Eric.ed.gov – “Educate to Innovate”: How the Obama Plan for STEM Education Falls Short. Backgrounder. No. 2504

President Obama’s Educate to Innovate initiative has provided billions in additional federal funding for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education programs across the country. The Administration’s recognition of the importance of STEM education– for global competitiveness as well as for national security–is good and important. But the past 50 years suggest that federal initiatives are unlikely to solve the fundamental problem of American underperformance in STEM education. Heritage Foundation education and national security analysts explain that, though Educate to Innovate is intended to raise the U.S. “from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math,” the federal program’s one-size-fits-all approach fails to remedy the underlying problems of academic performance and does not plug the leaky pipeline in the American education system. (Contains 33 footnotes.) [This paper was written with the assistance of Jessica Zuckerman.]