Chicago Educators Look To Promote STEM Education To Hispanic Boys

The Chicago Tribune (12/6, Cullotta) reports that Manuel Adrianzen, principal of Chicago's Nobel Elementary School, says that it is harder to interest Hispanic boys in STEM courses than it is with Hispanic girls, noting that "For Chicago-area educators such as Adrianzen, empowering Latino boys and girls to enroll in and excel in math and science classes is important to combating relatively high absenteeism and dropout rates, low college enrollment rates and disproportionately low numbers of minorities working in STEM careers. For Gerard Kovach, teaching at Chicago's Salazar Bilingual Center - a prekindergarten-through-eighth-grade school where roughly 80 percent of the students are categorized as ELL, or English language learners - demands a vibrant, hands-on math and science curriculum, not rote learning intended to prepare students for standardized tests."