As you might guess, most teenagers in Philadelphia are, quite simply, not violent, flash mobbing ne’er-do-wells.

Like their counterparts elsewhere, they’re students, who like clothes and sports and friends. And they care a lot about how others see them.

So it might make sense that when organizers of the University Community Collaborative of Philadelphia, a youth leadership nonprofit housed at Temple University, were looking for a new outlet for the nearly 15-year-old group that its students wanted to create a news program to fight negative perceptions of themselves.

Not enough positive youth voices are being heard above the din of violent exceptions, the group argues.

Meet What’s POPPYN, a quarterly, half-hour online news show about teenage issues in Philadelphia: produced, starring and featuring the group’s participants. This month, the show’s sixth episode launched, focusing on global issues and how local kids are getting involved, and shorter segments are being produced every couple weeks.

“We highlight how young people are positively contributing to their schools, communities and organizations and their voices on local and national issues,” said Natalia Smirnov, the initiative’s media productions and communications manager. “Ultimately, we hope that POPPYN helps to change the perception of young people in the city as criminals, drop-outs, violent flash mobbers, poorly educated.”

Founded in 1997 by Temple political science professor Barbara Ferman, UCCP began as a community-based research project, adding youth programming in 2001 and beginning to focus on leadership development in 2006 and has done a lot of work to connect young leaders.

This year, with a small grant from the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development, Poppyn started with four college-aged young people who had been involved in past UCCP programming, said Smirnov.

“The original team had been frustrated with representations of youth in the media and wanted to create their own positive alternative,” Smirnov said. Each episode is created, produced and starring six to 10 young people, including students from public and charter schools and a smattering of college volunteers, many of whom have been involved with UCCP programming for years. The group, which finds its members through its own programming, is often seeking other interested young people.

No one involved in the project had TV production experience, but rather took an interested group of young people and found partnerships, including strong support from PhillyCAM, said Smirnov.

Smirnov offered a few ideas to help support their cause:

• Submit comments on Youtube, Facebook and Twitter: “It means a lot to our youth producers to to know that the show is being watched and liked and would be great to get some more public feedback.”
• Pitch ideas: Organizations that are supporting youth-led projects and activities can pitch their stories to us on whatspoppyn AT gmail.com.
• Host a screening: “We’re looking for teachers to host screenings in their classrooms,” said Smirnov. “We’ll come and do a workshop for free with them. We also had a lot of fun covering a Philly public school graduation last year — we did South Philly High School — and are looking for schools that want to have their school’s graduation featured on POPPYN.”
• Offer expertise: If you have background in video production or in dissemination, get involved by emailing whatspoppyn AT gmail.com.

Womack in 2007.

Updated, Dec. 13, 2011, 12:41: Changed company named from NanoTec to NanoVec; corrected Dr. Nunery’s name.

When Dr. Chad Womack moved his nanobiomolecular startup company NanoVec to Philadelphia in 2006, he was working from an office located in front of University City High School.

Though he was born and raised in Philadelphia, he didn’t know the history of the school. Long drawn to education, he began wondering how the school was impacted by science, technology, education and mathematics (STEM) initiatives.

That was how he came to chair a School District of Philadelphia task force run by then Superintendent Thomas Brady to help shape a vision for boosting STEM opportunities.

“The school district was not prepared to address STEM as an initiative that would provide an opportunity for students to have a pathway into college, majoring in STEM, and then into careers,” Womack says.

It wasn’t the first time that he has been involved in the issue.

In 1999, Womack followed a health fellowship at Harvard researching HIV/AIDs to a research position at the National Institutes of Health in Washington D.C. His interest in STEM led him to D.C. Public Schools, where a year later, Arlene Ackerman would resign as Superintendent.

So it was that Ackerman’s departure from the School District of Philadelphia this summer was familiar to him. He was actively working to encourage STEM initiatives in the District, when he wasn’t working with The America21 project.

“Ackerman didn’t want to be bothered with it, but this is very typical of leadership in public education. To them, STEM is this special thing for whiz kids,” he says.

Womack’s The America21 Project is focused on empowering urban centers and communities through STEM education and workforce development, high-growth entrepreneurship and access to capital. With his new venture, he’s still actively engaging the District around STEM priorities.

