s going to take us there.  And, of course, the hardware being built now is going to be for the test flights that will eventually get us there.

But it’s a very exciting time, and I’m so proud of the team.

THE PRESIDENT:  Great.  And what are we learning from having you spending your time up there?  I know so much research is done; I’m getting a glimpse of some of it right here in the Oval Office.  What are we learning by being in space?

CMDR. WHITSON:  Well, I think probably the International Space Station is providing a key bridge from us living on Earth to going somewhere into deep space.  So on those Mars missions, we need to better understand how microgravity is really affecting our body, and we need to understand it in great detail.  So, many of the studies are looking at the human body.  We’re also looking at things that involve operations of a space vehicles on these long-duration missions and the technological advancements that will be required.

For instance, on a multiyear Mars mission, we’re going to need to be able to close the life support system, and that means we, right now, for instance, are taking solar power that we collect, and using it to break apart water into oxygen and hydrogen.  The oxygen, we breathe, of course.  We use the hydrogen, combine it back with the CO2 that we take out of the air, and make more water.  But water is such a precious resource up here that we also are cleaning up our urine and making it drinkable.  And it’s really not as bad as it sounds.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, that’s good.  I’m glad to hear that.  (Laughter.)  Better you than me.  I will say, Colonel Fischer, you just arrived, and how was your trip?  Complicated?  Easy?  How did it go?

COL. FISCHER:  Oh, sir, it was awesome.  It made even my beloved F-22 feel a little bit underpowered.  I launched in a Russian vehicle with my Russian friend, Fyodor Yurchikhin, from Kazakhstan.  Got the immediate perspective change as we got to orbit, and I saw that frail, thin blue line of life around the Earth.  Six hours later, we’re docked at the station.  The next day, I install an experiment in the Japanese module that’s going to be looking at new drugs and how we can make those drugs for muscular dystrophy, Alzheimer’s, multi-drug-resistant bacteria — all sorts of things.  A couple hours later, I watched our crewmate, Thomas Pesquet, a Frenchman, drive a Canadian robotic arm to capture a spaceship from Virginia, carrying 3.5 tons of cargo and science that’s going to keep us busy for the next few months, and dock that to the station.

Sir, it’s amazing.  Oh, and then, you know, now I’m talking to the President of the United States while hanging from a wall.  It’s amazing.  The International Space Station is, by far, the best example of international cooperation and what we can do when we work together in the history of humanity.  And I am so proud to be a part of it.  And it’s just cool.  (Laughter.)  Like, yesterday, I had — well, there you go — there’s our resident space ninja doing the gravity demonstration.  And yesterday morning, I had my coffee in floaty ball form, and, sir, it was delicious.  So, it’s awesome.

THE PRESIDENT:  Tell me, Mars — what do you see a timing for actually sending humans to Mars?  Is there a schedule?  And when would you see that happening?

CMDR. WHITSON:  Well, I think as your bill directed, it will be approximately in the 2030s.  As I mentioned, we actually are building hardware to test the new heavy launch vehicle, and this vehicle will take us further than we’ve ever been away from this planet.  Unfortunately, spaceflight takes a lot of time and money, so getting there will require some international cooperation to get it to be a planet-wide approach in order to make it successful, just because it is a very expensive endeavor.  But it so worthwhile doing.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, we want to try and do it during my first term or, at worst, during my second term.  So we’ll have to speed that up a little bit, okay? 

CMDR. WHITSON:  (Laughter.)  We’ll do our best.

THE PRESIDENT:  Oh, you will.  And I have great respect for you folks.  It’s amazing what you do.  And I just want to introduce another great one.  Kate Rubins is with us today, and she has been so impressive with research and so many other things having to do with NASA.  And, Kate, I understand you’re the first person to sequence DNA in space.  Can you tell us about that?

RUBINS:  Yeah.  So that was actually just this last summer, and it’s a real example of what we can do with technology and innovation.  We’ve got a sequencer down to the size of your cellphone, and we were actually able to fly that onboard the space station and sequence DNA.  It’s not just the technology demonstration, but we can actually use that to do things like detect microbes on the space station, look at astronaut health.  We can easily use that in Earth-based settings, too, to look for disease outbreaks and to do rural healthcare as well.

