t the Los Nietos Middle School STEAM Academy, students engage in cybersecurity education, mentorship with STEAM professionals and team-based competitions to ensure they remain engaged in math and science after middle school. The success of the Golden Bell Award-winning program has even spawned a middle school-to-college STEAM pathway, which has been a gamechanger in preparing students for life beyond classroom walls, said Los Nietos School District Superintendent Ramiro Rubalcaba.

“The reality is, employers are looking for students who are not just academic, but that really have the skills to be able to work collaboratively in the team or be self-driven,” Rubalcaba said. “And we need to do a better job of preparing students earlier for those soft skills that transfer to high school, to college, to careers and beyond. The ability to build relationships and be resourceful, to be competitive and have drive — that matters earlier and earlier.”

Mary Dell’Erba, assistant director for the Arts Education Partnership for the Education Commission of the States and an expert in STEAM learning, said there is a growing body of evidence of the value of starting as early as pre-K with STEAM skills and lessons.

“Early exposure is really critical, and the benefits of STEAM are well documented when we look at student achievement, things like learning retention and attendance, and sense of belonging and joy in learning,” she explained. “We’re seeing a lot of states and districts moving in that direction. We know that identity formation and how students really think about themselves and perceive their abilities starts really young. Whether students feel like they identify as creative or as an artist or a scientist or an engineer, the sooner that we can support students in understanding that they can be any and all of these things, the more likely that they will see themselves in those careers later on.”

There isn’t one right path to authentically incorporating STEAM in a way that’s responsive to the needs and the interests of students, Dell’Erba said, but no matter how an LEA chooses to move forward, “a really solid way to do that is to equip the adults who work with young people with the resources and support to do it well.”

Professional development is an “extremely critical” component in Redlands Unified School District, said Assistant Superintendent Kenneth Wagner. In collaboration with the UC Davis C-STEM Center, the district has worked with teachers and administrators to build the capacity to integrate coding and robotics into the math curriculum aligned to the Common Core State Standards beginning in elementary school.

The intent of the K-12 Computing, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (C-STEM) program is to prevent the decline in math achievement as children get older by also teaching them computer science skills. “The theory is that computer science learning is a similar brain development learning style to math learning,” Wagner said. “The difference is kids will invest all of their time and energy into learning robotics and computer science and learning how to make robots do things, and it turns out they’re also learning math when they’re doing so.”

In order to teach C-STEM, Wagner said teachers are required to undergo 40 hours of training that results in their earning a supplementary authorization in computer science. Currently, more than 30 teachers in the district, spanning elementary to high school grades, have undergone this training.

“We’ve invested a lot in those professional development opportunities,” he said. “The teachers that are doing this are very committed and they work really hard, but more importantly, they learn that they don’t have to know it all. Finding teachers that are willing to let down their guard and learn from the kids just as much as they’re learning along the way is one of those components that you have to pay attention to.”

The program has had a positive impact over the last several years. According to Wagner, 2023 assessment results show 47 percent of the district’s more than 650 C-STEM students in grades 4-8 met or exceeded the math standards versus almost 37 percent for all students in the same grade range. Additionally, AP Computer Science Principles course enrollment increased by 770 percent in four years.

Black Oak Mine USD — a small district with five school sites located in unincorporated El Dorado County — places an emphasis on STEAM education, innovation and real-world, hands-on learning tied to local industry need.

At Georgetown Elementary, located next to the district’s 40-plus acre nature preserve, science programming includes outdoor learning focused on plants, horticulture and more. As they graduate up to higher grades, students can take part in the local Future Farmers of America chapter’s animal science offerings.

In addition to taking graphic arts, engineering or automotive courses, students at the high school level can split their time in the classroom and at the fire station learning about fire management and science, firefighting and emergency response before going on to become local or regional firefighters. Students have even been able to get out in the field and take part in controlled burns, which involve setting planned fires to maintain the health of a forest, said district Superintendent Gabe Simon.

Through a grant, a new wood milling and fuel pathway will soon be available at the high school that will allow students to learn about how natural wood and timber in the area can be converted into electricity through a machine being developed by PG&E, he said.

“We have an instructor that we’ve hired that’s an industry expert in that field that’s dedicated to teaching the kids, then training them in that process. And then PG&E will get involved,” Simon said. “Their goal is to have that be sustainable to the point where it actually fuels an entire grid in our area. It’s pretty niche. As a small school district of about 1,200 students, we don’t have a huge amount of revenue. So, most of these programs are driven by grants and funds of that nature and partnerships with local agencies in the community.”

Back in Los Nietos, middle schoolers who participate in the cybersecurity program are trained in essential coding and operating systems skills, critical thinking and problem solving, as well as collaboration and communication. Students also take field trips to the FBI building and participate in Cyber Summer Camp and the National Youth Cyber Education Program.

The program started about six years ago when a local Boeing engineer and cybersecurity expert began mentoring students. The program was so popular among students that, when they moved on to Whittier Union High School District, they petitioned to continue the program there.

“And then it went on to Rio Hondo Community College, and now we have students who were the first generation already in four-year universities doing very well, preparing themselves for well-paying jobs,” said Los Nietos Superintendent Rubalcaba. “Our students’ attendance is better, their GPAs are better, they have less issues with discipline, they are better prepared for high school and for college and careers and beyond.”

