Page 121 - Standards for K-12 Engineering Education

Standards for K-12 Engineering Education?

106 STANDARDS FOR K–12 ENGINEERING EDUCATION?

Policy Challenge
The one significant remaining policy challenge is to align high school graduation expectations
and state college admission requirements. This issue has only recently come to the fore because
it has taken until now for technology/engineering programs to produce a significant number of
students with these credits. Second, addressing the issue requires alignment between the
Department, the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, and, interestingly, the National
Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

Although the Department allows schools to apply technology/engineering courses to science
graduation requirements, the Department of Higher Education does not yet recognize those
courses as “natural/physical science” courses for the purposes of college admission. Since most
higher education institutions have separate science and engineering departments, these
disciplines are not immediately considered equivalent. Added to that, institutions of higher
education have not had a chance to assess the nature or rigor of high school
technology/engineering courses. Thus when they conduct a transcript review for purposes of
student admission, technology/engineering courses are not being counted as fulfilling science
requirements. This issue is being actively addressed and will hopefully be resolved before long.

Alignment with NCAA requirements is a bit more abstract but just as important. NCAA
conducts its own transcript reviews of students who want to play or receive sports scholarships at
NCAA-affiliated institutions. NCAA reviews the high school syllabus (submitted to NCAA by
high school guidance departments) and pre-approves all high school academic courses. When
MA high schools submitted technology/engineering courses for review as science courses,
NCAA rejected them because they were “vocational” rather than academic courses, no matter
what evidence the school provided. And once a rejection letter was received, the guidance
department had to tell the science and/or technology education department that the course could
not be added to the school’s program of studies for science credit. To address this issue, the
Department wrote to NCAA explaining that the state has incorporated technology/engineering
into science as an academic subject and asking that future requests be reviewed as such. NCAA
agreed to do so and has now begun to approve these courses.

Implementation by Schools, Districts, and Institutions of Higher Education
Implementation Successes
Schools and districts have implemented a range of changes in the K–12 curriculum aligned with
the technology/engineering standards. Although the Department has not collected unit lessons or
syllabi, evidence of successful implementation can be seen in inquiries made by schools to the
Department about implementation issues and curriculum development, newspaper articles about
technology/engineering offerings, and students taking the high school technology/engineering
MCAS test. The Department has also seen more district administrators taking an interest in
technology/engineering, particularly those who follow state economic policy discussions where
biotechnology and high-tech themes have been ongoing for several years now. Finally, the
development of published curricula (primarily by the Museum) and textbooks aligned with state
standards (e.g., by publishers Glencoe, Goodheart-Wilcox, and Great Lakes Press) have made it
easier to initiate programs.

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