A Postmathematical Topology of Stem Education Policy: Networks and Discursive Communities Free

Much of the policy analysis on STEM education thus far mirrors the commitments to STEM content areas; in these works, the face value of STEM education goes unchallenged. That is, policy scholars focusing on STEM education adopt its purported objectives to increase the teaching and learning of STEM content and, furthermore, motivate such inquiries with the same national economic and security frames used by politicians. This section will review a handful of these to make this point more clear, familiarize the reader with the mainstream objectives of STEM, and properly situate contributions contained herein among existing STEM policy research. I will also review STEM policy analysts that reject mainstream STEM policy in favor of alternatives; however these analyses do not stray from the content areas included in STEM education instead of considering STEM policy context.

Some STEM policy research can be categorized as studies of advocacy and efficacy. In both cases, there is agreement between these scholars and the policy enactors regarding the broad goals of STEM education, namely the preparation of STEM content in service to national economic and military security. As for policy analysis that advocates, these scholars highlight particular pilot programs and make suggestions for specific micro policies that fit the broader STEM policy goals. STEM advocacy work includes, for example, Pender, Marcotte, Domingo, and Maton (2010) who advocate for summer research experiences that encourage STEM PhDs and Cullinane (2009) who suggest a model program to diversify the STEM workforce with particular programs geared for Tribal Colleges and Universities, Historically Black Colleges and Hispanic Serving Institutions.

In the case of policy studies on efficacy, these scholars recognize the distinction between policy text and policy effects. Typically, they do not make recommendations that run counter to the overarching goals of policy text, but do make recommendations after careful study of what takes place in educational settings. Studies of this type include Johnson (2012) who studied the policy implementation of a regional STEM education initiative using change theory. Conclusions from this study indicate helpful suggestions for leaders interested in developing regional STEM initiatives in line with the goals of STEM education. In reviewing these and other (e.g., Brett, 2007; Cox, Berry, & Smith, 2009) policy considerations on STEM education, there are two themes: (1) STEM content is relevant for economic and military security and (2) the STEM workforce should be diversified.

In contrast to these policies, there are criticisms of STEM education policy that reject the overarching principles of STEM policy goals as they relate to economic and military security and/or reject policy considerations regarding diversity, but remain true to the general goal of increasing the efforts in educating STEM content areas. In other words, these policy analysts consider and reject the axiological claims inherent in STEM education policy and present alternatives for our consideration. Much of this work is completed by separating the various STEM content areas and mostly with direct attention to mathematics and science.

Take mathematics. There are several examples of analysis on mathematics education policy that reject or negate the values claimed in it. For example, Gutstein (2008) critiques U.S. national mathematics education for its inherent tendencies toward capitalist logics and Martin (2013) for its inherent racism. Implicitly, both suggest that mathematics education policy could better serve its face-value commitments to increasing mathematical knowledge with a change in values. As another example, Apple (1992) claims that mathematics education policy is entirely rhetorical with no interest in the increasing of mathematical knowledge. Finally, in these and other examples (e.g. Dowling, 1998; Wolfmeyer, 2014a), the suggestion that mathematics education is about more than mathematics is at least implied. In questioning mathematics education policy’s ability to increase mathematical knowledge, one can begin to think whether other goals motivate the policy as well. Similar critiques of science education policy exist as well (e.g., Hodson, 2004; Pierce, 2012).

To date there is very little scholarship that looks at STEM policy as a unit. Chesky and Wolfmeyer (2015) begin this work in thinking about the values of STEM education and appropriating the space for differing axiological claims, however at times these are taken again as singular content arenas. Part of the issue in looking at STEM as a unit is the very tendency for most of this scholarship to prioritize the content arena. In reviewing these efforts and aiming to address the STEM unit, a gap in the literature motivates a new research question: What STEM policy agendas exist external to the learning of STEM content? This question might be posed prematurely in this article but will be revisited once further considerations on policymaking are discussed in the next section. The earlier examples of STEM policy analysis in this section reflect an understanding of policy as government. However, the research question above is motivated more by the advanced thinking on policymaking to which I now turn: the perspective that considers contemporary governance to be a constantly shifting intersection of interests and agendas.

