House Passes STEM Education Bill
(Washington, DC) – Today, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1020, the STEM Education Act of 2015. The bill incorporated provisions previously proposed by Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-CT) and Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-IL). The bill authorizes the National Science Foundation (NSF) to award grants and support activities, including teaching fellowships, to improve STEM learning outcomes.
Rep. Esty said, “We must support educational and economic foundations that encourage the innovation and entrepreneurship of all Americans innovation, and today’s bipartisan passage of our STEM Education Act brings us one step closer to that goal. I hear from manufacturers, high-tech companies, and small businesses across all sectors that struggle to find workers with the necessary technical and critical problem-solving skills to fill jobs in demand. Strong support for STEM education in K-12 education will help prepare our children for good-paying jobs in high-demand fields like manufacturing, health and biomedical industries, energy, and information technology.”
Rep. Lipinski said, “I am glad that the STEM Education Act included language I wrote supporting informal science education at museums and science centers. These programs are key to reaching the more than 13 million students that visit museums each year, many of whom will be inspired to pursue science careers as a result.”
Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) said, “I want to thank Congresswoman Esty for her language to amend NSF’s Noyce Master Teacher Fellowship program. I also want to thank Congressman Lipinski for his language to authorize NSF’s informal STEM education portfolio.
“However, I must express my concern about the definition for STEM included in this legislation, which differs in a significant way from the definition of STEM that Chairman Smith proposed in last year’s version of this same bill. Specifically, the current version would define STEM as ‘science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, including computer science.’ Last year’s version, developed in collaboration with the STEM Education Coalition, read as ‘science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, including other academic subjects that build on these disciplines such as computer science.’
This second definition, the one this entire House agreed to last year, was agreed to because it left the door open for other critical fields such as statistics and geology that don’t cleanly fit into the S, T, E, or M of STEM in K-12 teacher certifications and curricula.”
She continued, “I will support this bill today, but I hope that the Senate will be wiser than we are being in defining STEM. This is not just semantics. How and what science is taught in our nation’s classrooms is essential to our future economic competitiveness, national security, and overall well-being.”
The bill passed the House 412-8.
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