TRUMP:  That’s fantastic.  That is really great.  I saw some of the work, and it’s incredible.  You know, I’ve been dealing with politicians so much, I’m so much more impressed with these people.  You have no idea. 

Now, speaking of another impressive person — Ivanka, you’ve been very much interested in this program.  Tell us something about it.

MS. TRUMP:  Hi, Dr. Whitson.  First of all, congratulations on your incredible milestone today.  You may know that my father recently signed the Inspire Women Act to encourage female participation in STEM fields across all aerospace areas, and really with a focus on NASA.  So encouraging women and girls to pursue STEM careers is a major priority for this administration.

And today we are sitting with an amazing example of that — Dr. Rubins, and you, Dr. Whitson.  So I would love to hear from you, what was the impetus for you to get involved in the sciences?

RUBINS:  Yeah, so when I around fifteen, I actually went to a conference, and that was very inspiring for me.  It was sort of the beginning of recombinant DNA and understanding biology.  And so just that exposure to scientists and the kinds of things that you can do with science and technology innovation.

MS. TRUMP:  Amazing.  Dr. Whitson?

CMDR. WHITSON:  For me, it was actually the Apollo program was my inspiration, and that was when it became a dream to become an astronaut.  But I don’t really think it became a goal until I graduated from high school, when the first female astronauts were selected.  And seeing those role models, and with the encouragement of my parents and various mentors in college and graduate school, and when I started working at Rice, that’s what made it possible, I think, to become an astronaut.  And it took me a lot longer to become an astronaut than I ever really wanted it to take, but I do think I’m better at my job because of the journey.

MS. TRUMP:  You’re an incredible inspiration to us all.  So I would also like to ask you one more question.  I’m incredibly curious, as I’m sure all the students across the country are, to know what a day in the life in space is like.  Could you share what a typical day looks like, what the challenges are, just any special moments?

CMDR. WHITSON:  Well, a typical day, we wake up and look at the messages from the ground, because we have a huge ground team that’s working overnight to prepare changes or the details of the tests that we’re going to be performing over the course of the day.  So first thing I do is check out that, see what’s changed.

But on any given day, it can be so dramatically different.  On one day, we might be focusing on science.  On another day, we might be repairing the carbon dioxide removal system.  On another day, soon Jack and I are going to do a spacewalk.  We talked about, last Saturday, we did robotics operations.  I love the diversity of the different activities that we do.  Plus, you know, we have over 200 investigations ongoing onboard the space station, and I just think that’s a phenomenal part of the day.

Of course, there’s also just the living and, onboard the space station, it’s such a unique and novel environment.  Nothing that we’re used to on the ground.  And it’s so special to just be in zero gravity.  So Jack is the new guy here, and I think he can probably give you a better perspective on what that’s like.

COL. FISCHER:  Well, you know, everything here — my dad always said that if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life.  And we work really hard up here, but it’s not really work, it’s just fun.  It’s like playing fort almost, only you’re changing the world while you do it.

And then on the off time, the other morning I was working out, and on our machine that we work out on, right below it is the Cupola window.  And so when you’re on the device where you do crunches, every time you come up, you see out the window.  And it’s awesome because you kind of go, crunch, “Oh, my gosh, that’s beautiful!  I got to do that again.”  Crunch, “Oh my gosh, that’s beautiful.”  It’s awesome.  Everything we do here is fun, and it feels so great to know that we’re making a difference on the ground and for the future of humanity as well.  So it’s an incredible, incredible job.

THE PRESIDENT:  You’re making a great difference, I have to say.  And this is a very exciting time for our country, and you see what’s happening with our country in terms of jobs, in terms of business, and there’s such excitement and such enthusiasm.  Many American entrepreneurs are racing into space.  I have many friends that are so excited about space.  They want to get involved in space from the standpoint of entrepreneurship and business. 

Tell us about the opportunities that could exist for the next generation of scientists and engineers.  Is that something that you think a student — because you have so many students, hundreds of thousands watching — is that something that you think that students should be focusing, or should they be thinking about other subjects?  What do you think are the opportunities for young students wanting to be involved in space?

