TITLE:  Dear Colleague Letter: Indicators for Monitoring Progress 
        Toward Successful K-12 STEM Education (nsf15062)
DATE:   3/26/2015


   NSF 15-062

Dear Colleague Letter: Indicators for Monitoring Progress Toward Successful
K-12 STEM Education

   This Dear Colleague Letter is to announce that the National Science
   Foundation's Directorate for Education and Human Resources is
   interested in research and development activities around the 14
   Indicators as described in 2013 in the National Research Council
   report, Monitoring Progress Toward Successful K-12 Education: A Nation
   Advancing? The report calls for a national indicator system that could
   be used by both policymakers and practitioners to improve STEM
   education. The report lists 14 Indicators that, if measured regularly,
   could catalyze such improvement. The indicators can be found at:
   [1]http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13509. While there are
   measures of some of these 14 indicators, the valid and reliable
   measurement of all these indicators is insufficiently developed to
   monitor the progress of K-12 STEM education in the US.

   The purpose of this DCL is to encourage proposals to be submitted to
   the Promoting Research Innovations in Methodologies and Evaluation
   (PRIME) program ([2]NSF 15-540) to conduct exploratory work in its
   early stages on untested but potentially transformative research ideas
   or approaches necessary to move forward to design and develop measures
   of one or more of these 14 indicators for use in monitoring and
   improving the STEM education system.

   Since measures and the associated data for many of these indicators are
   not yet available, it is anticipated that many of the submitted
   Indicators-related projects may consist of:
    1. Research that would lead to the development of consensus among STEM
       educators about the nature and operational definitions of one or
       more of these indicators;
    2. A review and synthesis of the current state of the evidence base as
       they might map the development of measures of these indicators;
       and/or
    3. Research and development to create and validate measures of one or
       more of these indicators, with an emphasis on the measures with the
       potential to support inferences at a national scale.

   All submissions should begin with INDICATORS in the proposal title.
   Questions should be directed to one of the following program officers:

     Karen King ([3]kking@nsf.gov), Division of Research on Learning
     Finbarr Sloane ([4]fsloane@nsf.gov), Division of Research on
     Learning
     Gul Kremer ([5]gkremer@nsf.gov), Division of Undergraduate Education
     Rebecca Kruse ([6]rkruse@nsf.gov), Division of Research on Learning

   Joan Ferrini-Mundy
   Assistant Director, Education and Human Resources

References

   1. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13509
   2. http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf15540
   3. mailto:kking@nsf.gov
   4. mailto:fsloane@nsf.gov
   5. mailto:gkremer@nsf.gov
   6. mailto:rkruse@nsf.gov