In September 2010, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released this report about the future of the students.The report, titled “Prepare and Inspire: K-12 Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) for America’s Future” tells us that we need to change before we fall further behind in STEM.
In their introduction, they have a very strong argument, that I find hard to argue that:

“The Nation’s future depends on our ability to educate today’s students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Despite the fact that many U.S. students excel in STEM, U.S. students as a whole perform poorly on international comparisons of mathematical and scientific proficiency. There are wide disparities in STEM achievement among groups, and too many students think of STEM subjects as too difficult or uninviting.”

Okay, but what does this actually mean? The whole report is centered around 7 major points:

“we have sought to identify the most critical priorities for rapid action. We have therefore called out our main conclusion (about the need for both preparation and inspiration) and our seven highest priority recommendations, which concern:
(1) Support for state-led shared standards and assessments
(2) Recruiting and training of great STEM teachers
(3) Recognition and reward of great STEM teachers
(4) Using technology to propel innovation
(5) Creating programs that foster inspiration through out-of-class activities
(6) Creating new STEM-focused schools
(7) Ensuring strong and strategic National leadership”

And their main conclusion contains these main bullets:

“(1) To improve stem education, we must focus on both preparation and inspiration.
(2) The federal government has historically lacked a coherent strategy and sufficient leadership capacity for k-12 stem education.“

I don’t want to bore you with all of this, but that information was found on page 31 of the report. This report may be 130 pages, but each page brings up a strong point of what we need to do, why we need to do it, and the consequences if we don’t.