For nearly 20 years, academic strategies, support and policies focused on closing long-standing achievement gaps in STEM between boys and girls. These efforts paid off, and by 2019, girls’ achievement in  and  equaled or exceeded boys’. Then the pandemic hit, and the gaps that took two decades to close were back.

My colleagues and I at NWEA, an education assessment and research company, recently released examining how the pandemic impacted achievement for boys and girls in math and science. We looked at scores from three large national assessments (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, the National Assessment of Educational Progress and NWEA’s MAP Growth). The data highlighted two main trends:

•  The achievement gap in math and science reemerged during the pandemic, once again favoring boys. However, an achievement gap did not resurface in reading, where girls continue to outperform boys.
• Looking at high-achieving students, boys showed significantly higher scores across assessments than girls in both math and science. For low-achieving students, however, boys’ scores were lower than girls’.

These trends are not limited to the U.S. Other English-speaking countries show similar gaps, pointing to a broader issue. A similar trend is seen more locally.  On the NAEP assessments, which provide California-specific data for eighth grade math, the results mirror the nation. In  had an average math score that was not . By 2024, however, boys had an average score that was  than girls’ in math.

Our research also looked at enrollment by boys and girls in eighth grade algebra across 1,300 U.S. schools. Enrollment in this math course is often used as a predictor of future enrollment in higher-level math in high school, as well as a predictor of participation in college and career opportunities in STEM fields. In 2019, girls enrolled at higher levels than boys in eighth grade algebra (26% vs 24%). By 2022, enrollment had declined for both groups, with the drop-off for girls being slightly sharper than for boys. While the decline was experienced by both, enrollment for boys in algebra had bounced back to pre-pandemic levels by 2024.

Taken together, the results of this research signal that the effects of the pandemic were not felt evenly by boys and girls. More significantly, this data does not provide the “why” for these setbacks and the reemergence of achievement gaps. One area to spotlight is the trend of girls reporting more emotional challenges, like depression and anxiety, during and after the pandemic that may have impacted their learning. Notably, the widening gender gap emerged after students returned to in-person school, pointing to factors in the school environment as potential contributors, like the  among boys, leading teachers to pay more attention to them in class.

While many of the  in the last few years about gender differences in school have focused on the ways that boys are  than girls, our research has illustrated an overlooked area where girls could use more support. As schools continue to focus on academic recovery and approaches that drive academic outcomes for all students, it’s crucial that those efforts are measured and evaluated effectively to ensure new inequities don’t arise or old ones don’t take permanent root. We have three primary recommendations to address these gaps:

1.    Monitoring participation in STEM milestones by boys and girls, over time, and not just within a single year to gain a better view of trends. For example, eighth grade algebra enrollment in 2024 appears to be balanced by gender, but it overlooks a critical trend that boys’ enrollment has returned to pre-pandemic levels while girls’ enrollment is still below 2019 levels. Analyzing longitudinal trends within each group is key to uncovering and addressing setbacks that may be hidden by a single-point-in-time snapshot.

2.    Providing specific academic and emotional support to students. Girls reported feeling more stress, anxiety and depression than boys, and noted it as an obstacle to their learning during the pandemic. Addressing both the academic needs and emotional needs of students may be critical in closing these emerging gaps in STEM skills.

3.    Evaluating classroom dynamics and instructional practices. If shifts in behavior and teacher attention during the pandemic disproportionately benefited boys in STEM subjects, understanding these shifts may help address the re-emerged achievement gap. Targeted professional learning that promotes equitable participation and inclusive teaching practices in STEM can help ensure all students have equal opportunities to succeed.

As our schools continue to navigate this long path toward academic recovery, it’s important that those efforts don’t unintentionally grow existing inequities or create new ones. More and more evidence is emerging that the pandemic was not an equal opportunity hitter, and its disruptions affected students differently. For girls in math and science, moving forward will require renewed attention to addressing achievement gaps, targeted support and careful monitoring of progress. Reclosing STEM gaps will take time, but with the right focus, it is possible to not only recover, but to build a more equitable STEM education system that ensures both boys and girls have immense opportunities to succeed.

This was originally published on .

As the oldest daughter of six, Vanessa Tostado always felt pressure from her immigrant parents to succeed in school.

She enrolled in Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, California, which helps first-generation students enroll and earn a degree. She fostered her passion for STEM by taking science classes and participating in national math competitions. 