After the jump, we caught up with Womack about the state of STEM education in Philadelphia.

Womack

We’re following reports that less than one percent of the District’s black students graduate college with a STEM-related degree. Given your vantage point, what does that make you think?

At a level where it’s left to a percentage point, you have to accept the null hypthesis. You have to round to zero. It means the School District of Philadelphia doesn’t make a difference in terms of their ability for post-secondary success. In essence, it means you have large swaths of the city that don’t have a bridge for their children into the 21st century.

How do you actionably begin improving these statistics?

One metric of success would be that we need a ten-fold increase. Let’s get that number to 10 percent in next five to 10 years. If Philadelphia is going to transform its economy, we need to ask: ‘What is the place-based value of growing up in the city viewed through the lens of tech-based local development? What is the likelihood of a kid growing up in West Philadelphia, in terms of employment in the technology industry?’

You were involved with a STEM task force at the District under former Superintendent Thomas Brady. Tell us about that.

One of the things that fell out of that was that the School District was not prepared to address STEM as an initiative that would provide an opportunity for students to have a pathway into college majoring in STEM, and then into careers. It wasn’t just a probem with content knowledge, but also skills that are STEM-related that would prepare them for work, like problem-solving, thinking creatively.

And you say that for former Superintendent Arlene Ackerman, STEM wasn’t a priority?

She didn’t want to be bothered with it. This is very typical of leadership in public education. It’s this special thing for the whiz kids. They see it as this initiative for the Mastermans and Centrals of the world. It speaks to the mindset of public education and it’s role in preparing kids for the future. Industry has actually been a leader and driver in STEM education and workforce development. They require the talent being produced, so they’ve been saying, ‘you guys need to do a better job because we need highly-skilled workforce.’ This is really about local and national competitiveness on a global scale.

And what are your expectations of new Acting Superintendent Leroy Nunery?

In Dr. Nunery, we have someone who does understand STEM. But he’s left with this $600 million hole in his budget. The question becomes ‘where do we get capital to drive STEM initiatives?’

What has to change to address that problem?

People have approached the District because of what they can get out of the relationship, instead of what they can contribute. They should say: ‘what can I do to help build capacity in the District?’

A child plays with one of the robots at the Philly Robotics Expo during Philly Tech Week 2011. Photo: Rachel Playe

Of the four parts of a series on science, technology, engineering and mathematics education that ran this week on Technically Philly, it was perhaps the fourth that grabbed our attention most.

Despite mounting problems in the School District of Philadelphia related to STEM education, many are beyond its immediate control, and citizens are taking action to get involved.

Throughout conversations with dozens of people involved with STEM education in Philadelphia it was said repeatedly: This is the city’s and nation’s problem, not the District’s alone.

That makes it a local technology community problem.

What is missing is a pipeline to connect that community of bright, active individuals in Philly tech with students. Second, we believe, entrepreneurs could use their experience with innovation to attack the problem with business plans.

It’s with that in mind that we’ve partnered with Teach for America’s Greater Philadelphia: Innovation in Education workshop series. Focused on innovation in education, the invite-only workshops, which will take place in 2012, are intended to inspire the creation of actionable nonprofit and business ventures to impact education.

When TFA launched a similar workshop series in the San Francisco Bay Area, it resulted in the launch of new startups, including Junyo, a tool to help teachers measure student learning, and Skoodio: a student portfolio platform for the social media age. Perhaps most interestingly, of 25 participants in the workshop series, a third were experienced in technology and business with little education background.

When we connected with the organization, it was abundantly clear that the entrepreneurial spirit of Philadelphia’s technology community could help create organizations that could inspire actionable change in education.

The workshops will lead up to a pitch event in May where participants will demonstrate their ideas.

We encourage you to apply for the workshops here. Mention that you saw the opportunity on Technically Philly. Deadline for applications is December 16.

If you’re not interested specifically in the workshops, there’s plenty of ways to get involved with STEM education in Philadelphia. After the jump, we point to some of the organizations that have mentorship, volunteering and sponsorship opportunities.