A few of the New York City public school students pleading that the government not cut funding for science education, at the March for Science, New York City, April 22, 2017 © 2017 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

COL. FISCHER:  Sir, absolutely.  I think that this is probably the most exciting in space exploration, certainly in my lifetime.  We are about to just have an explosion of activity.  There is so much involvement on the space station with commercial industries and commercial partners.  We have an entire program to manage the science.  NASA has done a wonderful job of seeding a new industry with the Commercial Crew Program and the Commercial Cargo Program so that we can build the infrastructure we need for the future exploration.

One thing I love about American entrepreneurs is, once you get them going, you better stand out of their way because they’re going to start chucking.  And we’re about to that point.  NASA is taking on that expensive, hard, complex task of going further and deeper into space with the wonderful new rocket, Space Launch System and Orion.  And then, as soon as we break open that door, this incredible infrastructure that we’ve been building is going to be right there to pick up the baton and continue into the stars.

I would say to all the students that are watching, the time to get excited is now.  If you aren’t studying science and math, you might want to think about that because our future in the stars starts now, and you can be a part of that if, like Dr. Whitson, you can find that passion and work really hard.  And we’re going to find a permanent foothold in the stars for humanity if you do that.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, thank you.  So well said.  And I have to say, there’s tremendous military application in space.  We’re rebuilding our military like never before.  We’re ordering equipment, and we’re going to have the strongest military that we’ve ever had, the strongest military that the world has ever seen, and there’s been no time where we need it more.  And I’m sure that every student watching wants to know, what is next for Americans in space. 

I’m very proud that I just signed a bill committing NASA to the aim of sending America astronauts to Mars.  So we’ll do that.  I think we’ll do it a lot sooner than we’re even thinking.  So which one of you is ready to go to Mars?  Are you ready?  And I think you’re ready.  I know you’re ready, right?  We just discussed that.  She’d like to go to Mars very quickly.  Who’s ready to go to Mars up there?

CMDR. WHITSON:  We are absolutely ready to go to Mars.  It’s going to be a fantastic journey getting there, and very exciting times, and all of us would be happy to go.  But I want all the young people out there to recognize that the real steps are going to be taken in a few years.  And so by studying math, science, engineering, any kind of technology, you’re going to have a part in that, and that will be very exciting.

THE PRESIDENT:  I just want to thank you very much.  And, Dr. Whitson, I just — congratulations.  Amazing.  What an amazing thing that you’ve done.  Everybody here — I know you’re family — but everybody here is incredibly proud of the record you just broke.  I hope that every young American watching today finds, in your example, a reason to love space and think about space because many great things are going to come out, tremendous discoveries in medicine and so many other fields.

So thank you very much.  I want to say God bless you, God bless America.  We are very, very proud of you, and very proud of your bravery.  Thank you very much.

 

END                10:19 A.M. EDT

Education, President Obama

At White House Science Fair, President Obama Calls on this Generation of Students to Tackle the Grand Challenges of Our Time

 

President Obama hosted the sixth and final White House Science Fair of his Administration and celebrate the student competitors and winners from a broad range of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) competitions © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
President Obama hosted the sixth and final White House Science Fair of his Administration and celebrate the student competitors and winners from a broad range of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) competitions © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

On April 13, President Obama  hosted the sixth and final White House Science Fair of his Administration and celebrate the student competitors and winners from a broad range of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) competitions. The event was the largest White House Science Fair to date, with more than 130 students from more than 30 states, as well as student alumni from each of the prior five White House Science Fairs.

Highlighting the powerful stories of ingenuity, social activism, teamwork, and civic engagement evident in the projects, President Obama called on this generation of students—those in elementary, middle, and high schools today—to actively participate in solving the toughest challenges facing our world, from combating climate change to setting foot on Mars.

President Obama at a Brooklyn High School. At the 6th and final White House Science Fair, he announced new programs and initiatives to expand STEM education © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
President Obama at a Brooklyn High School. At the 6th and final White House Science Fair, he announced new programs and initiatives to expand STEM education © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

President Obama established the tradition of the White House Science Fair at the start of his Administration to personally celebrate our Nation’s top young scientists and innovators. The President created the Science Fair with a simple credo: “If you win the NCAA championship, you come to the White House. Well, if you’re a young person and you produce the best experiment or design, the best hardware or software, you ought to be recognized for that achievement, too.”