But during her sophomore year, Tostado hit a roadblock. Her computer science class became so difficult that she asked her vice principal if she could withdraw. She was one of the few female students enrolled, and though computers were a field she was interested in pursuing after high school, she struggled with assignments while her classmates thrived.

“Before we could leave class, we would have these sort of exit slips to solve a problem. I just remember this dreadful feeling of, ‘I don’t know how to do this. I’m stuck.’ And this is your exit ticket to go to lunch and all my peers are leaving,” she said. “I was really feeling like this is not for me, like I’m just not getting it.”

Tostado credits Technovation, an international tech education nonprofit, for getting her back on track while reinvigorating her passion for STEM. The organization connects girls ages 8 to 18 with mentors who help them learn about coding, artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship in order to create mobile apps that address real-world problems. 

“In high school, I had a very fixed mindset of, ‘I can’t do it. It’s not for me.’ Through the mentorship that I had in Technovation, that really sort of shifted,” Tostado said. “It’s not that I can’t do it, I just don’t know how to do it. And I need to figure out what I don’t know how to do, and what questions I need to ask to help me get there.”

Since 2006, Technovation has served more than 150,000 girls around the world, mostly through a free, annual international competition that challenges participants to find a problem in their community and build a mobile or web app to help solve it. 

The organization has a network of chapters that work with mentors, volunteers and parents to help individual girls, or teams of up to five, create their projects over a period of several weeks. Last year, Technovation from 7,500 girls.

Tara Chklovski founded Technovation, formerly named Iridescent, after witnessing the lack of women in STEM fields while working on a doctorate in aerospace engineering at the University of Southern California. It was a stark difference from her bachelor’s degree program in India, which had equal representation of men and women.

“There were two or three women in (my) entire Ph.D. program. So then you begin to notice, and you’re like, ‘Why is that?’ ” Chklovski said. “I think the thing that really surprised me was that women would sort of say with pride, ‘Oh, I don’t do math. I’m bad at math.’ And I’m like, ‘Why is that something that you’re saying so proudly?’ You don’t say, ‘I’m bad at reading, I can’t read a book.’ I think that was bothering me.”

A new international study from the American Institutes for Research shows that by age 6, kids already perceive boys to be better than girls at computer science and engineering. Among girls, such beliefs only grow more entrenched over time.

Chklovski left her doctorate program to create a nonprofit of her own. She eventually founded Technovation, which began as a school-based STEM program but shifted to serving girls internationally in 2010. The nonprofit launched its global competition in 2012 and has since focused on increasing women’s representation in technology industries, including artificial intelligence.

This year, Technovation formed a collaboration with UNICEF, Google and other companies called the , which provides government agencies and nonprofits around the world with guidance on how to incorporate artificial intelligence education into their own mission and work. 

Technovation is “calling upon the world and other countries’ governments to help close the gender gap” in technology and STEM industries,” according to the organization. Chklovski said the alliance’s goal is to .

In Technovation’s competition, girls identify issues in their communities, build mobile app prototypes to offer solutions and create business plans, complete with a pitch and video, to be judged. The projects go through a round of semi-finals before the finalists are flown to Silicon Valley to pitch their projects in person.

Tostado hadn’t heard about Technovation until after her struggles began as a sophomore in 2013. When a mentor at her after-school program proposed that Tostado and some of her friends participate in the competition, she was hooked — especially after learning that she could help her own community in the process. 

For three months, working on their own time outside of class, Tostado’s team focused on creating an app called Tag It, which aims to improve their local neighborhood by notifying residents of graffiti and helping to organize events to clean it up. 

“The idea was, essentially, build an app that lets people say, ‘I am going to create an event to paint over the graffiti at the public library.’ And then, if someone is feeling like they want to volunteer, they can join that,” she said. “The idea was getting people to work together to help clean up East Palo Alto.”

Technovation also encourages a focus on climate solutions for project submissions. One girl in India built an app that would tell users their risk of getting lung cancer from air pollution in their community. A team from Argentina created an artificial intelligence app that predicted the chance of wildfires in specific areas.

“These young women are still in school, right? They are creating real solutions to solve real problems,” Chklovski said. “But then, as they become alumni and they go into the workforce, they continue with that — they have that mindset to solve problems.”

The Tag It app ranked among the top 20 projects judged in the Technovation competition that year. While the app didn’t win the entire challenge, Tostado said the education and mentorship she received from the nonprofit — which continued throughout her high school career — helped her rediscover her passion for STEM.

“I’m coming from a place of like, I can’t solve this exit ticket — and I have to scarf my lunch down my throat to get to my next class — to this confidence of [being] able to create this app,” Tostado said. “I think that mentorship and experience gave me the confidence to continue with my classes in high school and then continue taking classes in undergrad.”

Tostado graduated from Eastside in 2015 and enrolled at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where she earned a bachelor’s in 2019. She then landed a software engineering job at Palo Alto Networks, a multinational cybersecurity firm. 

Throughout college, Tostado said, she noticed there was still a lack of women in STEM programs. At conferences, she was told she was “stepping into something that’s not the norm.” Tostado is currently the only woman on her team of 10 engineers.

“I don’t feel like my team treats me any less than, and I feel like my opinions are heard, but I can definitely understand that might not be the norm everywhere,” she said. “But it’s also one of those things, like, you don’t know what you don’t have until you have it, right? Maybe in the future, I join a team and there’s a woman manager, or there are more women on the team, and I’m like, ‘Whoa. This is what I’ve been missing.’ ”

Correction: The Eastside College Preparatory School graduate’s last name is Tostado.

“I went from looking at colleges for health care to looking for a college for engineering,” says Susan Mendez, Karmin’s mom. “Karmin and Kayla will always give credit to Electric Girls for giving them the resources and education they never knew they needed.” 

Launched in New Orleans in 2015, the nonprofit organization is restructuring and ramping back up following the pandemic, with both STEM summer camps and afterschool programs, says Bryoni Prentice, program director.

During the pandemic, Electric Girls offered at-home STEM kits, but this summer in-person events resumed with summer camps — including one at Loyola University New Orleans where Karmin served as a volunteer counselor. The camps offer an intense two-week session that teaches 400 girls a variety of skills, allowing them to then create a project of their choosing. “Are you interested in nature and a terrarium? Let’s make one that lights up and find the best way to create an ecosystem,” Prentice says. “This is all about tapping into their curiosity, learning new skills and growing their love of science at an early age.” 

Now back in schools for the first time since the pandemic, Electric Girls remains focused on the New Orleans area because much of its grant money requires the nonprofit to support students in the city. This fall, the program is operating four afterschool programs and Electric Girls hopes to add more schools for the spring. 

For 90 minutes every school day, instructors teach girls from age 5 to 14 an array of tools, from the basics of how a circuit works to soldering to operating power tools to how to code. Students can then focus on an interest and expand it into an individual project.

Electric Girls partners with the schools they serve. Administrators and counselors inform students of the meaningful educational opportunities the nonprofit provides, and the program collaborates with science teachers so Electric Girls can serve as an extension of the school day. 

For students at other schools, the five-member team that makes up Electric Girls is looking to host additional three-hour evening workshops to help connect students to STEM. They have already partnered in the past with local libraries to host workshops and use the time to teach basic skills at each event. While reaching a range of ages, Electric girls has found girls in second through fourth grade attend most frequently. 

“Statistics show the earlier you tap into a kid’s mind and let them know what is out there, the more likely they are to follow that path,” Prentice says. “When you think about science, it is in everything. There is food science if you want to cook, there is science in clothing design. In every single thing they may want to do, there is science. You can take science and solve problems and tap into curiosity. No matter what they are passionate about, you can use science.” 

For Karmin and Kayla Naquin, that scientific passion started with a single Electric Girls “demo day” about flashlights and grew when the girls joined an afterschool program. “I loved seeing their little minds work and explain in detail their experiences,” their mother says. “They taught us things we didn’t even know. I have seen them both grow as a person.”

This love of engineering led Karim to join a school robotics team in 2020 and helped her become a leader of a group that now competes in First Robotics competitions. “Karmin and Kayla learned from Electric Girls women empowerment, how to be a leader, public speaking, to be inventive and creative, troubleshooting, time management, how to work alongside others, being attentive and to teach,” Mendez says. “(Karmin) learned Arduino [open-source electronic prototyping], computer programming, soldering, how to use a drill, website design, scratch coding, 3D printing, how electrical stuff works, how to build a mini car — all things I could never have taught my daughters on my own.”

In 2021, North Carolina had 300,000 STEM jobs, yet women accounted for only 28% of them.

That’s according to the , which spoke at the

Women account for about half of all jobs in North Carolina, which makes their low showing in STEM professions notable.

Emily Roach, director of policy and planning at the Department of Commerce, talked about its efforts to do something about this, including launch of the That plan “includes strategies to enable more women to enter the workforce by increasing access to childcare, education, training, and family friendly work environments,” according to the presentation.

