The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) has been working with universities and non-profit organizations to institute pathways—sets of curricula and courses—that promote the study of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in Louisiana’s middle and high schools. These pathways are meant to prepare students for advanced STEM studies in college and/or careers in STEM after graduating from high school.
As part of this project, RAND is conducting an independent, innovative, and mixed-method study of the Louisiana STEM micro-credential project. The study includes both design-based implementation research to help inform development and deployment of the micro-credentials and a randomized controlled trial to assess the effect of the micro-credentials on instruction and student learning.
The Louisiana STEM micro-credential project is a unique partnership between the LDOE, Louisiana State University (LSU), BloomBoard Inc., and RAND to develop and study a set of STEM micro-credentials. The micro-credentials are aligned to the content of the courses taught in the pathways and are intended to help teachers apply their STEM training to the classes they teach.
The goal of the micro-credentials is to provide job-embedded professional development that will improve teacher instruction and student learning. The LDOE has received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Education Innovation and Research Program to fund this work.
The study has four overarching goals:
