Building Great RI Jobs: Let STEAM Rise

Recently, Middletown town council president Chris Semonelli called for a summit targeting science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) to drive our state’s own economic revolution.  While a high-level summit might offer some long-term benefits, there is a more immediate opportunity that will yield lasting results.  Launching a Rhode Island STEAM-focused public charter elementary school would be a key step in building a durable STEM “pipeline” of future talent to serve our tech-hungry world. 

There is plenty of talk about the need to create “good paying jobs.”  The list of potential technology-driven jobs is long, yet we face a chronic shortage of qualified graduates to fill them.  

Rhode Island students need to have an early and sustained STEAM-based education that ignites and fuels interest in STEM fields. Starting in kindergarten, students can be shown the relevance of STEM in their lives.  Our schools could be developing interest by offering a hands-on, project-based, and integrated learning approach which blends the arts with the sciences.   

Research shows that children are deciding as early as 4th grade whether they are “good” at math and science.  By the time students reach high school too many of them, especially young women and minorities, have given up hope that they would ever be candidates for a STEM career.  

STEAM is being promoted at the national level thanks in major part to the marketing efforts of Rhode Island School of Design, Brown University, University of Rhode Island, and the congressional STEAM Caucus (which includes Rhode Island’s two congressmen).  School districts in California, Colorado, Georgia, and Alabama are now running  STEAM-centered schools.   Rhode Island already has the ingredients needed to fashion an impactful, integrated STEAM curriculum.  Our leaders just need to move beyond wishful rhetoric and make it happen. 

Elected leaders and traditional school officials predictably react to the short-term financial ramifications posed by any charter school.  This shortsighted, status quo reaction hinders the needed progress that our state’s economy demands.  But for the Rhode Islanders who want to get on a more solid footing for the 21st Century, let’s transform our approach and allow STEAM to rise.  In short order we will be on our way to building a scalable educational foundation for our children and our state's future.  Now that is a risk worth taking. 

There is good news.  This month, a group of Aquidneck Island citizens received an invitation from the Rhode Island Department of Education to submit a proposal to open a K-8 STEAM public charter school that would be open to any Rhode Island student.  You can track the progress of the Rhode Island STEAM Academy and be notified of upcoming “collaboration sessions” by registering at bitly.com/RISA2014.