Talk about STEM? Not to boast, but I'm the quintessential person the proponents of STEM education are talking about. I hold a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, I spent 10 years in industry designing test equipment and came into education eight years ago to lend expertise in the sciences and effect positive change in what I understood to be lousy math education.
I took a pay cut, sure; but I jumped in eyes wide open! A promise of a bonus based on some wonky adjustable set of merit pay rules is, to my analysis, an unreliable promise is/was not worth consideration.
The truth is that once I got into education and saw the realities, I considered many time leaving -and it wasn't because of the money either. Education has evolved into a horrible institution corrupted by adults who put their vested interest in power, ego, and profit before the needs of kids. The top down glass ceiling of micro management control is so oppressive it sucks the air out of anyone who has any semblance of creativity. The echo's of NCLB and it's manic teach to the test has created an environment so different form what I expected or anything resembling good education.
The reason why STEM teachers aren't jumping the broom is because (as many predicted) the smear campaign of StudentsFirst and other reformers against teachers and the institution as a whole has left a PR image of education as a cesspool of angry ineffective cronies who dance at the strings of unions and care nothing about kids or their learning or well being.
Teachers want to teach. Kids want to be valued beyond test scores. Creative teacher's want the monkey of NCLB punishment and top down oppression off our backs! What we teachers and kids are left to work with today is a bunch of horse apples! Until this system is restored (NOT reformed) to a place of encouragement, innovation, curiosity, and fulfillment, STEM is destined to fail as a round idea that will ever fit into today's square peg of eduation.