In Oakland USD, Board President Sam Davis said that the district has long pursued different ways of connecting students to an array of career pathways and prepare them for higher education. Earlier this year, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond announced the Bay Area STEAM Career Accelerator — a $750,000 investment in paid summer internships for Oakland students — which included contributions from PG&E, General Motors and the biotechnology firm Genentech, to support youth aged 13 to 24 seeking STEAM internships.

“Fifty students participated in a work-based learning experience this past summer that was located at the College of Alameda,” Davis said, noting that students came from various Oakland USD schools, including Oakland Tech, Castlemont, McClymonds and Fremont. “We understand that the superintendent is fully committed to these internships being anchored in our schools moving forward, with a clear goal of achieving this next summer, which gives us a great runway to plan together, including how to ensure that our highest-need students participate in internships with Genentech, General Motors and PG&E.”

There are several challenges LEAs face when working to develop or implement strong STEAM programming, including competition between STEAM and other subject areas when allocating time or physical space, professional development and collaboration needs and “the funding to support all of these things,” said Dell’Erba. “It requires real dollars to supply materials and to train educators.”

Redlands USD’s Wagner agreed. “It’s not cheap to do professional development, and it’s not cheap to buy materials,” he said. “Every one of these classrooms has a laptop cart that is upgraded to handle the platform of C-STEM because there’s applications that need a little bit more than just your average $250 Chromebook. Then you have all the supplies for the class.”

The district was able to use federal pandemic relief funds for a few years, as well as Educator Effectiveness Block Grant funds for professional development and even Title I funds, Wagner said, but the shifting financial landscape may prove to make funding these sorts of innovate programs more difficult.

Black Oak Mine USD relies on grants and partnerships for much of its STEAM programming. To other LEAs, district Superintendent Simon recommends looking to “larger statewide agencies and see if they either have grants or are willing to develop grants to feed into those types of programs. We’re always looking for new partnerships or opportunities and keeping our eye out for things that might work for our district and our school.”

In Los Nietos, Rubalcaba said the district depends on a different kind of community connection: local families. For instance, the Boeing engineer who helped to kick off the cybersecurity program is married to one of the middle school’s math and science teachers.

“Be aware of the resources you have within your community and embrace them,” he said. “Districts need to be prudent to remember that education is too important to be left in the hands of educators alone. The philosophy of ‘it takes a village’ in practice means you embrace whatever everyone brings to the table, and they don’t have to be professionals — there are people who have expertise that’ll shock you.”

Regardless of how LEAs fund STEAM programs, collecting and analyzing data to better inform decisions around the use of time and resources is critical to maximizing outcomes, Dell’Erba said.

“It’s hard to understand the impact of STEAM when the information that we’re collecting around impact is separated. So, some state and district leaders are looking at how we collect information about programs and about what schools are doing to be more conducive to understanding the integration of those things,” she said. “We’re seeing a lot of state education agencies fostering greater collaboration between their fine arts people, their science, engineering, math, career and tech, so that these disciplines at the state level aren’t so siloed and they can have conversations around where to start and really thinking about how to embed this integration, not just in the classroom, but in how we work within these institutions.”

In 2021, 9 percent of STEAM workers nationwide were Black, while 15 percent were Hispanic or Latino, according to a report from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. Women make up about 34 percent of the workforce.

“Women and people of color are vastly underrepresented in STEAM fields. And while it’s getting better, there’s still a lot that can be done,” Dell’Erba said. “While it’s important for schools to make STEAM accessible, it’s also really important for them to make sure that the lessons are responsive to student interest, that they include cultural representation and that the adults in the classroom affirm the students’ belonging.”

When programs are equitable and culturally responsive, students are empowered to advocate for themselves and be confident, outspoken leaders who demand better from their school district and for future careers, said Rubalcaba, who saw it firsthand when graduating Los Nietos middle schoolers sought to continue the cybersecurity program they’d loved in high school and at the local community college. And a recent cybersecurity program participant was selected to be the district’s student board member, using leadership skills she gained through the program, he continued.

“We’re excited about our first generation of students who went through this program entering their careers very soon, more than likely starting with the six-digit salary,” Rubalcaba said. “And those kids, they all come back. Those students are mentoring the new generation — they come after school when they’re able to during their breaks, right before competitions, and they give advice and mentor the younger students. It’s this really nice kind of generational system that we’ve developed that I’m just so proud of.”

In Redlands USD, equity is a factor in decisions beyond STEAM programming, Wagner said, noting that the district is committed to making sure schools with the highest rates of low-income youth get first access to innovative programming. “They’re the ones with the lower scores, they’re the ones that need more opportunity to learn in different ways,” and it’s paying off, he added.

The biggest gains in the most recently published math scores were seen among students learning through the C-STEM platform in the district school with the highest socioeconomic need. “Our biggest successes have come from kids who get exposure multiple years in a row,” Wagner said. “We had about 11 kids score perfect on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress math assessment at the sixth-grade level, and nine of those were in a C-STEM classroom, and those are kids who’ve been multiple years in C-STEM.”

Each district leader noted that community and family reactions to these opportunities mirrored the enthusiasm shown by students. Black Oak Mine parents have “responded really positively to it,” Simon said. “They really feel like it has prepared their kids for the next step after high school, whatever that may be.”

Rubalcaba shared similar thoughts.

“I think that STEAM education and other programs create ripples of hope and positivity that help breed more success,” he said. “We have seen an increase in parent, community and student engagement like never before. We’ve seen an increase in our staff morale — people feeling more positive, better about the perception of our school district and what we do. So, it’s this awesome ripple of hope that just permeates throughout the entire community to make our community and world a better place through education.”