• 21st Century Partnership for STEM Education – Aspires to be a regional leader in data-based analysis, program planning, innovative curricula and professional development for STEM education. [Coverage]
• America21 Project – Fosters solutions-based approaches to 21st century community economic development. [Coverage]
• Atomic Robotics – Robotics club with mission of convening regional assets. [Coverage]
• Breadboard – Breadboard is developing innovative partnerships with neighboring organizations that will introduce Philadelphia youth to new creative technologies. [Coverage]
• Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center – Works with high schools and colleges around STEM talent development. [Coverage]
• Girl Geek Dinner – Potluck-style networking events for women in tech. [Coverage]
• Girl Develop It — Web design and development classes for women. [Coverage]
• Hacktory – The Hacktory’s goal is to empower people and give them a sense that technology can be a tool for personal expression. [Coverage]
• Math + Science Coalition – The Philadelphia Education Fund’s Math + Science Coalition is looking for volunteers to share their knowledge and love of math and science with students in the School District of Philadelphia. [Coverage]
• NextFab Studio – NextFab Studio is a membership-based, high-tech workshop and prototyping center. They provide resources and training for local high school robotics teams and more. [Coverage]
• Nonprofit Technology Resources – NTR distributes donated, refurbished computers to low-income people (especially children and families) through their community groups, churches, and schools. [Coverage]
• Pennsylvania Society of Professional Engineers – Puts industry workers in front of students during school career days and at robotics competitions. [Coverage]
• Philly Robotics Expo – At Philly Tech Week 2012, schools from the Philadelphia area will demonstrate how young people can get involved in robotics. [Coverage]
• School District of Philadelphia Robotics – Students are engaged in STEM challenges, competitions, tournaments, symposiums and institutes throughout the year. [Coverage]
• TechGirlz – Helping adolescent girls understand that a future in technology does not necessarily equate to ‘a boring computer job.’ [Coverage]
• Upward Bound Math Science – Penn’s college preparatory program that provides hands-on experience with science and math for high school students.
• Web Start Women — Devoted to bringing more women into the web design and development fields. [Coverage]
• What It Takes – E-mentoring for young black men. [Press Release]

If you have an organization that you want to list here, email the organization title, a web URL and a brief description of the organization to info [at] technicallyphilly.com.

READ THE ENTIRE ‘STATE OF STEM’ SERIES

Part 1 of this series: STEM graduation rates show uphill battle with math and science in School District
Part 2 of this series: Lack of citywide STEM education vision leaves Philly’s skilled workforce in jeopardy
Part 3 of this series: State and District math and science policies leave gaps in competitive STEM curriculum
Part 4 of this series: Citizens work alongside the school system to strengthen District STEM

The cover of the subsequent book resulting from the Gathering Storm committee.

This story is part of a series produced by Technically Philly. It is published in support of Teach for America’s 2012 education workshop series Greater Philadelphia: Innovation in Education. The series will run daily Dec. 5-9.

It was the Gathering Storm that brought Philadelphia’s science, technology, engineering and mathematics professionals interested in STEM education to action.

Known as the “Rise of the Gathering Storm” committee, in 2005, representatives of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine addressed a congressional committee on America’s ability to compete globally in the 21st century.

The committee said in its executive summary that it was “deeply concerned that the scientific and technological building blocks critical to our economic leadership are eroding at a time when many other nations are gathering strength.”

On the top of the list of actionable change was improvements to K-12 STEM education.

In part, it led to the Philadelphia Education Fund’s launch of the Math & Science Coalition, a group of 45 partner organizations from corporate and educational industries dedicated to advancing the conversation around math and science instruction in Philadelphia public schools.

“An overwhelming majority of future jobs in the country will have some STEM component to them. The skills that STEM gives to students are absolutely essential for the future workforce,” says Math & Science Coalition President Don McKinney, who has run the program since 2006.

With STEM programming abundant across extracurricular activities and in alternative learning environments, the Math + Science Coalition raises awareness and creates opportunities to ensure that good teachers are available in public schools in Philadelphia.

As we reported earlier this week in the first two parts of this series, STEM education faces an uphill battle in the School District because of policy precedent and the summer’s budget crisis, which could affect the local workforce that is available for 21st century jobs.

Today, leaders say that in School District classrooms, success in STEM education is hurt by a disproportionate focus on math skills driven by state testing requirements, a curriculum that has difficulties impacting and interesting young students, and an inability to retain teaching talent across STEM studies.

