The Future of Education

This paper will first discuss the various approaches that institutions of higher education in the U.S. have adopted in order to improve the educational trajectories of public school youth in disadvantaged urban settings. It will then elaborate on one such effort undertaken by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA, through a STEM education program called Nurture thru Nature (NtN). This afterschool and summer program was designed by an interdisciplinary team of Rutgers University faculty in 2010 with the objective of increasing science and mathematics performance of students from minority groups. Designed as a classical experiment with random assignment of students to NtN and control groups, the program selects students at the end of their third grade and follows them until they have graduated high school. NtN currently serves 7 cohorts of students in grades 5 – 11 from the various New Brunswick public schools, with its very first cohort of 2010 having graduated high school in 2019. The paper will discuss the program strucutre, development of grade-specific STEM curriculum, and its delivery to the public schools. It will also describe the measurement of cognitive and non-cognitive program impacts and present our findings that show that relative to the control group, NtN participants achieved significant improvements in school grades in science and mathematics, as well as in their non-cognitive skills such as prosocial behavior, higher order thinking, and conscientiousness. The paper will conclude with lessons learned and suggestions for transporting the NtN model to other school districts in the U.S. as well as abroad.     

Keywords: STEM education, Cognitive skills, Non-cognitive skills, randomized education experiment, university-community partnering models.