Federal STEM education programs need better coordination, finds a new report by the Government Accountability Office—the federal government’s watchdog arm.
In 2010 Congress created the Committee on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics to review some 163 STEM education programs in 13 federal agencies, totaling nearly $3 billion. The GAO found the committee did not review or document performance evaluations of the STEM programs, nor did it report the programs’ participation rates for underrepresented groups. Nearly every program overlapped with another program—for example, serving the same field, objective, or groups, though many served different subpopulations or had different areas of emphasis.