In this section, I review the notion of contemporary governance as opposed to traditionally conceived government. This represents the shift from traditional structures of government to the nebulous public/private nexus by which private interests exert greater influence on public policy. First, I review examples of the United States context to motivate a rich understanding of the highly theoretical developments made by social scientists and especially advanced thinking in education policy studies. This will lead to the theoretical concepts of topological policy networks that motivate this paper’s research goals.

Drawing particularly on U.S. policy, Mills (1956)Power Elite describes public policy as the work of an easily identifiable and rigid set of corporate and celebrity individuals. They aimed to write policy that acted in their private interests rather than the public’s interest. Offering a contemporary stance on this perspective, Wedel (2009) suggests a shadow elite exists in United States politics. The set of organizations and people comprising the work of public policy making is now less easy to identify. Accordingly, public policy itself is hard to locate and disentangle from both private structures and private operations. In attempt to uncover what is hidden, Wedel presents the following characteristics, sticking primarily to the United States context.

First, Wedel asserts the operation of policy networks that hover at the nexus between private and public. This includes several new structures within government, such as quasi-governmental organizations, think tanks, Federal advisory committees and government outsourcing to private corporations. Kosar (2011) has given more description for these quasi-government structures. To begin, they are defined as those organizations that have both private and public legal characteristics. Furthermore, they are a spectrum of organizations from those that are mostly state to those that are mostly private. Moving along this spectrum are “government-sponsored enterprises,” “federally funded research and development centers” “agency-related nonprofit organizations,” “venture capital funds,” and “congressionally chartered nonprofit organizations (CCNOs).” The variations in these organizations include more and less oversight from government agencies and more and less funding from government agencies.

Here is an example of a quasi-governmental organization that is commonly misunderstood. One CCNO is the National Academy of Sciences. Without too much thinking, many who are familiar with this organization may think that it is somehow a branch of government with some oversight by elected politicians. However, the organization is in fact private. It is a CCNO, meaning that at some point Congress designated this private organization as one that acts in the national or patriotic interest. However, the National Academy of Sciences receives general funding primarily from private sources. In addition, several of its activities are cosponsored by private corporations and can include representatives from these. For example, NAS conceived and published the document Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future (2007). Together with NAS researchers, the document was authored by representatives from corporations, such as Craig Barrett, of Intel, Lee Raymond of ExxonMobil, and P. Roy Vagelos of Merck. In this case, such a document includes significant interests from the information and communications technology and pharmaceuticals industries.

Thus one nexus of private and public are these types of quasi-governmental structures. Operating among them, as Wedel argues, are social networks of individuals that are invited to address public policy and many times serve private interests. She refers to such individuals within this nexus as “flexians.” They flex in their role, as academics, policymakers, and/or consultants or executives in think tanks or corporations. They also flex in their position, often adopting others’ interests in the social network so as to advance their own.

Many individuals who are invited to write policy in quasi-governmental structures either work for corporations, as already expressed, or represent think tanks and policy institutes. Although these organizations are exclusively private (and cannot be considered quasi-governmental), they represent a significant element in an operating shadow elite. These think tanks “once enjoyed a greater reputation for scholarly distance from politics ... [but now] are more often partisan than neutral.... Part of the usefulness of think tanks, from the point of view of their affiliates, is that they provide a veneer of neutrality and objective study” (Wedel, 2009, p. 102). In other words, think tanks continue to project an image of objective policy analysis, however their research often promotes private interests, such as research leading to policies that enhance an industry’s means for making profit.

In addition to quasi-governmental organizations and think tanks is Wedel’s attention to Federal Advisory Committees. They are comprised of individuals that have made contributions to a specific policy domain and are then appointed by government officials. Providing “guidance to more than fifty government agencies” signals Federal Advisory Committees’ increased significance. They are sometimes referred to as the “fifth arm of government” and are steeped in “might-be-private, might-be-public ambiguity” (p. 101), especially since the Federal Advisory Committee Act allows portions of their meetings to be held in private.

