will learn in the following pages, did not suffer from a lack of interest in STEM. Rather, they suffered from a lack of opportunities to learn STEM skills in the classes available to them.
The parents that we met also ran counter to type. Though many of them struggled with low-skill, low-paying, low-status jobs, they understood the value of education and STEM. Many of them labored hard and made personal sacrifices to provide their children access to computers, smartphones, and the Internet. These parents knew better than anyone what it meant to try to make a life for a family in today’s world without the vital education and skills that are closely linked to economic opportunity and social mobility.
The story that we tell is one of the first attempts to see up close how the debates about technology, equity, and the future of learning take shape in the real world. It is one thing to theorize about the future of learning. It is one thing to prepare reports that envision a more robust STEM education system. It is another to be charged with building that future in a community and a school bereft of crucial resources. In the world that we observed, students, families, and schools faced a string of hard choices. For example, we personally witnessed classrooms that had the resources to purchase technology but not to develop the instruction, curricula and learning opportunities that prepare students for a rapidly evolving society and economy. We also observed parents in working poor families make sacrifices to afford computers and Internet access even as they typically lacked the financial resources to expose their kids to the out-of-school enrichment activities that are routinely available to children in more affluent households.
But the story that we tell in this book is also influenced by students who in the face of unprecedented challenges and widening disparities struggled earnestly and creatively to find their pathways to better futures. Many of the students that we got to know worked hard to make school a more relevant place by transforming their classrooms, after-school life, and social relations into a vibrant ecosystem for exploring, tinkering, and learning with technology. We believe that if the president, tech leaders, high-powered councils, and policy makers could meet the students that we met, they would see the challenges in education through a different lens. Rather than labeling black, Latino, and lower-income students as disinterested in learning STEM—lacking inspiration—they would come to appreciate how the most diverse student body in U.S. history is eager to participate in building tomorrow’s world.
Our research team did not know it, but the site for our fieldwork—the school, the city, and the state—emerged as a powerfully emblematic place to think about many of the challenges and (missed) opportunities in STEM education addressed by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Many of the issues that are connected to the crisis in our schools (the lack of educational opportunity) and the crisis in the tech industry (the lack of diversity) were on vivid display throughout our fieldwork. The school that we were fortunate enough to gain access to placed us on the front lines of the future—a future marked by increasing diversity, uncertainty, and complexity.
This is the world that we share with you in the following pages.
Acknowledgments
A book like this does not happen without the support and contributions of a number of people. There are far too many to mention by name here so a special thanks to the many people, organizations, and universities that contributed to this project in some way.
I owe a special thanks to the Digital Edge team, which helped to design the study and collect and analyze the data that informs this book. The core team members over the life of this project were Andres Lombana-Bermudez, Jacqueline Vickery, Alexander Cho, Vivian Shaw, Lauren Weinzimmer, Adam Williams, Jennifer Noble, and Bailey Cool.
This project was also influenced by my colleagues from the Connected Learning Research Network, a team of extraordinarily generous scholars who offered expertise, feedback, and rich perspectives over the life of this work. This group includes, Mimi Ito, Sonia Livinstone, Kris Gutiérrez, Juliet Schor, Jean Rhodes, Bill Penuel, Vera Michalchik, and Dalton Conley. Also, advisors to the CLRN that influenced this project include Julian Sefton-Green, Ben Kirshner, Richard Arum, Katie Salen Tekinbaş, Nichole Pinkard, Daniel Schwartz, and Kylie Peppler.
A lot of this work was also supported by the fantastic team at the Digital Media and Learning Hub at the University of California at Irvine, including David Theo Goldberg, Claudia Caro Sullivan, Amanda Wortman, Mimi Ko Cruz, Anita Centeno, and Jeff Brazil.
Several of my colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin also provided intellectual support and encouragement, including Sharon Strover and the UT|Portugal Collaboration, Wenhong Chen, Tom Schatz, Joseph Straubhaar, Kathleen Tyner, and two Deans, Rod Hart and Jay Bernhart.
The Digital Edge team and CLRN were the beneficiaries of generous and forward thinking funding from the MacArthur Foundation and the Digital Media and Learning—DML—initiative. DML anticipated the digital revolution in the lives of young people and funded both research, policy, and the prototyping of new learning futures. During her stewardship of the DML effort, Connie Yowell was a significant advocate of the work that I and my CLRN colleagues conducted. There are so many people to thank at the Foundation including, Jennifer Humke and the current President, Julie M. Stasch.
Family provide more than they ever know when taking on a project of this scope. Thus, I’d like to thank my beautiful wife and daughter, Angela Hall Watkins and Cameron Grace Watkins. I shared many insightful conversations about this project with Sherry Watkins and Karen Munson, two people who have been a constant source of inspiration in my life.
Finally, this book was made possible by members of the Freeway High School community—teachers, administrators, district leaders, parents, and students—who gave us incredible access to their lives. We could not have asked for more and hope that we represent you in a fair, respectful, and appreciative light.
Introduction
The Digital Edge
S. Craig Watkins
In a 2013 cover story for Time magazine titled “Why Texas Is Our Future,” economist Tyler Cowen explains why a growing number of Americans are moving to Texas. Cowen writes, “More than any other state, Texas looks like the future … offering a glimpse of what’s to come for the country at large in the decades ahead.”1 One data point about Texas and what it implies about the nation’s future from the most recent U.S. Census is especially revealing: between 2000 and 2010 the number of under-eighteen-year-olds in the United States increased by about two million. Roughly half of the nation’s increase occurred in one state: Texas.2 Moreover, fully 95 percent of the growth in Texas was by Latino children.
Freeway High School is emblematic of the changes that are shaping the future of American demography, geography, and opportunity. Like many things in Texas, Freeway is big. The cavernous school is broad, tall, and home to more than 2,200 students. Located in the suburban fringes of Austin, Freeway is tucked far away from the entrepreneurial energy and affluence that are commonly associated with Austin’s technology-and university-driven innovation economy.3 The school building is surrounded by many of the familiar landmarks of a suburban geography characterized by nondistinct architecture, big-box stores, fast-food chains, immigrant-owned mini-markets, and arterial roads that are built, in theory, to aid the navigation of Austin’s sprawling metropolis.
Freeway was also the home of our research team for nearly two years and provided an opportunity to examine the many challenges that confront our schools in a time of epic change. If, as Cowen claims, Texas is a microcosm of our future, then Freeway presents a unique opportunity to see that future up close.
