Large_Scale_Reform

The workshop, “Lessons Learned from Large-Scale Reforms in K-12 STEM Education,” is sponsored by the National Science Foundation’s Education and Human Resources Directorate. There is now a productive window of opportunity to provide a number of stakeholder groups with a comprehensive, research-based conversation on many issues and challenges associated with large-scale reforms which are state-focused. Contained in the current policy emphasis on STEM K-12, inclusive of the common core standards, is a renewed determination to achieve sustainable and replicable reforms that have remained elusive for decades. Throughout these decades, however, lessons have been learned.

Among possible questions to be considered at this workshop are:

• What can we learn from an examination of state-focused STEM reform efforts from previous decades? Are there lessons that can be applied to contemporary STEM reform work?

• What is the state of the evidence to help us better understand how to sustain reforms that are state-focused? Which policy, organizational, system, accountability, and classroom-based mechanisms do or do not contribute to sustainable reforms?

• What role, if any, have state-based or regional networks played in the work of past STEM reform efforts? How has the purpose and organization of such networks evolved over time to advance, or not, the effectiveness and endurance of these reform efforts?

• What have been historic and contemporary choices made in the design of state- focused reforms?

• What are perennial challenges associated with reform design choices? For example, what is known about linkages between design choices and building capacity among major reform actors?