School District of Philadelphia headquarters on North Broad St. Photo: Wikipedia

Pennsylvania System of School Assessments (PSSA) testing requires that by 2014, all public school students are proficient or better in math and reading content testing.

Leaders say that because budgets are allocated to meet these more rigorous testing requirements, a shadow is being cast upon science learning. The state’s focus on math and reading testing results in higher proficiency levels in those subjects compared to science in the School District of Philadelphia.

In 2011, test scores for Philadelphia middle school students show that half of students have only below-basic knowledge of science content [PDF], the lowest designation of PSSA scores.

Twenty-six percent of the 8th graders that tested show proficiency or better in science content. Across the state, 58 percent of 8th graders show proficiency or better [PDF], more than double the District.

For math and reading content, 57 percent of District 8th graders show proficiency in math and 63 percent show proficiency in reading [PDF].

Joseph Merlino, President of the 21st Century Partnership for STEM Education (21PSTEM), says that because science proficiency scores do not impact Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), which determines how schools are performing, there are no consequences for low scores, and thus less attention paid to those scores.

“If you don’t make AYP in english or math, your school gets put on a corrective action list. If it tanks in science, there’s no penalty,” he says.

The 8th grade science test scores are discouraging, considering that captivating student interest in STEM fields in elementary and middle school has a larger long-term impact than pushing students into advanced courses in high school, according to a new study from the University of Virginia.

“Unless students are connected in math and science by the time they reach grade eight, it’s going to be almost impossible to get them interested,” says McKinney, who pointed to the research.

Many of these issues are clear to outsiders that partner with the School District across STEM activities.

Megan L. Dougherty manages an umbrella of outreach efforts at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, which trains secondary teachers and provides research experiences for high school students.

Her day-to-day work includes creating programming for high schools that utilize Penn facilities — like its robotics and nanotechnology laboratories — and volunteer resources. The entity also helps provide resources for individual program for efforts like FIRST LEGO League, a regional youth robotics competition which is hosted locally by Penn each year.

The crux of the issue for Dougherty lies in the ultimate mission of her outreach: finding students that can be a strong fit for Penn Engineering.

Something as simple as generating a list of schools in Philadelphia that offer a competitive curriculum that includes pre-calculus and physics classes, prerequisites for the engineering program, can be difficult, she says.

“If you’re looking at it from the angle of trying to get Philadelphia students to apply to Penn Engineering, there are not that many to choose from,” she says. “They’re not going to have the background necessary.”

The student talent gap is in part widened by a shortage of quality STEM teachers, experts say, a problem not unique to Philadelphia, but also nationally.

Many school districts, like Philadelphia’s, do not require secondary certification at the middle school level in math or science to teach those classes. And teacher mobility rates — those that retire, take medical leave, or switch schools, subjects or grade levels — which leave students and training behind, impact success.

According to a forthcoming report from the 21PSTEM, which trains teachers in more than 90 schools in the region, 60 percent of math and science School District teachers leave their post every two years for those reasons listed above.

Merlino

“You have kids with an unstable urban district. Some have an unstable family life, as well. Combine all this swirling and now you want them to learn?” asks Merlino.

“It’s an impediment to doing anything regarding science, technology engineering and mathematics,” he says. “Even if you have infrastructure, you need to stabilize the workforce.

Hurdles in Philadelphia public schools also stretch beyond the classroom.

Students that participate in extracurricular STEM activities at least a few times a year are 50 percent more likely to follow a STEM-related career path, according to a University of Virginia report issued last month.

But teachers that coordinate extracurricular STEM opportunities for their students must jump through hoops because of liability issues, limited access to transportation, and uncertain funding constraints for extracurricular pay as a result of the District’s summer budget crisis.

It’s simply easier to work locally with charter programs, Dougherty says, where there is often more resources and more flexibility.

More and more, concerned stakeholders are looking at solutions adjacent to and outside the District to fix the problem.

READ THE ENTIRE ‘STATE OF STEM’ SERIES

Part 1 of this series: STEM graduation rates show uphill battle with math and science in School District
Part 2 of this series: Lack of citywide STEM education vision leaves Philly’s skilled workforce in jeopardy
Part 3 of this series: State and District math and science policies leave gaps in competitive STEM curriculum
Part 4 of this series: Citizens work alongside the school system to strengthen District STEM

Alliance for Progress Charter student Karizma watches her LEGO robot automatically follow a black line.