“Advancing opportunities for women in STEM is a real point of passion for Secretary Sanders,” Roach told the committee.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ Newsletter

She talked about a few other initiatives launched by the department, including a mentorship program for female high school students to get them interested in STEM jobs in government.

She also talked about the department’s attempt to critique its own role in the STEM gender gap. The department took part in the, which was organized by and had employees of various organizations do a self assessment to look at diversity in gender and ethnicity when it comes to both STEM and leadership positions. Roach said that the Department of Commerce found it was doing a good job in that regard when it comes to leadership positions — but not so much when it came to STEM.

Getting more women into STEM fields is important because 71% of North Carolina STEM employers say they have trouble with finding the workers they need.

Meanwhile, the growth in STEM jobs will be twice as fast at non-STEM jobs during the next 10 years. It’s projected that there will be more than 27,000 STEM job openings each year.

So has North Carolina improved at all over time when it comes to getting women into STEM fields?

According to the Department of Commerce, more women have taken on STEM jobs since 2011, but the numbers are still relatively small and women are still considered a minority in the industry.

And women in STEM stand to benefit by going into these types of jobs. The pay for STEM jobs is significantly higher compared to non-STEM fields. Unfortunately, women in STEM still tend to make less than their male counterparts.

“There is quite a significant gap,” said Jeffrey DeBellis, director of economic and policy analysis in the Department of Commerce’s Labor & Economic Analysis Division. “Whether that is a factor in women’s desire to get into the industry, I can’t say.”

You can see the

Members of the also spoke to the committee about their efforts to get accounting classified as a STEM field, which is of particular concern as the pipeline for students expressing interest in the profession declines.

According to that association, accounting faculty are reporting a 54% decline in enrollment and graduation rates in accounting programs around the country. However, women make up more than half of all accounting graduates.

A STEM designation makes programs more attractive to students and it makes students more attractive to employers, among other benefits, Scott Showalter, director of the Master of Accounting Program at North Carolina State University’s , told the committee.

The association came to the committee hoping to get lawmakers to help them advance the profession, including by designating accounting as a STEM field in North Carolina.

You can

The committee also heard presentations on the and .

The Future City Competition is a STEM-based competition for middle schoolers. You can see the

Betabox focuses on hands-on STEM instruction through its mobile learning labs. You can see the

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Growing up, Atiyah Harmon always gravitated toward math. In elementary school, she developed a knack for the subject, participating in citywide math competitions in her native Philadelphia.

By high school, however, her interest in the subject had started to wane.

“I didn’t have really good teachers,” she said. “So, I kind of backed away from it. My senior year I could have been in honors math and I chose not to be.” 

What pains her in retrospect is that no one urged her to take the higher-level math class. As founder of , Harmon wants Black girls to have the opposite experience today. She rediscovered her enjoyment of math while tutoring students and decided to become a math teacher, achieving that goal in 2005. 

“I noticed around sixth grade the girls were still super excited to know the math, and around seventh or eighth, they would kind of veer away,” she said. “It was just like, ‘This is interesting. What’s going on here?’”

A friend suggested that Harmon take action to address the issue, and she launched Black Girls Love Math in 2020. The organization aims to foster a fun and encouraging learning environment through which Black girls in grades K-12 can develop the confidence to explore mathematical concepts, participate in cooperative competitions, and receive mentoring and other services in a culturally responsive manner. Up to 300 girls from Philadelphia-area schools take part in the program, repeating affirmations and celebrating “She-roes” — prominent Black women in math  —  during sessions.

Although Black Girls Love Math is a new organization, it’s part of a 21st-century movement across the country to foster Black girls’ interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects, an area where girls and women of all racial backgrounds have long been underrepresented. Efforts such as Girls Who Code, I Am STEM and Girls STEM Institute, which predate Black Girls Love Math, share a similar mission to inspire Black girls and other marginalized youth to fulfill their potential in math and science. 

Just , and research indicates the problem starts well before college graduation. A 2021 study found that educators are , even when their academic records are similar to students enrolled in such classes. When Black girls overcome the hurdles they face in high school and college to enter a STEM profession, they often . Black and Hispanic women in STEM earn a median annual salary of $57,000, significantly less than White and Asian women and men of any race, according to the Pew Research Center. 

One of the benefits of math and science enrichment for Black girls, the founders of these programs say, is that participants learn to have faith in their academic prowess and their worthiness as individuals.  

Lauren Shepherd, 8, has been involved in Black Girls Love Math since last year. She has enjoyed learning about Black women mathematicians such as Mary Jackson, depicted in the 2016 film “Hidden Figures.” 

Math is Lauren’s favorite subject in school because she enjoys learning how numbers make things work, she said. But she also appreciates the math enrichment she receives in Black Girls Love Math.

“It is not like you’re doing the same thing in school,” she said. “You get to do games while you’re learning.”

LaShaya Duval-Shepherd is Lauren’s mother and also the head of Philadelphia’s Belmont Charter High School. She said math enrichment gives children a break from the drills commonly assigned in math class and can help them enhance their skills and become active learners.

“It’s OK to be wrong,” she said. “It’s OK to figure out things and not always know [the answers]…, to just stick with it and feel passionate if there’s something that you have an interest in.”

She wanted her daughter to take part in Black Girls Love Math so Lauren could interact with Black women in STEM and discover that studying math can prepare one for a variety of fields.

As an educator, Duval-Shepherd has seen too many girls shy away from math as they reach high school. She wants Lauren to have a different outcome. 

“She always had an affinity toward math,” Duval-Shepherd said. “I thought it was important that she continued to see math as something that she was good at and that gave her confidence.”

Gina Cappelletti, assistant principal of instruction at the Mann Campus of Mastery Charter Schools in Philadelphia, brought Black Girls Love Math to her school for similar reasons. Her student body is nearly all Black, and she wanted the girls there in particular to believe that they could excel in math. Marginalized students are vulnerable to a phenomenon known as  in which they hear the negative stereotypes about their demographic, such as “Black girls aren’t good in math,” and perform poorly when tested on that subject as a result. 

“We know from research that math anxiety is real; stereotype threat is real,” Cappelletti said. “So, consistently girls, and even more so Black girls, are told what they’re good at, what they’re not good at, how they can participate, where they can participate. And, oftentimes, those things exclude them from mathematics.”

Math enrichment programs like Black Girls Love Math create a safe space for students to build confidence with the encouragement of others, Cappelletti added. She said that leads to a shift in mindset that she has observed in her students, several of whom did not consider themselves to be good at math before participating in the program. Cappelletti said Black Girls Love Math also helped their academic performance: Class participation increased, and they were more willing to problem solve and take risks than they had been before. 

She credits these improvements to the relationships that the girls formed with the program’s teachers, Black women who work in mathematics or related fields.

“We know that the teacher in the room makes a difference, right?” Cappelletti asked. “If students see that role model and know that someone believes in them, those things lead to academic gains. The [Black Girls Love Math] teachers were just incredibly supportive and encouraging, and the girls were able to have a role model and feel comfortable working on their math skills.”

Harmon eventually wants to scale the program, branching out to Brooklyn and Harlem in New York, and then across the country, and possibly around the world, she said. 

Outside Philadelphia, programs such as  and  are also providing math and science enrichment for Black girls. In 2017, Natalie S. King, assistant professor of science education at Georgia State University, started her two-month-long I Am STEM enrichment summer camps in the Atlanta metro area. The camps serve about 500 youth, largely Black girls.

“A lot of times in our schools, science is basically memorization and regurgitation of information, and that’s not what we want them to do,” King said. “We want them to engage in critical thinking. We want them to learn how to communicate their knowledge and be able to collaborate with other individuals because science does not happen by yourself. It happens in collaboration with other scientists.”

King also wants the students in her program to think of themselves as brilliant and gifted and to develop their creativity, inquisitiveness and sense of purpose. 

“The more that we can affirm and validate them, the better off they can be when they go out back into their schools or back into their communities,” she said.

At the Girls STEM Institute, founded by Crystal Morton, an associate professor of mathematics education at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, students receive math and science enrichment during the summers and on Saturdays throughout the year. In the program, girls learn to apply math and science to real-world situations. 

Demetrice Smith-Mutegi, the program’s director of science engagement and research collaborator, said students learn to connect financial literacy to math standards. They also use math to explore issues such as the role of interest rates in housing discrimination or the demographics of groups receiving vaccines, said Smith-Mutegi, an assistant professor in the Darden College of Education & Professional Studies at Old Dominion University. 

“Classrooms need to be humanizing,” said Smith-Mutegi, who  on the impact of Girls STEM Institute. They found that participants developed higher levels of self-efficacy, or the “confidence that one can achieve a goal.”

“Classrooms need to be spaces where they can engage in authentic math and science experiences, where they can apply their day-to-day living to solving problems and working collaboratively and really just thinking about how to enjoy what they’re learning, essentially,” Smith-Mutegi said.

