Engineering education in the K-12 grades still only reaches a small fraction of U.S. students. Experts say new content standards could raise its profile in more classrooms and bring engineering in line with standards used in science, technology and math. In a new report, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) contends that, while set standards for K-12 engineering are doable, their usefulness and implementation would be limited.
Better standards “could create an identity for engineering as a separate and important discipline in the overall curriculum” that would boost quality, relevance and popularity of instruction, NAE says. But with only five million of about 56 million K-12 students exposed to engineering education, the students’ experience is too limited to implement standards and assess benefits, it says.