Twitter STEM Advocacy Toolkit
Twitter Advocacy Tool Kit
Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)
The STEM Education Coalition is advocating aggressively for a strong STEM focus in the House version of the ESEA reauthorization bill, which could see action in the House Committee on Education and the Workforce as early as next week. The document contains information and messages for your organization to support the Coalition’s efforts through Twitter and other forms of social media advocacy.
For those of you new to Twitter, here is an intro: http://michaelhyatt.com/the-beginners-guide-to-twitter.html
This document has three components:
Key Messages
Example Tweets
Twitter Handles for Members of the Education and Workforce Committee
Key Messages
Retain Science Testing, Alongside Math and Reading
We respectfully disagree with the draft Student Success Act’s removal of the requirement for states to test students in science. Removing the existing requirement for testing in science while maintaining testing in math and reading sends a powerful, negative, and unambiguous signal to U.S. schools and the public that science – along with all of its related subdiscliplines – is no longer a national priority. If the requirement for science testing is eliminated, schools will shift their limited resources away from science classes, less time will be devoted to science, and professional development for science educators will suffer.
While we appreciate your interest in providing more flexibility to states, if a future version of the ESEA will continue to establish national priorities – as the draft Student Success Act clearly does for reading and math – it is critical that science testing be retained.
A Strong Federal Focus on STEM Education is Essential to a Strong U.S. Workforce, Economy
The Encouraging Innovation and Effective Teachers Act would eliminate the U.S. Department of Education’s only existing dedicated STEM education-focused program – the Math and Science Partnerships program (Title II, Part B). While we recognize the bill’s goal of streamlining a myriad of education programs, we disagree with the absence of any strong STEM education focus for Title II grants or any significant linkage between Title II activities and workforce needs.
We support a provision in the bipartisan Harkin-Enzi Senate ESEA draft bill that addresses STEM-specific education needs through a single competitive grant program (Sec. 4103) that would require state applicants to demonstrate that their proposals had robust input from the business community and other workforce stakeholders. Our Coalition also strongly supports the underlying stand-alone bill (S. 1675) introduced by Sen. Merkley upon which Sec. 4013 is based as a balanced approach of competitive and formula-based funding dedicated to meet the STEM-specific needs of U.S. schools.
The STEM Education Coalition also aggressively supports comprehensive efforts to coordinate, evaluate, and review all federal STEM programs on a regular basis to ensure that effective programs are scaled up and that underperforming programs are improved or eliminated.
STEM and the Definition of Core Academic Subjects
While we appreciate that math and science are included in the Student Success Act’s definition of “core academic subjects,” we feel that this definition is overly narrow and static, excluding many areas of study that are essential to the needs of the economy and workforce.
Instead, the broader “STEM subjects” should be listed as a core subject area, with a provision for defining STEM education in a broad and inclusive manner that embraces each STEM discipline and its unique needs.
Example Tweets
Below are example tweets your organization can send to individual Members of Congress. A list of Twitter handles is at the bottom of this document. The key aspects of a good tweet on this are:
Targets a specific member of the House Education and Workforce Committee.
Mentions clear support for STEM education as a priority.
Mentions @StemEdCoalition, so we can see and rewet them.
You can send multiple tweets to each office and repeat often.
Example tweets:
Dear @[MOC Handle] America’s future depends on STEM education. Don’t eliminate science testing. STEM=jobs. @StemEdCoalition #STEM
Dear @[MOC Handle] Retain Science Testing, Alongside Math and Reading. America’s future depends on STEM education. @StemEdCoalition
Dear @[MOC Handle] A Strong Federal Focus on STEM Education is Essential to a Strong U.S. Workforce, Economy @StemEdCoalition
Dear @[MOC Handle] STEM is a Core Subject Area. Accountability matters. STEM=jobs. @StemEdCoalition #STEM #education
Twitter Handles for the House Education and Workforce Committee Members