Finally, Wedel addresses the contracting out of government work as yet another instance of blurring the public/private sphere. This phenomenon has increased in recent years and furthers private sector influence on public policy in a particular way. “Upwards of three quarters of the work of the federal government, measured in terms of jobs, is contracted out” (2009, p. 77). This extends not just to the services government provides, but also to government actions leading to the creation of policy, such as policy research. As Wedel points out, contracting out has increased in scale. Her phrase “US Government, Inc.” indicates how “Government agencies are now faced with justifying not contracting out a government program, project, or function, rather than the other way around” (p. 73). For example, the government’s Competitive Sourcing Initiative “mandates competition with the private sector and encourages the outsourcing of government work” (p. 73) because it is believed that competition in the private sector results in greater efficiency. Although this initiative is credited to President George W. Bush, it was President Bill Clinton and his administration that “paved the road for the actions of his successor.... George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, said it succinctly: ‘Clinton laid the framework and set the speed limit at 500 miles per hour but never drove the car past 250. Bush tested the limit’” (p. 93).

However, such policies have nothing to do with increased competition because large corporations are granted huge government contracts. In many instances, a certain corporation is the only one able to provide the service. These policy shifts encouraging outsourcing simply make the process “friendlier” for contractors. The Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act (FASA) and the Federal Acquisition Reform Act (FARA) removed many of the traditional competition and oversight mechanisms that had been in place for decades and provided the statutory basis for new kinds of megacontracts, such as the “Multiple Award” Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) system, under which an estimated 40 percent of all federal government contracts are now awarded in areas ranging from computer support to analysis of intelligence.... Like the euphemisms of politicians obscuring their intentions, the language of these [contract] awards is telling: “contracts” that aren’t really contracts; “competitions” without real competition; “task” orders that may sound like small potatoes but can net billions of dollars for the contractor (p. 93).

Wedel highlights the tension between the motivations and effects of these policies calling for greater outsourcing of government work. This hypocrisy requires a look at possible ulterior motives behind the push to outsource. Companies seeking to gain contracts are these motives. These contracts can be hugely rewarding, as evidenced by the “mega-contracts” Wedel cites above. A company that provides government services via a stable contract with the government secures the demand of that company’s services. As Wedel suggests, government outsourcing also “privatizes policy” because companies can push for the creation of megacontracts.

This look at the U.S. context gives specific examples to motivate the deep theoretical work in understanding such a governance process. Essentially, governance appears to be fluid, not fixed, and represents significant entanglements between public, official governing bodies and private institutions and their interests. This work has been theorized significantly and in multiple arenas of social science research, including education policy studies. The remainder of this section details the educational policy research emphasizing the role of governance through its topological policy networks.

First, the notion of topology: This domain of mathematics explores the geometries of fluidity. There is no rigidity. In this arena, a triangle is equivalent to a square because you can stretch and bend (but not cut or glue) one into the other. Similarly, for a three-dimensional figure a mug is equivalent to a bagel given the hole in the bagel and the handle on the mug; the one can be stretched and molded to be like the other (Martin & Secor, 2013, p. 422). At the risk of oversimplifying the mathematics of topology, social scientists find the metaphor of topology’s manifold forms to be relevant to social life, including contemporary governance. Given such metaphoric usage, some refer to this application as a postmathematical topology originating from but not further committed to the mathematical domain.

The expansive use of such a postmathematical topology is documented by Lury, Parisi, and Terranova (2012):

Specific to educational policy studies, it is highlighted by Lingard and Sellar (2013) that policy network studies, specifically Ball and Junemann (2012), develop policy analysis suggestive of the postmathematical topology that is contemporary social life:

Their work points to the more generally description of governance, as follows in Ball and Junemann’s (2012) own words: “the descriptive and analytic term that refers to a form of governance that interweaves and inter-relates markets and hierarchies—a kind of messy hinterland that supplements and sometimes subverts these other forms” (p. 9). “And, their work focuses “on a set of specific network relations and on a highly interlinked ‘policy community’ that ‘catalyses’ philanthropy and business in the delivery of education services and reconfigures and disseminates a particular set of education policy discourses” (p. 9).

Weaving together the examples from Wedel and such theories of postmathematical topologies of social life, one might begin to think differently about network policy. Policy networks, such as those constructed in Ball and Junemann (2012) and Wolfmeyer (2014), suggest an always changing manifold that amalgamates in one moment to be something particular and in the next to be something else. This includes both the actors in the network as well as the policies enacted. Thompson and Cook (2015) further develop the notion of educational policy as postmathematical topology, giving clear examples such as the global policy discourse of testing.

The relevance of these theories to STEM education policy is the fact that said policy arena exists as itself a manifold engaged among and entangled within many manifolds of social life, including public policy more generally. Or, possible the manifold that is STEM education is the manifold that is educational policy at the same time that it is not. Through these many manifold possibilities are the discursive practices central to public policy. Drawing again from Ball and Junemann, (2012) this notion of discursive practices provides a unit of analysis by which to engage the entanglement of STEM education.

