Donna LaLonde is the Associate Executive Director of the American Statistical Association (ASA) where she works with talented colleagues to advance the vision and mission of the ASA. Prior to joining the ASA in 2015, she was a faculty member at Washburn University where she enjoyed teaching and learning with colleagues and students; she also served in various administrative positions including interim chair of the Education Department and Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs. At the ASA, she supports activities associated with presidential initiatives, accreditation, education, and professional development. She also is a cohost of the Practical Significance podcast which we appeared on in May.
Steve Pierson is the Director of Science Policy for the American Statistics Association. In his role, he works to raise the profile of statistics (the scientific discipline), government statistics, and statisticians nationally. He also advocates on behalf of ASA members and for more engagement of statistics/statisticians and the need to invest in our data infrastructure, as it powers the economy and improves our health and wellbeing.
Episode Description
A number of organizations in the United States focus on statistics education, and now you can add the U.S. Congress to the list. A bill introduced in the house earlier this year seeks to help support and improve stats education for both Pre-K through 12, as well as higher education. It is also the focus of this episode of stats and stories with guests Donna LaLonde and Steve Pierson.
+Full Transcript
Rosemary Pennington
A number of organizations in the United States focus on statistics education. And you can add the US Congress to the list. A bill introduced in the House earlier this year seeks to help support and improve stats education in pre-K through 12, and in higher ed. It's also the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories, where we explore the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics. I'm Rosemary Pennington. Stats and Stories is a production of Miami University's Department of Statistics and media journalism and film, as well as the American Statistical Association. Joining me as always is regular panelist John Bailer, emeritus professor of statistics at Miami University. Our guests today are Donna LaLonde and Steve Pierson. LaLonde is the Associate Executive Director of the American Statistical Association. Prior to joining the AASA in 2015, she was a faculty member at Washburn University where she enjoyed teaching and learning with colleagues and students at the AASA. She supports activities associated with presidential initiatives, accreditation education and professional development. She's also a co-host of the Practical Significance podcast, which John and I appeared on in May. Pierson is the Director of Science Policy for the ESA. In his role, he works to raise the profile of the statistics discipline, government stats, and statisticians nationally. He also advocates on behalf of HSA members, and for more engagement of statisticians, and the need to invest in our data infrastructure. The AASA has been supportive of the data science and Literacy Act of 2023. And on its seat, Donna and Steve are here to talk with us about it. Thank you both for joining us once again at Stats and Stories.
Steve Pierson
Happy to be here.
Donna LaLonde
Thanks for having us.
John Bailer
You know, this was really cool. When I first heard about this idea of a bill, a data science education bill, not something that I thought would have just come to the minds of most representatives without a little bit of prodding, can you give us– well, maybe just first, what is the bill designed to do? And then maybe we can loop back and talk a little bit about kind of an origin story?
Steve Pierson
Well, obviously, the bill has several pages to it. But it boils down to supporting schools, teachers, educators, who want to implement data literacy education, which of course, includes statistics and includes data science. And, as you know, there's not a lot of curriculum out there. As you know, there's not teachers coming out with data science degrees. And so it's a lot of professional development in the curriculum as needed, and just general support for these schools who want to take the initiative. Let's find ways to support them through the Department of Education.
Rosemary Pennington
Why this bill now? I mean, we've had this ongoing conversation, I think, for years about sort of the importance of data literacy and statistical statistical literacy. But why this bill now? Why did it get introduced, I think, in February of this year?
Steve Pierson
Yes. Well, I think there's several reasons, Rosemary. One is just, you know, the state of science education is growing at K through 12. And, especially exploding at the undergraduate and graduate level. And so there is this need, this recognition that 21st century jobs require data, and working with data learning, you know, getting knowledge from that, to that point. Last fall, the National Academies hosted a two day workshop on K through 12 data science education. So it's certainly a recognized need. There's growing recognition, and there's just a need for this kind of input. So that is one of the drivers. I also want to just recognize that a year or two ago, Senator Patea, led a letter to both the Department of Education and the National Science Foundation, saying, Hey, what are you doing around data science education? So there's that interest in Congress. And so our motivation in having this bill introduced was to make sure the HSA and statisticians had a voice in that, and so that was part of our motivation. And on this point, I need to credit the HSA Science Policy Fellow at the time, Edward Wu, who took a leadership role in, you know, having AAASA do this and drafting the bill.