This story is part of a series produced by Technically Philly. It is published in support of Teach for America’s 2012 education workshop series Greater Philadelphia: Innovation in Education. The series will run daily Dec. 5-9.

At the Alliance for Progress Charter School, just west of Temple University along Cecil B. Moore Avenue, technology teacher Mary Beth Hertz runs the school’s first all-girl robotics club.

It’s an upstart team, funded by a $640 online donation campaign and Hertz’s own dime, which brought the purchase of a $1,000 robot kit this summer.

On an early evening in October, sixth grader Karizma L. plugged a LEGO Mindstorms robot into an iMac computer and began to fix the ‘bot’s light sensor while Hertz hustled between her and a team of two students working across the room.

After using a kid-friendly software package to program the light sensor by herself, Karizma crouched down beside a white mat nearby and watched as the robot automatically followed a circular black line by comparing the color values of the white and black pixels underneath it.

Karizma gasped and threw her hands up in the air in celebration. “I just followed the instructions!,” she yelled to Hertz, who watched nearby.

“It’s the epitome of what learning looks like. They’re working through a problem. You can see the light bulbs go off,” Hertz says.

It’s a familiar story across public school science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs: children learning the values of problem-solving, the impact of technology and the math and science that make it possible.

STEM education reform could be a powerful way to rejuvenate the urban core of Philadelphia, advocates say, where the loss of manufacturing jobs in the last half-century and the recent global recession have led to an unemployment rate larger than the national average. In September, Philadelphia reported a 10.9% unemployment rate compared to the national average of 8.8%.

And though it appears that the District is renegotiating a focus on STEM education under new leadership, stakeholders close to the issue say it’s bogged down by precedent and budget concerns.

Mary Beth Hertz works with Karizma at an iMac workstation.

As we reported yesterday, the percentage of District graduates who earn four-year degrees in STEM-related fields, about 13%, is on par with national averages.

Across the District, however, less than one percent of black students — who make up more than half of the District’s enrollment — earn college degrees in a STEM major. The percentage of degree earners who are Asian or white were more than double their percentage share of total District enrollment.

That could be because students are more likely to succeed in alternative learning environments of special admissions schools like Central High School and Masterman than in neighborhood schools, according to the report on STEM graduation rates from the School District’s Office of Accountability, which we reported on yesterday.

Special admissions high schools account for more than half of the District’s four-year STEM degree earners, while neighborhood high school STEM students were more likely to attend two-year technical schools. Charter schools, like Alliance for Progress, which are independently-run public schools, were not evaluated in the report.

Racial disparity in the success of STEM education runs parallel with a similar disparity in enrollment at special admissions schools. White and Asian students who apply to special admission schools are twice as likely as black and Latino applicants to be enrolled, according to 2010 Research for Action report.

A decade ago, these facts might have only concerned technologists. But today, science, technology, engineering and mathematics issues are gaining mainstream interest and federal backing.

Calling it the nation’s Sputnik moment, President Obama spoke highly of education reform in his State of the Union Address early this year to address the quality of math and science learning.

“If we want to win the future — if we want innovation to produce jobs in America and not overseas — then we also have to win the race to educate our kids,” the President said.

On a local level, as part of Drexel University’s community development vision in University City, Vice Provost of University and Community Partnerships Lucy Kerman is helping to envision how technology education can impact a neighborhood plan, preserve history and empower existing residents.

Kerman co-chairs the community-focused portion of Drexel’s oft-writ 2012 strategic plan under new President John Fry, using her experience in a similar role at the University of Pennsylvania during its West Philadelphia Initiatives [PDF]. It was at Penn that she became intimate with education issues, having developed community programming and partnerships for the new Penn Alexander School.

“In trying to solve brain drain,” she says, “one problem is that it’s not creating jobs for the massively unemployed. How do you create that new economy that stretches across high- and low-skill jobs?”

Kerman

“When we’re talking about giving youth the tools they need, technology is the medium that is so empowering,” Kerman says.

She compares the strong science programs available at Penn Alexander with schools like Morton McMichael elementary, located in the Mantua neighborhood, where she says “the infrastructure isn’t there at all.”

