Date: 2015-02-24
Speaker: EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. Speaker. I rise in support of H.R. 1020although. reluctantly. I must qualify my support. I will begin with the parts of the bill that I strongly support. I want to thank Ms. ESTY for her language to amend NSFs Noyce Master Teacher Fellowship program. This is an important update to the program to ensure that we are tapping into our entire pool of talented math and science teachers who might serve as master teachers in their schools and districts. I also want to thank Mr. LIPINSKI for his language to authorize the National Science Foundations informal STEM education portfolio. While we know that informal STEM education learning holds great promise to increase engagement in STEM by diverse populations and to enhance learning of STEM content. there is still more R&D to be done to make sure we are developing and implementing the most effective programs. My support for those sections of this bill is unqualified. 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 years version of this same bill. Specifically. the current version would define STEM as "science. technology. engineering. and mathematics. including computer science." Last years 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 dont cleanly fit into S. T. E. or M of STEM in K12 teacher certifications and curricula. I think we can all agree to the importance of computer science education. The current disconnect between the high demand for information technology jobs and limited opportunities for students to be exposed to computer science at the K12 level puts American students and American companies at a significant disadvantage. However. it baffles me as to why we would implicitly devalue such fields as statistics and geology in order to highlight computer science. Statistics is an essential tool across all fields of science. Without good statistics. the biomedical research results that we count on to develop new diagnostics and therapeutics for diseases would be meaningless. Without geology. oil and gas companies would not be able to locate and drill for new sources of energy. Without geology. we will never achieve early warning for earthquakes to save lives. Whether we are from Texas or California. we ought to place high value on geology. I am also baffled why this bill is so urgent that we had to skip regular order to bring it to the floor. I requested that the committee hold a hearing or a markup on this legislation so that we might settle the definition dispute in committee after an open and public debate. but my request was denied. Mr. Speaker. I will support this bill today. but I hope that the Senate will be wiser than we are being today in defining STEM. This is not simply semantics. How and what science is taught in our Nations classrooms is essential to our future economic competitiveness. national security. and overall wellbeing.