STEM education is education for the future of this country. It prepares youth to find challenging and generally well compensated employment in activities that underlie economic growth and future prosperity. If our youngest have capabilities and interest in math, science and technology - they should be encouraged. If there are societal pressures that are dissuading our female youth from these pursuits or other factors regarding other’s expectations instead of what they would want, we should know and at least work to remove those barriers. I endorse the study since I believe that STEM education is critical to our county’s health and well being- and that the losing half of our youth who would pursue this to unwarranted stigma’s is well, just stupid. Next, we have to upgrade educational programs to include more passionate and knowledgeable teachers into our schools to inspire our youth - and the funding to make this type of learning interesting and fun. … … … NoHedges: I can’t reach the DC from my iPad currently so I cannot respond directly to your comments. My endorsement of STEM is an endorsement of the concept of encouraging this type of education for our youngsters. From your comment, I believe that you may be referring to the consequences of a specific STEM program implementation, of which I have no knowledge or experience and certainly cannot comment on. I will try to be more careful about this in the future. I won’t be able to check the web site you referenced until I can a get back to a computer tomorrow but, as always, I am looking forward to check out your references.