The term STEM education refers to teaching and learning in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It typically includes educational activities across all grade levels—from pre-school to post-doctorate—in both formal (e.g., classrooms) and informal (e.g., afterschool programs) settings. Federal policymakers have an active and enduring interest in STEM education, and the topic is frequently raised in federal science, education, workforce, national security, defense, and immigration policy debates. Although many observers cite the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik satellite in the 1950s as a key turning point for STEM education policy in the United States, federal interest in scientific and technological literacy writ large is long-standing and dates to at least the 1 st Congress. For example, in the first State of the Union address, President George Washington called upon Congress to promote scientific knowledge for the sake of the republic and the polity: Nor am I less persuaded that you will agree with me in opinion that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. In one in which the measures of government receive their impressions so immediately from the sense of the community as in ours it is proportionably [sic] essential. More recent concerns about scientific and technological proficiency of the population of the United States have focused on the relationship between STEM education and national prosperity and power. Since World War II, the United States has benefitted from the social, economic, health, and military advances made possible, in part, by a highly skilled STEM workforce. Today, a wide range of U.S. occupations—in STEM and non-STEM fields—either require or benefit from workers with STEM skills and knowledge. Most observers would likely argue that science and technology skills will continue to be as important in the future as they were in the past, if not more so. As such, many observers consider widespread STEM literacy, as well as specific STEM expertise, to be critical human capital competencies for the 21 st century. The education system is one major source of STEM skills and knowledge among the U.S. population. Federal legislators have paid close attention to the STEM-related outputs of that system—such as the number of college graduates with degrees in STEM fields or the performance of U.S. students on international mathematics tests—and have sought to increase its functioning and capacity through federal policy and investments. For example, over 300 bills containing just the term "science education" were introduced in the 20 years between the 105 th (1997-1998) and 115 th (2017-2018) Congresses. Agency reauthorization bills often contain STEM education-related provisions, and at least 14 federal agencies conduct STEM education programs or activities. The annual federal investment in STEM education programs, while difficult to estimate, is typically considered to be around $3 billion. Given policymakers' ongoing interest in the scope and scale of the federal STEM education effort, this report aims to provide an overview of the current and historical landscape of programs and issues in STEM education. The first section of this report examines federal agencies, programs, and funding for STEM education. The second section examines the performance of the U.S. STEM education system and outstanding issues that may be of interest to Congress. The final section of the report includes a list of major acts dealing with STEM education and provides a history of recent legislative efforts. Appendix A contains links to sources of STEM education data, and Appendix B includes descriptions of the federal STEM education effort from selected historical inventories. The federal effort in STEM education can be thought of as consisting of two major components. The first component consists of programs that can be used for a variety of general educational purposes, and which may include STEM education as an optional element, but not as the main purpose. These include programs such as Title I-A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which provides additional funds for school districts serving large concentrations of children living in poverty. These also include postsecondary federal student aid, consisting of Pell grants, student loans, and campus-based programs for students attending institutions of higher education (IHEs). Students who receive Pell grants or federal student loans may choose to use the money to pursue degrees in STEM fields; however, routing students into those fields is not the primary purpose of those programs. The second component of the federal effort in STEM education consists of programs whose main stated goal is to improve STEM education outcomes in the United States, whether by supporting students in STEM fields directly, improving STEM teacher preparation, improving the quality of STEM programs at the K-12 and postsecondary educational levels, providing better access to STEM majors for traditionally underrepresented minorities, or through some other means. Even though the amount of money spent annually on these programs by the federal government is significantly lower than on those that make up the first component discussed above, these programs are the ones that most directly attempt to influence the quality of STEM education in the United States, and they will be the main focus of this report. The overall structure of the administration of federal STEM policy is shown in Figure 1 . The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) advises the President on scientific aspects of foreign and domestic policy. The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) coordinates science and technology policy across the federal government. The responsibility for coordinating STEM education programs and initiatives across the federal government falls to the NSTC's Committee on STEM Education (CoSTEM). CoSTEM was established in 2011 in accordance with statutory requirements of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 ( P.L. 111-358 ). Since its establishment, CoSTEM has carried out an inventory of the federal effort in STEM education (hereinafter referred to as NSTC-11) in response to concerns about the focus and possible overlap in the nature of federal approaches and has created and begun implementing the Federal STEM Education Five-Year Strategic Plan. The NSTC-11 inventory found that, as of FY2011, federal agencies were making 254 distinct investments in STEM education for a total budgetary commitment of $3.4 billion. The inventory characterized federal investments in STEM education by primary objective. Of the eight pre-defined primary objectives, federal agencies reported the largest shares of their STEM investments were for the following: (1) increasing the number of postsecondary STEM degrees, (2) preparing people to enter into STEM careers, and (3) conducting STEM education research and development. The distribution of federal STEM investments by primary objective is shown in Figure 2 . NSTC-11 also reported that nearly three-quarters (74%) of all federal STEM education investments had at least two secondary objectives in addition to the primary one. The inventory also included NSTC's suggestions for possible approaches to improving the federal STEM education portfolio. These suggestions included consolidating programs, creating joint program solicitations across agencies, and developing data sharing, evaluation, and performance measurement tools. For more about the various attempts to catalogue the federal STEM education effort, see Appendix B . The NSTC-11 inventory also attempted to identify the primary "audiences" (i.e., groups) that were being served by federal investments in STEM education. The majority of distinct investments—in terms of numbers of activities or programs (64%) and funding in dollars (54%) listed in NSTC-11—provided assistance to or services intending to benefit at least two primary categories of audience types. As shown in Table 1 , the largest number of investments and the largest total funding were targeted toward undergraduate and graduate learners. Other categories—including K-12 students and K-12 STEM teachers—received substantial attention as well, both in terms of number of programs and total amount invested. CoSTEM's five-year strategic plan, mandated by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act, was released in 2013. This plan was created with the goal of identifying priority STEM education investment areas where a coordinated federal strategy can be developed and implemented across federal agencies over a five-year period, leading to major improvements of the federal STEM effort. The strategic plan identified five such priority STEM education investment areas: 1. Improve STEM instruction . Prepare 100,000 excellent new K-12 STEM teachers by 2020, and support the existing STEM teacher workforce. 2. Increase and sustain youth and public engagement in STEM. Support a 50% increase in the number of U.S. youths who have an authentic STEM experience each year prior to completing high school. 3. Enhance STEM experience of undergraduate students . Graduate 1 million additional students with degrees in STEM fields over the next 10 years. 4. Better serve groups historically underrepresented in STEM fields . Increase the number of students from groups that have been underrepresented in STEM fields that graduate with STEM degrees in the next 10 years and improve women's participation in areas of STEM where they are significantly underrepresented. 5. Design graduate education for tomorrow's STEM workforce . Provide graduate-trained STEM professionals with basic and applied research expertise and ancillary skills needed for success in a broad range of careers. According to the NSTC-11 program inventory and subsequent annual updates carried out by the OSTP, funding for the federal STEM education effort ranged from $2.8 billion to $3.4 billion in nominal dollars annually between the FY2010 baseline year and FY2016. (See Table 2 .) No single federal agency is responsible for the entire federal effort in STEM education. Instead, STEM education programs are spread out across over a dozen federal agencies, with the largest shares (both by number of programs and total investment) housed at NSF (39.8% of total dollars), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS, 21.1%), and the Department of Education (ED, 17.8%). As of FY2016, the Department of the Interior (DOI), DHS, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had the smallest STEM education budgets in the portfolio of federal agencies supporting STEM education.