— OUR MISSION

We are here for one A Our focus - A better future for our kids.

Elevation's mission - To make effective STEM education available to all students in the United States with emphasis on under-served groups and locations

According to the U. S. Department of Commerce, STEM occupations are growing at 17%, while other occupations are growing at 9.8%. STEM degree holders have a higher income even in non-STEM careers. Science, technology, engineering and mathematics workers play a key role in the sustained growth and stability of the U.S. economy and are a critical component to helping the U.S. compete in the future. STEM education creates critical thinkers, increases science literacy, and enables the next generation of innovators. STEM education helps to bridge the ethnic and gender gaps sometimes found in math and science fields. Initiatives have been established to increase the roles of women and minorities in STEM-related fields.

Despite the critical importance of STEM skills to society and our country, US students continue to lag in these subjects. One of the biggest cross-national tests is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which every three years measures reading ability, math and science literacy and other key skills among 15-year-olds in dozens of developed and developing countries. The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science.

An American College Testing (ACT) report on “Understanding the Underserved Learner: The Condition of STEM 2014” suggests that underserved students are far less likely to be prepared for careers in STEM, despite an often equal interest in the disciplines. According to the report, the underserved student sector — minority students, low-income students and/or first-generation college students — “had a 49 percent interest in STEM, the same interest level as the overall student population. Underserved students make up nearly half (47 percent) of all STEM-interested high school graduates.” This is a huge source of untapped talent in the U.S. To make matters worse, those who live in rural areas may have a particularly difficult time accessing quality STEM curriculum to help them succeed. Nearly half of all U.S. public school districts are considered to be rural. In total, one-quarter of the public-school population is in attendance at one of these districts, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Other data, compiled by Google and Gallup polls, report that while rural students show similar interest levels in learning STEM-related subjects, their access is far more limited. When asked how interested they were in learning computer science in the future, for example, the percent of students that reported that they were very interested or somewhat interested was the same regardless of their geolocation. Rural students, however, were less likely to have access to STEM courses, clubs, and advanced placement courses.

We believe that it is time to address this problem, NOW.