The President  also highlighted the growing community of education, business, and nonprofit leaders who have responded to his State of the Union call to give every child the opportunity to learn computer science (CS), as well as his overall “Educate to Innovate” campaign to ensure all students have the tools to be innovators and problem-solvers. New programs announced included: 

  • New Department of Education guidance to states, school districts, and other education organizations on the many ways they can use existing Federal funds to advance Pre-K–12 STEM and CS learning.
  • A $200 million investment by Oracle to support CS education for an additional 125,000 students in the United States.
  • More than 500 K-12 schools committing to expand access to CS, with support from Code.org.
  • Commitments to expand STEM learning for more of our youngest learners, from family engagement to innovative use of media.
  • A new online matching platform, supported by US2020, to help more STEM professionals who want to volunteer and mentor.

The STEM announcements also marked progress on the President’s My Brother’s Keeper Initiative and the efforts of the Council on Women and Girls to build ladders of opportunity for all young people, including populations underrepresented in STEM; incorporate STEM into the Administration’s push to expand high-quality early-childhood education; and advance the Climate Education and Literacy Initiativeto help connect all American students and citizens with the best-available, science-based information about climate change. Full details on all of today’s announcements can be found here.

The White House Science Fair is part of a week of Administration activities celebrating science and technology, featuring the President’s participation as a guest presenter throughout this week on the Science Channel’s nightly science news segment. In addition, the White House Science Fair will be immediately followed by the USA Science & Engineering Festival, the nation’s largest celebration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, with more than 350,000 students and adults expected to engage in more than 3,000 hands-on activities over 3 days. More than 70 Federal agencies will participate in the Festival.

A Generational Call to Action 

Students today have the potential to be one of America’s greatest generations. Though each generation of Americans brings with them new ideas and energy, today, because of unprecedented access to cutting-edge physical and digital tools, online and in-person communities, and information about the grand challenges we face, American students are even better equipped to harness their passions towards developing solutions that confront our toughest challenges.

They can be the Mars generation, the explorers who first step foot on another planet. Their skills, perseverance, and collaboration can help seed new technologies and solutions to tackle the climate crisis. They can collaborate to harness rapid advances in information technology and nanotechnology to understand the human brain, forge new solutions to cancer, and embrace the American spirit of discovery, invention, and entrepreneurship.

As the President highlighted in this year’s State of the Union Address, everyone in the United States can harness technology to help solve our toughest challenges. The 2016 White House Science Fair shines a spotlight on the contributions that the Nation’s students are making now, and the potential they have to help make our country and our world a better place.

The more than 130 students at the 2016 White House Science Fair represented more than 40 different STEM competitions and organizations. Forty student teams had the opportunity to exhibit their projects at the White House, and the President personally viewed some of these projects. Additional information on the projects, students, and competitions being recognized at the Fair can be found here.

A Sustained Record of Accomplishment 

This White House Science Fair is only the most recent example of President Obama’s sustained and historic focus on giving every child the opportunity to excel at STEM education. In the past 7 years:

  • The Administration has secured more than $1 billion in private investment for improving STEM education as part of the President’s Educate to Innovate campaign.
  • Our Nation is more than halfway towards achieving the goal the President set in 2011 of preparing 100,000 new math and science teachers by 2021.
  • Compared to when President Obama took office, 25,000 more engineers are graduating each year from American universities.
  • STEM education has been incorporated into the priorities of the Department of Education (ED)—as illustrated by the Administration’s signature Race to the Topcompetition—and into the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act that the President signed last year.
  • This White House has announced more than 350 commitments from college and university leadership and others to provide pathways for students underrepresented in STEM to attain degrees.
  • President Obama has started traditions such as the White House Science Fair to honor young people using STEM to improve their communities and the world.