John Bailer
Yeah, that's a great segue into the next question that I have. How do you go from a good idea to a bill? Can you take us through a little bit of the key steps to key components and maybe a little bit of the timeline associated with that?
Steve Pierson
Yeah, so we saw the letter. It must have been around a year and a half ago, and that's also the time that Edie started as a science policy fellow, I guess two years ago. And, you know, we saw that these discussions were happening, right, we saw the interest in data science education. So, Ed and I started talking about data and what are the needs there and the committees that focus on undergraduate and also K through 12 education. So what are the needs? Where are the opportunities? And from there, you know, we kind of borrowed the playbook of another profession, right, we started looking at what other bills are out there regarding that kind of technical education. And so, we've been pretty open and saying, We borrowed a lot from the playbooks of the computer science educators, there are bills that you'll see a lot of similarities with.
Rosemary Pennington
Donna, in the press release the AASA sent out, you're quoted as saying, “it's essential all children leave high school able to live and work in a data driven world.” And I imagine sort of thinking, I know your interest in K through 12 education, what do you think would be like the best case scenario for if this bill gets passed, how it could impact K through 12 education around data and stats?
Donna LaLonde
I think that the best case scenario would be that all all states would have the resources to look at their curriculum, and make sure that the teachers both professional development for existing teachers, for current teachers, but also to support pre-service educators, acquiring the necessary skills and knowledge to feel comfortable teaching in a data rich context. And, you know, that maybe sounds like Well, of course, teachers are comfortable teaching in a data rich context. But that's really a heavy lift, right? It's a heavy lift from finding the data to analyzing the data. And we want, I think, with the commitment from this bill to professional development, we can make that lift somewhat less heavy.
John Bailer
You know, that's interesting to think about, in particular, the pre-service teachers have their dance cards very full, they have a pretty highly specified collection of requirements. And in some ways to introduce more data science aspects to the pre-service training, is suggesting that other things will probably be removed. And that seems like, I know, I don't want to dive into the Oh, dear, that could be really tough. But it's an important recognition that needs change. And I think that I appreciate this. What have you thought at all about that? Or what that might mean?
Donna LaLonde
Yeah, well, I think the really exciting thing about this for me as a as a person who, in my past life spent time in pre-service, math and science education, is there's this real opportunity in data science to take an integrative approach, which my colleagues in Elementary Education already sort of know about. And you know, I'm a real fan of the middle school team approach. Well, I feel like we are with data science, right? Data science touches everything. And so yeah, John, you're raising a really good point that, if we approach it from, this has to go, then that's going to be a tension that is going to be really difficult to reconcile, but if we approach it from, this is what we're doing, and this is how we can do it better, and the skills and knowledge gained in statistics class get really transferred to science, chemistry class, biology, class, physical science class, then I think that integrated approach really moves us forward, and I think prepares our kids for a really fulfilling career further study life work. And as I guess I was quoted in the release just being good citizens.
John Bailer
I love this integrated approach. I do.
Rosemary Pennington
So I think I'm looking on the Congress's website, which you know, it's so handy to have that, but I think it's been referred to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. I assume it's still in that committee. If this bill actually would make it through both houses of Congress intact in its current form, what would it actually allow educators to do? What are the brass tacks of what would it let them do if this were passed?