Ensuring that kids have the right skills for the job market isn’t just theoretical. For manufacturers in the region that seek highly-skilled workers, it’s an actionable gain, too.

Hines

At the Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center, project manager Gary Hines helps small and medium-sized manufacturing companies identify staff competency needs, and coordinates training and education to keep them strong, competitive and growing.

A few years ago, “when companies started saying ‘we can’t find workers, our workforce is aging, and we don’t have anyone to take their places,’” he says the organization started advocating for and organizing around STEM talent development, including outreach to schools in the region.

Efforts to improve STEM education standards in the region have manifested in a number of ways since 2005.

For one, DVIRC has grown its regional STEM compact to a list of 100 signatory organizations that have pledged to help bridge the funding, talent and resource gap between industry and education, by helping to create a framework for industry needs and the educational output of schools.

For DVIRC’s manufacturing slant, that conversation often lands itself in the issues facing the region’s vocational-technical schools. But the STEM issues facing general education public schools are mostly the same.

“All of the things that happened with the District this summer, I think their priorities have shifted from focusing on STEM programs,” Hines says. “There are so many other critical issues going on.”

It appears that the District is attempting to renegotiate a focus on STEM education.

In early November, Acting Superintendent Leroy Nunery presented the District’s new STEM priorities to the Philadelphia Education Fund’s Math + Science Coalition. He stressed a need for a more comprehensive STEM strategy starting at the elementary level, the expansion of extracurricular STEM clubs and the ability to tap into regional resources for teacher preparation, according to a Coalition summary.

It was a departure from the STEM policies of former Superintendent Arlene Ackerman, “who didn’t want to be bothered with it,” says Chad Womack of the America21 Project, a Philadelphia nonprofit focused on empowering urban centers and communities through STEM education and workforce development.

“In [Nunery], we have someone who does understand STEM,” says Womack, “but he’s left with a $600 million hole in his budget. The question becomes, ‘where do we get the capital to drive STEM initiatives?’”

Joseph Merlino, President of the 21st Century Partnership for STEM Education, who attended Nunery’s presentation, says that despite the sincere picture painted by Nunery, change will have to come from outside of the District.

“Even if he had the resources to do it, there have been very few districts that can pull off improvement on their own,” Merlino says.

“It’s not about the next Superintendent, it’s about having a citywide vision.”

READ THE ENTIRE ‘STATE OF STEM’ SERIES

Part 1 of this series: STEM graduation rates show uphill battle with math and science in School District
Part 2 of this series: Lack of citywide STEM education vision leaves Philly’s skilled workforce in jeopardy
Part 3 of this series: State and District math and science policies leave gaps in competitive STEM curriculum
Part 4 of this series: Citizens work alongside the school system to strengthen District STEM

Students drive their underwater robot through a series of hoops during the 2011 Greater Philadelphia Sea Perch challenge. Photo: GPSPC

Updated, Dec. 5, 12:26p: Added total number of students graduating from 2005-2010 period, and total number of District enrollment to compare with STEM results; Corrected Womack’s title at America21 Project.

Last week at Drexel University, public school student teams kicked-off a five-month regional challenge to develop an underwater robot.

Students will prototype and engineer their robots until March of next year, when they’ll compete regionally for a slot at the second annual National Sea Perch Competition in Virginia.

At a local level, the competition is intended to show off the talent of students in the School District of Philadelphia and other regional public schools who spend hundreds of extracurricular hours building state-of-the-art robots with the help of dedicated teachers and industry mentors.

Teams gather around an indoor swimming pool, drop remote-controlled robots into the water, and are challenged to perform specific underwater tasks, like stopping the flow of a simulated leaking oil well, or propelling through a series of hoops.

“If people came to one robotics competition, they would be floored that our students do this,” says the District’s STEM Coordinator Kendrick Davis.

Advancing the priorities of math and science initiatives is a focus for Davis and his small team in the District’s division of College Readiness and Accelerated Programs. But the Sea Perch competition is launching at a time of great uncertainty for the school district’s education initiatives related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics, known as STEM.

Despite an aggressive federal push to prepare students for 21st century jobs, the School District’s perceived lagging prioritization of math and science education was amplified this summer by a budget crisis that is tearing down fledgling and disparate STEM efforts, leaving concerned citizens and stakeholders to move outside the system to fix the problem. Without improvement, they say, Philadelphia will have a hard time assembling a 21st century workforce that can rely on math, science and technology skills.

