INDIANAPOLIS (Dec. 1, 2014) – One Nation Under-Taught: Solving America’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Crisis, the new book from Project Lead The Way (PLTW) CEO Dr. Vince Bertram, debuted at #7 on The New York Times nonfiction hardcover best-seller list for Dec. 7, 2014, PLTW announced today. One Nation Under-Taught highlights the urgent need to address America’s STEM-education challenge head-on, and provides a blueprint for helping students fall in love with and succeed in critical STEM fields.
As American students fall further behind their foreign counterparts in international assessments, U.S. educators, policymakers, industry leaders, and parents must find ways to equip students with the skills and knowledge that will make them successful in the global economy. U.S. students placed 21st in science and 26th in math in the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings. Domestic assessments are equally bleak: the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found that only 26 percent of high school seniors score at or above proficient in math.
Meanwhile, math and science play an increasingly important role in defining the jobs of the future, as do the problem-solving, critical-thinking, and collaboration skills that are learned through a STEM education. STEM jobs are expected to grow twice as fast as other jobs over the next four years, resulting in 1.2 million unfilled STEM jobs by 2018.
In One Nation Under-Taught, Bertram highlights this crisis and explains why 30 years of efforts to address it – increasing funding, hiring more teachers, and raising testing standards among them – are failing. Bertram argues that the solution requires a reimagining of the U.S. educational system and its approach to subjects like math and science. Schools must integrate STEM principles into all subject areas at the earliest stages of development, and make the concepts relevant to students through activity-based learning that prioritizes experience and application over memorization. They must also equip teachers with the tools and training they need to teach these subjects more effectively.
One Nation Under-Taught is available online and in bookstores today.
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About PLTW Project Lead The Way (PLTW) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and the nation’s leading provider of K-12 STEM programs. PLTW’s world-class, activity-, project-, and problem-based curriculum and high-quality teacher professional development model, combined with an engaged network of educators and corporate partners, help students develop the skills needed to succeed in our global economy. More than 6,500 elementary, middle, and high schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia are currently offering PLTW courses to their students. For more information, visit www.pltw.org.