Steve Pierson
So it sets up a voluntary grant program with Department of Education, which means you know, we're not putting requirements on anyone to apply after the money or to do these things, but they can apply for funding for the professional training of teachers who might have degrees in computer science or science or mathematics to get the data science skills, but it also allows for curriculum development and dissemination. There is a call out provision there for two year community colleges, which is purposeful because of the role that two year colleges play in just diversifying our STEM ed workforce right there. They're very important vehicles in that regard. So what did two year colleges need, right, they definitely need the curriculum, right. They need professional development, but as importantly, because they serve as kind of a job skills training program for that region that needs to reach out to the local companies to find out what are the data science skills that they need? So there's funding for that. And you know, just like all instructors, they are very busy, right? So how do they carve out the time to do that sort of outreach? There's also kind of support for two year colleges to do just the transition for those students to do a four year degree and try to make that as seamless as possible. But implicit in this, Rosemary, is just the idea that not only do we want to further data science, and literacy education, but we also want to diversify the STEM ed workforce, right? We need more STEM workers in the US. And it's important that it be a diverse workforce for many reasons.
John Bailer
You know, I'm curious, how did you get four representatives to sign on as co-sponsors? So I heard, you know, I heard kind of this background of being inspired or finding these templates of other sort of technology curriculum bills coming through, and then you get a nice template for building one with data science, then, did you shop it around to representatives? I mean, how did that process work?
Steve Pierson
I'm glad you asked about that, John. So we have been shopping around for a while. And we had a staffer who is an Einstein Fellow, which means she was a K through 12 educator, serving a year in Congress as a fellow and she was very enthusiastic and supportive about this. And we've been talking to them, as well as others a lot. And ultimately, we were connected with Representative Haley Stevens, of Michigan through our colleagues at the American Mathematical Society. And Representative Stephens' staff was very enthusiastic, and at one point told us that Representative Stevens liked the bill so much she wanted it to be her first bill introduced in this new Congress. So that was terrific. In talking to many people, you know, we, as you know, the Representative buyer of Virginia is one of the original sponsors, right? And he makes sense because the NSA headquarters is in his district. More importantly, he has this strong interest in AI. So he's pursuing a master's in AI, and he's on the science committee. We did a lot of shopping around and I'll go on to say that Mr. Baird, of Indiana, has Purdue in his district. He's also an original sponsor of a bill that's called the Mathematical and Statistical Modeling Act, which does a lot of it. There's a lot of synergies. It's more research based. And it's also more, it's focused on the NSF. Ms. Kim of California, is on the Education and Workforce Committee. And if you go to our website, there's a line in the biography that says, STEM education is vital for America's competitiveness. Unfortunately, they went for it. So yes, there's a lot of shopping around. And, and things just fell in place this spring winter to get the four of them on.
Rosemary Pennington
You're listening to Stats and Stories. And today we're talking with the AASAs, Donna LaLonde and Steve Pierson about the data science and Literacy Act of 2023, which is currently slowly making its way through Congress.
John Bailer
As I looked at kind of its status, I was expecting you to break out in Schoolhouse Rock, I'm just a bill, you know. So that's probably not such an old reference that people are gonna have to go search on their favorite browser to find that song played. So now help me understand how long it's going to take to go through this process. I looked at the task list here. So its introduction, passed the House, passed the Senate, to President, signed into law. And right now it's living in a subcommittee, correct or?
Steve Pierson
But that's correct, John, it is going to be a long process, as you know from you know, Schoolhouse Rock. A lot of bills never become law, right. It's a small fraction. But that doesn't mean that we're not achieving our goals and having members of Congress talking about this bill, considering it is raising awareness. And that is vital, right. But we're also injecting AASAs voice into this. And I want to talk a little bit more. And I want Donna to know what is the important voice that statistics brings to data science education. The other thing we are doing, in addition to just making members of Congress and their staff aware of statisticians of the AASA, and data science so that they can be promoting it to their constituents and students is we're also, you know, building relationships. And so I already mentioned the American Mathematical Society, yes, we have these long standing relationships with them. But having this collaboration with them is really important. We also have, it's kind of our core group, we've got data science for everyone run out to University of Chicago, where Eric Rosa is really energetic and contributing a lot. The stomachs coalition is run by Patel, they're in Ohio. They're a strong supporter of this, as well as in Florence, which is the professional association of operations researchers, and also management scientists. So we're building on these relationships, and, you know, preventing kind of a united voice on the importance of data science education.
