publisher’s letter
ceo magazine
May|June 2014
Volume 5, Issue 3
THE
TALENT
PIPELINE
In the latest high school rankings from U.S.
News, Texas has 300 ranked high schools
out of 1,492 high schools in the state. Texas
also has the top ranked high school in the
U.S., the School for the Talented and Gifted
in Dallas, which is an advanced placement
(AP) magnet school inside DISD. Of the
top ten ranked high schools in our state,
seven are magnet schools and three are
charter schools. Three of the schools are in
Dallas, three are in Houston and there are
two schools each in Austin and in the Rio
Grande Valley.
For the most part, the top ten schools
are also STEM (Science, Technology,
Engineering and Math) ranked.
That’s what this issue is about, STEM
education in Texas. We chose this topic
because of the workplace hiring challenges
faced by companies who need STEM talent.
We wondered what the talent pipeline looks
like for those who need to hire engineers as
well as machine operators with a solid math
education.
Most STEM focused schools teach
students with a concept called projectbased learning, or PBL. PBL is a way
to teach students based on real-world
practices. Through PBL, students work
in teams to complete hands-on projects,
from conceptualization and planning, all
the way through creation and presentation
of the final product. PBL has personal
responsibility, communication and
collaboration at its core.
PBL experts believe this approach
to learning helps students retain more
knowledge by allowing them to use their
TEX S
Publisher
Pat Niekamp
Managing Editor
Ray Niekamp
Art Director
Tania Roberts
Sales
Truby Chiaviello
Potomac Media
202-363-3741
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Shannon Drawe
Jonathan Garza
Leah Overstreet
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Will Pate
Writer & Editor
Dacia Rivers
Web Developer
Jeff Rose
Branding & Web Design
Andrew Niekamp
skills to create, answer questions and solve
problems.
It isn’t just the magnet schools using
project-based learning. Manor New
Technology High School, east of Austin, is
an example of what happens in a diverse,
lower socioeconomic community that
committed to PBL eight years ago. Manor
New Tech has a 99.4 percent graduation
rate and 100 percent of graduates have
been accepted into college. Those numbers
look even better when you consider that 62
percent of students who attend the school
are first-generation college attendees and
52 percent of students qualify for free or
reduced cost lunches.
It isn’t just high schools that commit
to PBL – Irving’s Valley Ranch Elementary
(part of Coppell ISD) is another example of
a PBL campus. Coppell ISD also has a PBL
high school, New Tech High School.
As you might expect, there are two
driving forces in STEM education through
our universities – one is called the T-STEM
Coalition and the other is UTeach.
Read on.
Pat Niekamp, Publisher
[email protected]
Contributors
Melinda Brijalba
Mary Marg