According to a new report obtained by Technically Philly, less than 1,000 students are known to have graduated from college in the fields of science, technology, engineering or mathematics between 2005 and 2010.

About 13 percent of School District graduates earn four-year degrees in a STEM-related field. The statistics are on par with national averages: between 2003 and 2007, 15% of bachelor degrees were awarded in STEM-related fields, according to a report from the Business-Higher Education forum [PDF].

The numbers are discouraging when considering the racial breakdown of awarded degrees compared to the District’s total enrollment of 146,000. Less than one percent of African-American students — who make up more than half of the District’s enrollment — graduate high school and go on to earn college degrees in a STEM major.

The percentage of degree earners who are Asian or white are more than double their percentage share of total District enrollment.

Education reformers and technology industry leaders involved with STEM education interviewed for this series found the racial disparity alarming, given its impact on the lives of students and the regional and global consequences of a technologically-untrained workforce.

“At a level where it’s left to a single percentage point, you have to round to zero,” says Chad Womack, a black science and technology entrepreneur, who is Principal and Managing Director of the America21 Project, a Philadelphia nonprofit focused on empowering urban centers and communities through STEM education and workforce development.

“It means that the School District of Philadelphia doesn’t make a difference in terms of a student’s ability for post-secondary success in STEM.”

The School District did not return several phone calls and emails for comment on STEM education priorities.

The draft report — put together by the School District’s Office of Accountability and provided to Technically Philly by an anonymous source close to the report — tracked 846 students known to have graduated from a four-year or two-year college in a STEM field between 2005 and 2010. Those STEM degree earners were tracked out of a pool of 7,058 students who graduated a two-year or four-year college during that period.

“In essence, you have large swaths of the city that don’t have a bridge for their children into the 21st century,” says Womack.

Complicating the issue, consequences of the District’s summer budget crisis are not yet clear for extracurricular STEM programming in the district, which is intended to increase graduation rates and interest in STEM education.

Central High School's Robolancers team before heading to national BEST finals.

Just a year after a team from Central High became the first Philadelphia group to ever make the finals in the national Boosting Engineering Science and Technology (BEST) robotics competition, the District forfeited its eligibility for the prestigious contest, one of three extracurricular competitions that inspire interest in technology outside of the District’s classroom math and science programming.

With consolidation rampant across the district, the budget crisis led to the elimination of a well-connected robotics coordinator that oversaw the District’s participation with BEST, which also led to the merging of two District STEM offices. The surprising developments left remaining STEM coordinators unable to meet program deadlines. As a result, 25 schools and about 450 students will be excluded from the BEST competition this year.

There’s never been a central office for STEM activities, which has historically limited its ability to plan or to lobby math and science policy across the district.

And yet, despite a perpetual stagnation, unlikely and inspiring advocates for STEM continue to fight inside of and outside the school system.

Kendrick Davis, the robotics coordinator for the School District of Philadelphia, this summer.

Before he started working at the School District of Philadelphia as part of a $3.8 million federal grant in late 2009, Davis was putting the finishing touches on a mechanical engineering degree from Temple University and the nuances of the commencement speech he was asked to give that year.

With such a solid resume, Davis could have gone anywhere, like following his dreams of aerospace engineering or working for the Department of Defense.

But he chose a career in education because of the math and science roots that he traced back to his hometown of Pittsburgh. Having grown up in a neighborhood not unlike those that surround Temple, he also wanted to help bridge the racial divide that faces minority students who pursue STEM careers.

“You can see the value of a black male student having a black male teacher. The students know you came from the same place they come from,” he says.

The six-year grant that employs Davis, GEAR UP — the brainchild of Philadelphia congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA), which is intended to improve student college preparation in the district and across the nation — has had its share of criticism since it was enacted in 1999.

A 2006 report from Research for Action, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit dedicated to local educational policy found that though the School District’s GEAR UP program met its goal of improved college awareness, it failed to prepare students academically for college [PDF].

GEAR UP’s extracurricular STEM education initiatives helped the program save face. According to the report, those initiatives were successful in improving math scores for enrolled students compared to their district counterparts. The author of that report declined to comment on the findings.

