School Year Success and Where We're Going Next

As summer break begins, we’re taking a moment to highlight the past year and give a sneak peek on what’s to come in the fall and spring.

During the 2018-19 school year, more than 70,000 students attended NMSI study sessions across the nation. We inducted 153 new schools in 13 states into our College Readiness Program. To date, we’ve offered CRP in almost 1,400 high schools and trained more than 50,000 teachers in our Laying the Foundation program.

At the Milken Global Conference in April, NMSI CEO Bernard Harris unveiled a NMSI-led collaborative resource that demonstrates areas in the country that appear to have gaps in quality STEM education. About 50 organizations worked on the STEM Framework for Success, which identifies 10 conditions, practices and outcomes that show how well states, school systems and schools are performing in STEM education. Using this framework, an interactive map called the STEM Opportunity Index shows how states are doing in these 10 areas. By the end of this year, NMSI will add the school systems and school level data.

Continuing our Military Families Mission, the Department of Defense selected a coalition of more than a dozen organizations, including NMSI, for a $75 million initiative. As part of the coalition, NMSI will work with additional elementary and secondary schools to ensure students have access to rigorous, hands-on STEM education and teachers have the training needed to lead those courses. For this work, we will focus on serving students underrepresented in STEM careers, military-connected students and students identified as gifted and talented.

Looking ahead, NMSI will expand our services by offering programming for pre-kindergarten to second grade. Previously, our programs began at third grade. Students' long-term engagement and success in STEM depends on having access to high-quality STEM education that begins in the early grades and is coherent across elementary, middle and high school. We are lauching pilots beginning this summer and continuing in 2020 to meet this goal. 

One upcoming pilot is a K-12 computer science program – formed via a partnership among 10 organizations. The goal is to provide more access to underrepresented students. Of those who took the AP® Computer Science exam in 2017, only 27 percent were female, and 20 percent were people of color.  

Also this summer, we’ll host 13 teacher training Summer Institutes (in CRP and LTF). Interested? Openings are still available in some locations. Speaking of teachers, we completed one year of online teacher learning communities in Atlanta and will roll out national online learning cohorts in 2019-20.

Starting in the fall, NMSI is partnering with Nepris to deliver STEM mentoring for students in North Dakota.

For the 2019-20 school year, we will launch more than 80 new CRP schools in 14 states. Together, NMSI and the UTeach Institute will launch two new UTeach programs in the fall and spring at Stephen F. Austin State University and the University of Houston–Clear Lake. Currently, 46 universities provide the UTeach program.

We look forward to working with new and familiar teachers and students in the coming school year. Until then, enjoy your summer!