Pltw Essay

In recent years, the demand for workers in STEM fields has increased dramatically. Between 2008 and 2018 job growth in STEM fields is expected to grow by twenty percent, a much higher rate when compared to other fields. (Van Overschelede). As the STEM fields continue to grow employers are having a hard time finding employees. Without employees to take up the needed positions companies cannot expand to meet the engineering needs of the twenty first century. This problem becomes even more dire when one considers that much of the current engineering workforce is rapidly approaching retirement (Wright). If colleges are unable to produce the necessary amount of engineers, companies will be forced to function at lower capacities. In addition to this

Since PLTW is meant to prepare students for college it would make sense that they should focus on math. It would be very beneficial for a student to get a head start in math class through a pre-college program. To determine if PLTW was effective at building a student’s math skills, a study was carried out by Project Lead the Way. In the study a math test was given tow a group of PLTW and non-PLTW students. From this experiment it was found that, “a higher percentage of PLTW students [met] the college-ready standard (M = 41.1%) than the matched control group” (Mattern, pg.6). This means that PLTW has been successful in teaching math because PLTW students understood the material better than non- PLTW students. Having a strong math background in is essential to the success of an engineering major, because math is difficult topic for many engineers. In fact,” The category of math and science was listed by the largest percentage of respondents as one of the top three areas of greatest deficiency” (McMullin pg.52). The difficulty of these classes emphasizes the reason that students must come to college with strong mathematics knowledge. This also shows how beneficial taking a PLTW class can be to a