And in his final budget announced in February, the President seeks to sustain this impressive track record with an investment of $3 billion for STEM-education programs, as well as a historic $4 billion proposal in support of CS education for all students. (The Republican-controlled Congress has refused to consider the President’s budget and has yet to pass its own.) 

New Steps Being Announced by the Administration 

Federal agencies are announcing new steps to empower local communities with the tools, people, and support they need to expand their STEM efforts. These include:

  • Federal guidance on advancing STEM education. Today, the Department of Education (ED) Office of STEM is releasing a Dear Colleague Letter providing guidance for states, school districts, and other education organizations on how they can use Federal funds to support innovative STEM-education strategies and ensure equitable STEM-education opportunities and outcomes for all students in the 2016-17 school year. In particular, this guidance outlines how Federal money can be used to support high-quality, hands-on active STEM learning.
  • The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), along with the STEM Funders Network and the Afterschool Alliance, are collaborating to support vibrant STEM ecosystems in as many as 14 communities, where local schools, out-of-school programs, business, higher education, museums and local institutions will work together to expand STEM learning opportunities for local students. To support the effort, CNCS will place up to 28 AmeriCorps VISTA members, who will be full-time staff on the ground. In addition, CNCS is expanding STEM AmeriCorps VISTA through a new partnership with theNew York Academy of Sciences that will place more than 10 AmeriCorps VISTA members over the next 2 years in afterschool STEM-mentoring programs, which will serve students who reside in 60 of the poorest neighborhoods in New York City, NY, and Newark, NJ.
  • The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), in collaboration with theYMCA of the USA, will help 10 new host cities around the country expand Thingamajig, a program developed by the YMCA of Metropolitan DC. These cities will create programs, seminars, and tools that assist students in connecting STEM education with real-world problem solving skills. This partnership builds on the last 2 years of expansion across YMCA of the USA, which reaches over 100,000 youth—with a focus on low-income and underrepresented youth—in 48 states and Washington, D.C. Additionally, this year, USPTO will expand its collaboration with the JAMTECH program to more sites across the country. JAMTECH is a hands-on educational experience that gives students with little or no exposure to computer programming the opportunity to build and program their own video games over the course of a day—teaching the principles of game design, coding, and programming in a way that allows students to expand their competencies in areas such as math, physics, analysis, logic, and strategy.
  • Over 200 Federally supported citizen-science projects for students and adults are now accessible from a single place—CitizenScience.gov. The General Services Administration (GSA) is collaborating with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS), a Trust Instrumentality of the U.S. Government, to launch CitizenScience.gov, a new central hub for citizen science and crowdsourcing initiatives in the public sector. CitizenScience.gov will provide information, resources, and tools for government personnel, students, and adults who are actively engaged in or looking to participate in citizen science and crowdsourcing projects. The development of this catalogue follows the September 2015 memorandum to Federal departments and agencies issued by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).
  • ED, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and Too Small to Fail (TSTF) are releasing a series of tip sheets entitled “Let’s Talk, Read and Sing about STEM!” These tip sheets provide concrete resources and recommendations for families, caregivers, and educators of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers on easy ways to incorporate STEM concepts and vocabulary into everyday routines, and suggestions for activities to engage young children in STEM learning. These new resources build on an existing suite of materials co-created by ED, HHS, and TSTF focused on early brain and language development.
  • The National Science Foundation (NSF) will celebrate a Day of Active Learning. A robust foundation of evidence shows that while active engagement enhances learning for students of all demographics, it has an especially beneficial effect on women and underrepresented students, likely due to a greater sense of belonging that can be achieved in active classrooms. Today, NSF is announcing that it will hold an Active Learning Day later this year, with the goal of empowering and encouraging educators nationwide to use active learning in their classrooms.

Private-Sector Commitments in Response to the President’s Call to Action 

More than 100 different organizations announced new commitments, showcasing the strong response to the President’s State of the Union call to give every child the opportunity to learn CS, as well as his overall “Educate to Innovate” campaign to ensure all students have the tools to be innovators and problem-solvers. These announcements included:

  • New partnerships to train teachers and help more than 500 K-12 schools expand access to CS. Code.org has established partnerships with seven local organizations to deliver professional-learning programs aimed at preparing up to 550 new high-school and middle-school CS teachers over the next 2 years. In addition, Code.org will help support more than 500 K-12 schools expand their CS offerings. This includes:

o   Nine school districts surrounding Chicago have grouped together to begin offering AP CS Principles in 21 high schools.

o   Dallas Independent School District will be offering beginning CS courses districtwide for the first time in the majority of their high schools and all of their middle schools in the 2016-17 school year.

o   Georgia’s Department of Education and Governor’s Office of Student Achievement committed to expand AP CS Principles to 60 high schools and integrate CS into preexisting courses at 60 middle schools across the state.

o   Mississippi’s Department of Education will host 6 summer workshops this year to prepare approximately 170 new CS teachers in grades K-5.

o   Northeast Florida School Districts, representing Clay, Duval, Nassau, and St. Johns Counties, have combined efforts to spread opportunities for CS instruction to over 200,000 students served collectively by their 330 schools.

o   In Washington State, Educational Service Districts 123, 171, and 112 (serving 82 school districts) have partnered with Code.org to bring CS professional-learning opportunities for elementary- and middle-school teachers as well as for middle-and high-school counselors and administrators. 

  • A $200 million investment from Oracle over the next 18 months in direct and in-kind funds to support CS education in the United States. The investment will allow an additional 125,000 K-12 students to learn CS through the free Oracle Academy program. Oracle is also expanding access to emerging CS fields for interested teachers and students, through opportunities such as their free Big Data Science Boot Camps. To complement its direct CS offerings, Oracle will invest more than $3 million in nonprofit organizations focused on inspiring young girls and engaging other underrepresented students in pursuing STEM and CS degrees.
  • A new online matching platform, created by US2020, to connect more STEM professionals to volunteer opportunities, setting an initial goal to serve 20,000 students this year. The new platform will enable any nonprofit organization or classroom teacher to connect easily with a STEM professional. In 2016, US2020 will use the platform as a central hub to engage more than 1,000 corporations and civic organizations and serve more than 20,000 students with a focus on girls, traditionally underrepresented minority students, and children from low-income families.
  • Commitments to expand STEM learning for young learners nationwide. In response to the Administration’s broader push to expand early-childhood education, private-sector organizations are stepping up and making new commitments to build statewide early STEM programs, equip every Head Start center across the country with STEM tools, and engage families with new media and cultural options. A full list of new commitments will be released as a part of a White House event on early learning and STEM later this month. These include:

o   100Kin10 is awarding $1.7 million to partners in New York State and has leveraged additional support from Motorola Solutions to develop ways to increase the reach and quality of engineering and CS teaching in Pre-K–12 schools.

o   Common Sense Education will produce a set of early STEM-education resources and tools, covering themes like Coding for Early Readers. These resources have the potential to reach more than 300,000 teachers in 100,000 schools, and 65 million households across the country.

o   The Heising-Simons Foundation will partner with The Fred Rogers Company to support the production of 25 episodes of “Odd Squad,” a math-focused television show airing on PBS Kids, create games and an app, and hold free week-long summer math camps in 14 U.S. cities serving more than 400 children.

o   The Hispanic Information and Telecommunications Network (HITN) will donate 10,000 STEM-focused Spanish/English Family Kits to informal learning settings (libraries and museums), community-based organizations, and national organizations—including home visitation programs—that serve low-income families in order to help expand young children’s access to STEM at home.

o   Learning Point Alaska, Inc. is partnering with multiple Alaska Native organizations to deliver informal, technology-based STEM programming to elementary-school students and build capacity for local teachers in Native Villages throughout Alaska.

o   The Museum of Science, Boston is launching a 3-year initiative to create a research-based Pre-K-Kindergarten engineering curriculum, which will build on the museum’s Engineering is Elementary curriculum, for schools to use to teach children ages 3-5.

o   The National Head Start Association and Lakeshore Learning will set a goal to reach the one million children who are enrolled in Head Start programs with their “Recycle Your Way to STEAM” program.

o   Sesame Workshop, the creators of Sesame Street, will develop “Make Believe with Math,” a research-based Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for educators, which, along with other training resources, will be made freely available online.

Full details on all of the new programs and initiatives can be found here.