The networks contain flows of ideas as well as flows of people, and ideas are carried back and forth across the boundaries between the public and private sectors. These are discursive or epistemic communities. Through social relationships trust is established and particular views and discourses are legitimated. They structure, constrain and enable the circulation of ideas and give “institutional force” to policy utterances, ensuring what can count as “sensible” policy and limiting the possibilities of policy (p. 11).

As the review of policy analysis of STEM education earlier has revealed, nothing has been analyzed regarding STEM policy’s engagement within the larger arena of educational policy, or public policy in general. In viewing STEM education policy as a subset/ superset of the postmathematical topology discussed by Thompson and Cook (2015), it appears it as all about the STEM content and not at all about the STEM content, simultaneously. Given the existing policy analysis that centers on STEM content, these suggestions from postmathematical topology provide opportunities to inquire about the STEM-policy-as-not-STEM-content. This is the point at which this paper’s research question is now fully motivated: What is STEM education policy about outside of STEM content? What discursive communities in STEM policy exist that give institutional force to the manifold that is educational policy writ large? To answer this, I next turn to a methodology embedded in the advanced policy understanding of governance, including early steps in identifying the policy networks on STEM education.

In light of the theoretical discussion regarding governance and policy networks, this paper’s discussion section represents steps toward a network ethnography of STEM education. Ball and Junemann’s (2012) and my own (Wolfmeyer, 2014) method included exhaustive identification of actors, both individuals and organizations, in educational policy networks as well as interviews of key actors. These efforts allowed for the trace of flows of influence that developed comprehensive understandings of discursive communities that comprise the topological, always fluid, policy network. The spirit of this method is rooted firmly in articulating the blurring of lines of private and public throughout the making of public policy.

A complete ethnographic account of STEM education is a worthy endeavor that would fully illuminate the characteristics of its manifold quality, such as its impermanence and entanglement with other spheres of policy communities and influence. This paper’s initial discussion suggests the potential these efforts will have in understanding U.S. STEM education. Initial policy networks are next constructed for each. Although not nearly as illuminating as would be an exhaustive network ethnography, these networks indicate the interests among the manifold that is STEM education policy. Given this contextual description, the policy texts themselves are analyzed for the references to discursive tendencies including those related to STEM content and those beyond. These tendencies represent the discursive community of STEM education and are analyzed in conjunction with the interests represented by the policy’s network. In the spirit of governance, those that are suggestive outside of STEM content are highlighted as a discussion of the relevance of post-mathematical topologies in educational policy, and specifically, STEM education policy.

The policy texts chosen for this discussion reflect the variety of spaces in which policy occurs, according to the governance model. Table 1 below lists each policy text’s abbreviated title, its authoring description and governance space.

These texts are not a comprehensive list of STEM Education policy texts, but were chosen for their scope in addressing STEM at the national level and, taken together, so as to represent the breadth of authoring type and governance spaces involved. They are listed in order from most public (an official text of legislation) to most private (a think tank’s advocacy document). With the details of data used and inquiry thus described, I now turn to the implications of such discussions of each policy text.

This document is authored by U.S. congress-persons and is regarded as favorable to STEM education. The final draft was a compromise of the house and senate versions of the bill, thus authors include both Senators and Representatives. A social network of this exact document includes the lobbying efforts involving U.S. Senators with respect to public education. K Street organizations such as Change the Equation (more on them later) promote STEM education among U.S. Senators. On the whole, however, this text is the most “official” government of those discussed here because elected officials representing their public constituents have authored the policy and it has been voted on by elected representatives.

The text of this policy indicates significant commitments to STEM education. Under Title II of the act, under a subsection named “Programs of National Significance,” is Section 2245’s “STEM Master Teacher Corps.” Essentially this earmarks federal funds for statewide professional development opportunities for STEM teachers and also to recruit and “provide substantial compensation” to STEM teachers for their participation in a master teacher community (S. 1171, p. 151). This is not unlike the work of organizations like Math for America. In fact, the act states that states can provide such compensation themselves or work alongside nonprofit organizations (such as Math for America) in providing this.

