Every Child Achieves Act of 2015
Floor Speech
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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I am here to discuss the Every Child Achieves Act. I think it is significant that for the first time in more than a decade, the Senate is considering legislation to make significant changes to our Nation's elementary and secondary education system, and this conversation is long overdue.
As a former teacher, I appreciate the challenges our schools have, and I am very much looking forward to the debate ahead. I want to applaud Senators Alexander and Murray, the chair and ranking member of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, for reaching a compromise bill that passed out of their committee with strong unanimous bipartisan support.
Today, I want to focus on some of the provisions included in this bill that have to do with STEM education--science, technology, engineering, and math. This is an issue I have been working on for a number of years--really since I was Governor in the late 1990s in New Hampshire. We know the most critical jobs needed to compete in the global economy are in the STEM fields, but data consistently shows our American students are falling further and further behind in these subjects.
One of the other challenges is that we have an enormous gender gap in employment in these fields. Forty-eight percent of the workforce in this country are women. Yet only 24 percent of the jobs in STEM fields are held by women.
I had the opportunity last night to cohost a screening in the Capitol of an important new documentary called ``Code:
Debugging the Gender Gap.'' This documentary tells a very powerful story about the lack of diversity in the technology industry, outlining the resulting cost to our society, and it explores strategies that would solve the problem.
Last night we had more than 150 people in attendance at the screening, which was cohosted by Representative Susan Davis from California. The creators of the movie were there, and U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith. What followed the documentary was even more impressive, and that was a lengthy and very passionate discussion about how much work we have to do on this front.
We need to give the next generation a stronger educational foundation in these topics, and, most important, we need to get them engaged and excited to be working in STEM fields. This effort is going to require student engagement inside and outside the classroom. It is critical our schools have the resources to offer STEM opportunities during the schoolday. But of course as most of us remember from our childhood, it is sometimes what happens outside the classroom that is even more important than what happens inside the classroom if we are going to get kids excited about learning.
Afterschool programs allow students opportunities for more individualized instruction, for innovative experiences, and for opportunities to build their leadership skills. Afterschool programs can be especially successful in inspiring interest in groups that are traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields, such as young women, students of color, and students from low-income backgrounds.
So I especially appreciate Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray for working with me to include language from my Supporting Afterschool STEM Act, which is in the underlying bill and allows Federal grants to be used to support STEM-related afterschool activities.
This language will expand student access to high-quality, afterschool programs in STEM subjects. It will also promote mentorship opportunities and the building of partnerships with researchers and other professionals in these fields.
Again, one of the things we know about helping kids to stay in school, getting them excited, is that if they have a mentor, if they have someone who is really interested in what is going on in their lives, who is supporting them, then they are much more likely to be successful. These programs will give students firsthand experience to see what careers in the STEM subjects can look like.
Now, the Every Child Achieves Act also includes language based on a second STEM-related bill that I first introduced when I got to the Senate back in 2009--the Innovation Inspiration School Grant Program. This language would authorize Federal STEM education grants to support the participation of low-income students in related competitive extracurricular activities, such as robotics competition.
I am particularly excited about this because in New Hampshire, inventor Dean Kamen--also the inventor of the insulin pump and the Segway--founded a fantastic program called FIRST Robotics Competition. It is now wildly successful. Nationwide, we have nearly 100,000 high school students who compete. It is sort of an ``Einstein meets Michael Jordan'' kind of competition. Students have just 6 weeks to work in a team to design, construct, and program robots, and then they enter their robots in regional and championship competitions.
It is great fun to attend these events because kids are so excited about working with these robots and about the STEM subjects. They get excited about engineering, about science, about math, and technology, and you can see that in the students as they are building these robots. They are excited about accomplishing their goals, about being creative. When there are last-minute problems with the robots, they have to work to adjust. But most of all, whether or not they win, you can see the pride they feel for themselves, for their teammates that comes from successfully accomplishing their task: building that robot and being successful in the competition.
You can't replicate this kind of experience in a classroom. So I am very pleased that support for programs such as FIRST are now included in the bill we are considering on the Senate floor. These are provisions that I think will take very important strides toward inspiring future generations of scientists and engineers, of mathematicians and experts dealing with technology.
Again, I thank Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray for their work on these issues and for producing a bill we are now debating on the floor that has such strong bipartisan support.
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