The results are evidence of a thread of hope that advocates weave: not only is STEM crucial for the global and urban economy, the field of technology resonates with students in substantial and impactful ways. For the many involved, it is a beacon in the storms of urban renewal and education reform.

But in Philadelphia, STEM education faces difficult obstacles, say many near to the issue.

READ THE ENTIRE ‘STATE OF STEM’ SERIES

Part 1 of this series: STEM graduation rates show uphill battle with math and science in School District
Part 2 of this series: Lack of citywide STEM education vision leaves Philly’s skilled workforce in jeopardy
Part 3 of this series: State and District math and science policies leave gaps in competitive STEM curriculum
Part 4 of this series: Citizens work alongside the school system to strengthen District STEM

Teach For America wants input from Philadelphia’s technology community to help shape the future of education.

The organization is gearing up for Greater Philadelphia: Innovation in Education, a series of workshops through 2012 to allow leaders across industries to come together to discuss education innovation.

“We’re looking for people from the tech sector that have an interest in, but maybe not background in education. We want to put them in an environment where they might still have a revolutionary idea,” says Director of Alumni Affairs Adamah Cole, the program organizer.

More notably, the organization wants output.

Culminating from the series of events, TFA organizers hope that participants will create actionable, launchable ventures with business plans in hand.

Cole says, too, that the regional organization is hoping to get participants involved with future grant opportunities that are offered by Teach For America nationally.

TFA will be accepting applications for the workshops starting Friday.

To help participants prepare for that application process, next Tues., Dec. 6, at 6 p.m., the organization will host an informational webinar on. Click here to sign up for the webinar. Read more about the program here, and download the application on Friday, Dec. 2.

[Full Disclosure: Teach for America and Technically Philly are currently discussing a more in-depth partnership around this workshop series to launch next week.]

Simon Hauger, one of the lead organizers of the Workshop School, an alternative high school experience launched this academic year at the Navy Yard.

Four years ago, Stefon Gonzalez was a freshman at West Philly High School.

Like others interested in working with his hands at the school since the late 1990s, Gonzalez joined the Hybrid X Team, an after school program that grew national fame for building electric and bio-diesel cars that outperformed college-level teams. Now Gonzalez is finishing his high school career at an experimental, project-based program at the Navy Yard.

This fall, the Hybrid X group, started by West Philly High teacher Simon Hauger, has launched the Workshop School, which embodies the science-driven, hands-on learning of the after school program but expands it to a full school day. Featuring 29 seniors from three different public high schools, Hauger’s effort is housed in a Victorian building overlooking hulking ships at the Navy Yard.

When Technically Philly visited on a cool, bright November morning, the students were in a half dozen groups, working through different assignments as part of a project to build a solar-powered workshop on the building’s front lawn. One team was charged with financing its construction, another with design and building materials, another with site planning, another with permitting. The school, which was also developed by Hauger’s former West Philly High colleagues Michael Clapper, C. Aiden Downey and Matthew Riggan, and has been a concept in their minds for more than a decade.

Discussions and projects drive the curriculum, and hands-on action trumps much else.

The school is funded in part by a grant from the Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster and endorsed by the School District, which is administering the school’s lunch program, said board member Ann Cohen.

Below, watch a short video documentary.

During the past two weeks at Technically Philly, we couldn’t help but notice Drexel University being mentioned with increasing frequency in our interviews with local entrepreneurs and investors.

We don’t have the resources to rank the region’s schools like U.S. News and World Report, but anecdotally, Drexel is making waves:

• We’ve been told by one source that the college is planning to launch the Center for Visual Decision Informatics. Similar to Wharton’s Consumer Analytics Institute, the group will help analyze large data sets for corporations and government.
• LewBow School College of Business was ranked the #13 best entrepreneurial program for undergrads by the Prineton Review (Temple ranked #11).
• ApprenNet founder and Drexel Professor Karl Okamoto has just launched a entrepreneurial law clinic.
• Drexel is the site of the upcoming Startup Weekend.
• Drexel will be providing interns to Project Liberty, the Philadelphia Media Network’s new incubator.
• According to our interview with Ken Kay, founder of Ecelerator, Drexel will likely provide Ecelerator with interns as well.

Great work, Dragons. Dr.Papadakis would have been proud.