Another explicit mention of STEM education occurs in Title IV and its emphasis on 21st century schools. Within this part of the act is section 4107 that provides federal funds to advance after school STEM programs, competitions and the like. It also supports “the creation and enhancement of STEM-focused specialty schools” (S. 1177, p. 176). The current structures in place for creating such schools are charters. With this limited data in the text, there is no opportunity to suggest that STEM education advances charter school legislation, but this will become available upon further investigation of STEM policy texts in the quasi-government below. Primarily, the entire discussion of STEM education in ESSA rests on two policy directives: the creation of STEM focused schools and the recruitment and retention of STEM teachers.

PCAST, the President’s Council on Advisors on Science and Technology, is a Federal Advisory Committee created by President Obama in 2009. The charter for the committee states that its 20 “shall be distinguished individuals from the nonfederal sector appointed by the President. The nonfederal sector members shall have diverse perspectives and expertise in science and technology to ensure balance” (PCAST, 2010a). The charter also indicates that meetings may be open to the public as well as held in private, to be determined by the council. In September of 2010, PCAST members authored an original report titled “K–12 STEM Education Report.” The details of the recommendations on STEM education will be discussed shortly. First, a more complete discussion of the document’s context, that is, a discussion of the PCAST member’s affiliations, is presented.

PCAST members represent the largest multinational corporations today and across a variety of sectors, including information and communications technology, biomedical engineering and pharmaceuticals, emerging nano-technology industries and energy industries. As examples, high-level executives from the following corporations were on PCAST when the report was written: Google, Microsoft, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Broad Institute and the International Institute for Nanotechnology. The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard develops biotechnology and is particularly famous for the controversial Human Genome Project. As for energy industry, the director of MIT’s Energy Initiative served on PCAST. While this organization indicates significant committee to clean energy, it is serving the interest of big oil corporations with founding members BP, Exxon-Mobil and Shell. Thus the corporate presence of PCAST is made quite clear with a look at its social network.

As for the recommendations contained in the report, these are framed by a notion entirely consistent with what is revealed in the description of the social network above. The report states that “Achieving the Nation’s goals for STEM education in K–12 will require partnerships with state and local government and with the private and philanthropic sectors... We are encouraged by the state-led collaborative efforts and by the private groups, such as the recently formed coalition, Change the Equation” (PCAST, 2010b, p. 5). With the details of who is involved in writing this report, as above, it comes as no surprise that PCAST advises the President to encourage private-public partnerships for STEM education. Notably, they pay reference to Change the Equation, the final data point in the inquiry presented here.

Prepare and Inspire: K–12 STEM Education Report gives these as particular recommendations: (1) Supporting national standards in math and science (the common core and the next generation science standards), (2) recruiting and training STEM teachers, (3) creating a STEM master teachers corps, (4) using educational technology to drive educational research, (5) encourage STEM experiences outside the classroom, (6) create STEM-focused schools, and (7) ensure strong leadership through the creation of “new mechanisms, with substantially increased capacity, to provide leadership” (PCAST, 2010b, p. 8). The last of these is consistent with the new governance model by suggesting more advisory councils and thereby more opportunities for private influence.

These recommendations are consistent with what was recently passed into federal law under ESSA. The recruitment and retaining of STEM teachers, establishment of STEM-focused schools, and establishment of a STEM master teachers corps are all specifically addressed in both of the documents reviewed thus far. Given PCAST’s heavy representation by business, I thus conclude that these interests are at least not in conflict with business profits, and perhaps are in support of them specifically. As I describe in the final policy text, these policy themes are in fact specifically in support of for-profit frameworks. The flow of a discursive community, with its specific policy prescriptions, is beginning to come through in this study.

If looking at the quasi-governmental STEM document above begins to reveal the extent to which policy network discourse emerges in relation to private governance, the final data point certainly will. This policy text rests squarely within the private sphere and, as before, continues to put forth the same recommendations for STEM education. This time, however, the connections to corporate profit are explicit, both in the social context of the document and in the way these themes are discussed. To begin, the organization authoring this document is the private think tank Change the Equation, a policy advocate for STEM education. It is noted that PCAST gave positive reference to the organization in their report that was analyzed earlier.