Girls STEM Institute also involves the families of students in the learning process, a move that schools don’t always make, Smith-Mutegi said. The youth in the program not only feel more comfortable about their math and science abilities after participating but also are engaged enough in their education to advocate for themselves back in their classrooms. They’re learning to speak up when they need support rather than sit back and stay quiet, Smith-Mutegi said.

Self-advocacy is a skill that Harmon wishes she had when she opted out of honors math her senior year. Through Black Girls Love Math, she hopes to affirm her students to such a degree that they stand up for themselves when others have low expectations for them and don’t encourage them to reach their academic potential. 

Ultimately, Harmon intends to counter harmful narratives about Black girls and mathematics. The program is especially affirming for Black girls who enjoy math and don’t want to feel like the odd one out for their interest in the subject, Harmon said. 

“It’s safe to embrace your love of math in this community,” she said.

Twenty years after former Secretary of Education Richard Riley spoke these words, the need for qualified professionals in science, technology, engineering and mathematics continues to grow as the nation confronts global health, climate and security challenges that require innovative solutions to save lives.

STEM occupations are projected to increase as all other jobs through 2029, and while the number of college graduates with degrees in STEM-related fields is seeing comparable growth, to education in these fields is creating barriers to entering the workforce for people of color and women.

A close look at the data on who works in STEM reveals that Black and Hispanic professionals are compared with their white and Asian peers, and women fill only a of STEM jobs. This isn’t just a matter of equity — it’s a labor shortage issue. The U.S. population continues to become , and a recent cited concerns that America will be unable to meet workplace demands if the number of individuals from these populations earning bachelor’s degrees in STEM fields doesn’t significantly grow.  

This gap in access starts in early childhood, as infants begin developing their spatial awareness. The ability to create and manipulate visual images begins and continues through childhood, and is an for success in STEM careers. Yet children from low-income backgrounds have fewer opportunities, such as to blocks, to discover or develop their spatial intelligence. This continues throughout K-12 education, as schools and districts that predominantly enroll Black and/or Hispanic students and are located in low-income areas to provide science labs, hands-on activities and other resources necessary for high-quality STEM learning.

There is also a gap in the support and opportunities available outside of classroom settings. Parents with lower incomes and/or those who lack a college education are to believe their children will learn everything they need to know in school and are in their ability to support science and math learning at home. Particularly concerning for the increased representation of women in STEM is the fact that mothers are than fathers to feel confident in helping their children engage in science.

Ironically, the global challenges, such as climate change, that require a robust STEM workforce are also exacerbating these equity gaps in STEM education by keeping students out of classrooms and away from critical hands-on learning experiences in school labs. After Hurricane Ida hit the Gulf Coast in August 2021 as a Category 4 storm, of Louisiana’s students missed classes due to damage to their schools — in some cases, for up to a month. This in-person instruction couldn’t be replaced with virtual learning because of storm damage to critical infrastructure, including power lines.

Similar inequities occurred when the COVID-19 pandemic forced most school systems to shift to remote learning, as many students did not have access to sufficient broadband at home. Some states attempted to provide connections by parking school buses with mobile internet hotspots in neighborhoods. But this required students to be on the bus or working just outside in order to log on, and assumed that students would learn as well in that environment as at the kitchen table, with a parent nearby to help. This digital divide impacted Black, Hispanic and low-income students. In Baltimore, it is estimated that about of students were prevented from participating in virtual schooling. These concerns continue even as children return to the classroom, as school curricula and existing challenges, such as the , persist.

Local, state and federal policymakers must understand the economic, social and environmental harm inflicted by these racial and income disparities in access to high-quality STEM education. Close these gaps starts by investing in children’s early development and ensuring that funding for early childhood education includes STEM programs — and these must include low- to no-cost options so that all families, not just the privileged, can participate. States should also allocate funds and establish public-private partnerships to provide students in K-12 schools with access to the equipment and resources needed for high-quality in-person learning, particularly students of color and girls. This includes blocks and other building materials, lab equipment, internet-connected devices and books, as well as parks, museums, science centers and STEM businesses and workplaces. Professionals in science, technology, engineering and math careers can also serve a valuable role as mentors and role models for K-12 students, as having a mentor with shared identities has been to be particularly beneficial for students of color and girls in STEM. 

Ongoing and new global challenges demand a diverse STEM workforce. If we want to make the United States a country that is healthy, prosperous and resilient for every person, no matter where they grow up, policymakers and education leaders must act now to close equity gaps in STEM education.