Photo by Jose Antonio Galloso

University of Southern California cohosted a two-day summit along with the Competitiveness Crisis Council this past September to address the challenges facing California's education system with thought leaders in industry, academia, and the community at large, which addressed improving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education.

The conference, entitled "Education Crisis Summit: Securing Our Competitiveness in a Global Market," was designed to develop a set of specific recommendations to improve the education system in California and to send a call-to-action to all California stakeholders. Educators, administrators, corporate leaders, and legislators interested in math and science education from kindergarten through the Ph.D. level opened the summit with a report on the state of education in California, citing insufficient funding, resource inequities and persistent achievement gaps among population segments, and a lack of qualified teachers in the key areas of STEM as major contributors to the shortage of science and engineering bound students.

"As developing countries like China and India continue to produce a technical workforce at a greater pace than the United States, our standing as one of the world's largest economies continues to drop. This is largely because we are not keeping pace with the demand for science, technology, engineering, and math workers," says Mitchell Suarez, chairman of the Competitiveness Crisis Council. "The state's preschool through university education system has a strategically vital role to play in securing California's economic future. We must develop qualified talent to meet the technical workforce demand crisis in the U.S. and address the challenges posed by the global economy."

In the opening session on the state of education in California, Thelma Melendez, superintendent of the Pomona Unified School District, stressed the importance of finding new ways to reach the large and growing population of Latino students in public school. Ten million Latinos are currently enrolled in the nation's schools, she states. Their growth rate nearly doubled between 1990 and 2006, a growth rate that is expected to continue for decades. In California, Latinos will comprise 40% of the population by 2020.

Melendez called the crisis in education a problem of "watered-down expectations," a theme that was reiterated by many panelists throughout the conference. "We believe that anyone can learn and enjoy science and mathematics," she says. "This is not an achievement gap: it is an expectation gap."

Pomona Unified School District is home to 42 schools and 31,000 students. Melendez says nearly 80% of the students are Latino and almost half do not speak English. To improve education in STEM fields, the district has instituted a STEM initiative to build new academic programs, train science and mathematics teachers, and give students hands-on experience in science and engineering. Career ladders and academies, a new magnet school, workshops at Pomona High School and Cal Poly Pomona, and supplemental training for science and math teachers have been introduced to bolster middle school education and better prepare students for the challenges of tomorrow's technological workforce.

Charles Reed, chancellor of the California State University system, echoed her sentiments, noting that the universities cannot improve if the K-12 school system doesn't improve.

"Low expectations are a real disease," he told 150 participants on the first day of the summit. "The U.S. has slipped in the world and we're not competitive any longer. That's a crisis. We have to act with urgency and passion, and we've got to do things differently."

Panelists also included Warren Baker, president of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo; Michael Ortiz, president of Cal Poly Pomona; James Rosser, president of California State University Los Angeles; and David Brewer, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Ortiz said the reality is that most college-bound high school graduates are not prepared for college or the marketplace, and the cost of remediation programs at the university level tops $2.9 billion a year. "There has to be political will to make changes," he said, "but the biggest opposition to change comes from groups who are resisting accountability."

In discussing their views on specific ways to move forward collaboratively, Brewer, a retired Navy vice admiral and current superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, said he instituted five guiding principles to improve achievement in the majority Latino student body when he came into the job two years ago: research and data, professional development, innovation, parent involvement, and safety. "You can't have a world-class education unless you have a world-class staff," he said. "You can't keep doing the same thing and expect different results."