Change the Equation was founded in 2010 by chief executive officers of 100 major companies. The initial board of directors included the chief executive officers of Time Warner Cable, Intel, Xerox, Eastman Kodak, Exxon-Mobil, and SallyRide Science, a STEM education materials company. Current board members also include high-level executives of DuPont, a chemical manufacturer, Accenture, the world’s largest consulting firm, and Free-port-McMoRan. The last is a U.S.-based natural resource company with significant dealings in oil and gas. Therefore Change the Equation’s primary leadership represents the information and communications technology industry, pharmaceuticals, imaging companies (and the relationship to biomedical engineering), the energy industry and consulting services that further represent the financial services and human resources sectors. In other words, the list of industries represented by the organization Change the Equation might be the most lucrative, global of all today’s industries.

Change the Equation’s website includes the slogan “STEM is our business,” a statement that captures the corporate nature to the organization as well as their belief in the connection between STEM education and corporate profit. On the website, the organization provides what they refer to as “STEMtistics,” or statistics that suggest the urgency that STEM education is for business profits. Change the Equation provides resource pamphlets on its website as well and I chose one of these for an example policy text to study specifically because it is authored by the private organization. As will be shown, not only does it present the same policy directions revealed in the official policy and quasi-governmental texts above, it does so with strong articulation to their needs as related to business. Furthermore, these policy directives are discussed not for the specific connections to STEM content areas, but for their general concerns with making education function within market logics.

The documents full title A Business Leader’s Guide to Mobilizing State Action on STEM (Change the Equation, n.d.) indicates its central theme of business motivation. The suggestions contained in it are framed within a description of the policy problem that businesses face in enacting change in schools to suit their needs. In some ways, this document could be analyzed for the more general themes in this article, where it is suggested why and how private interests are inserted into governance structures. Sticking to the point, the policy text includes several recommendations about how business leaders can go about effecting particular STEM policy changes within their home states. However, just what policy changes are discussed in the policy text?

Again, this text indicates rather clearly just how embedded STEM education is with other directives in educational policy. It makes these claims explicit: “STEM is at the nexus of major education policy initiatives that are getting attention from policymakers. Effort on any one of these issues often has a ripple effect on others” (Change the Equation, n.d., p. 6). The text then presents a Venn Diagram that includes the following policy issues: the adoption of national math and science standards, standardized assessments, school choice and teaching and accountability. The appendix to the document expands on each of these and it is noted that all of the topics are touched upon in the two policy texts studied above. This time, however, the true intentions of these, as discussed by businesses, is discussed.

For example, take the discussion of school choice. In this policy text, the organization Change the Equation provides details of just how the “STEM-focused specialty schools” of ESSA will take place. This policy text gives a review of charter school legislation, completely omits the controversies, such as the private franchises operating hundreds of charters in urban areas, and promotes charters as “choices” for parents. Moving to teaching, Change the Equation brings up the particular issue of LIFO, or last-in-first-out hiring practices. One can consider this as a signifier against typical hiring practices and collective bargaining agreements, or at least that teacher hiring and firing should correspond more directly to nonunion marketplace practices. Although the official policy and quasi-governmental texts do not discuss LIFO, the discussion of recruitment and retention of math and science teachers is of a similar logic. My own publication (2014b) discusses how notions such as the master teachers corps and recruitment and retention are market logics that perpetuate profit and counteract union labor in teaching.

Taking the policy texts together I suggest a clear overlap in policy direction. In all three, there are discussions of revising teacher labor practices and the promotion of STEM-focused charter schools. Summarizing them in reverse order, that the most private organization motivates these goals with their private interests, almost more honestly than the others. Continuing to trace these corporate themes, next is the quasi-governmental text and finally the official written policy of ESSA. This specific example of analysis provides further evidence of the way governance works, of the fluidity and topological space that now inserts itself into written legislation. In no way do I suggest educational policy is immune from this and, in close reading of Change the Equation, there is no indication that private interest is unaware of their new opportunities to write policy.

Putting the results of this discussion of textual analysis another way, the research answers a unique question in STEM policy studies. As reviewed in the literature, STEM policy analysts support or reject the ways that STEM policy effects change in the teaching of STEM content. However, little has been said about the way that STEM policy encourages or does not encourage other education policy directives. This study has revealed, and in no uncertain terms given the data from Change the Equation, that STEM education policy overlaps with particular business objectives of educational policy more generally. Further work is needed to discuss whether STEM education operates entirely as a mask for neoliberal objectives in education, but the question has certainly been posed by the data analyzed herein.