Rosemary Pennington
Well, Donna, I will ask Steve's question, what does statistics have to add to the conversation about data literacy and data science?
Donna LaLonde
So, Rosemary, I will answer that question. But if I might, I'd love to just add a little bit to the notion of collaboration. Because, for me, one of the really exciting things about being involved in education initiatives at the AASA is this opportunity to collaborate with like minded individuals and organizations. And Steve has mentioned some but I think we would be remiss not to give a shout out to our colleagues at NCTM. And NAASA National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, because the conversations that we've had about how to support K-12, mathematics educators, has been really important and continues to be really important, and that AASA has a long standing joint committee relationship with NCTM. And, I think the bigger picture about that is, there are just so many talented individuals in every state that are committed to working for kids. And that is just, you know, regardless of the struggles, that is really wonderful to be a part of, but to answer your question, let's say let's take that data word. And I think that my colleagues would drum me out of the American Statistical Association, if I didn't say that, statisticians and statistics have a lot to say about data, and it has a lot to say about how you collect and consider the data, what data even want to collect and consider. Right. So I think it's fair to say that something that data science and statistics have have in common is, you know, is that notion of a driving question, that something that is going to drive the the investigation, wanting to understand a phenomenon better, you know, wanting to make a decision about a policy, you know, let's let's be frank wanting to make a marketing decision, right. I mean, I think it's across all of our work lives. So what Statistics Education brings to data science education is the knowledge of how to formulate that question, how to understand what data you should consider and collect. Boy, and I have to say, a really important thing that Statistics Education brings to data science education, is the ethical considerations. As John knows, the HSA has professional guidelines for ethical statistical practice. And, you know, those ethical guidelines need to be infused in the curriculum, you know, sort of beginning in kindergarten, right? If you're collecting data, you need to be thinking about the ramifications of the impact of that data collection. And then I would say the other contribution that we make, and obviously it is a contribution, and it is in collaboration with lots of other disciplines, but in particular, our colleagues in computer science education, now we we bring the knowledge of what's the appropriate technology that should be used to both code lacked, but also analyze. And then I'll say a very important part of that is to visualize.
Steve Pierson
If I could jump on to that for a moment. I mean, besides that, the great points that Donna added, you know that, you know, statistics is the science of learning from data. So of course it has this overlap with data science, right. But in addition, in terms of the instruction of statistics at K through 12, and a community colleges, there's also I mean, there's a lot of similar challenges, as I've already mentioned, that the people teaching statistics, you know, the vast majority, I would say, do not have a statistics degree. And it's gonna be the same way with data science, and statisticians, ESA, and the broader community of which NCTM is part they have this way to find that professional development, right. And the guidelines for assessment, instruction, statistics, education is an important part of that. What should be taught? How should it be taught? So AASA, and statisticians bring a lot of I would say, kind of the logistics and the framework that can be used for informing the people in data science education, what could be taught.
Donna LaLonde
I was just gonna say, John, you actually mentioned it at the beginning, you said those pre-service teachers, their dance card is pretty full. And so oftentimes, that dance card doesn't mean it. Obviously, you cannot become an expert in everything in every subject. And what I think teachers are great at is they are great at learning how to learn. And so it is the responsibility of the professional associations AASA and NCTM, and a response and others as well, of course, a responsibility we take very seriously is to contribute meaningful professional development.
John Bailer
You know, Steve, I think you were looking at my notes because I just jotted down a note about gays. And I know that there was recently a revision and an update to some of these guidelines, these guidelines for assessment of instruction of STEM education. How has data science started to move into some of these guidelines and recommendations that the society is promoting for the community teaching stats?
Donna LaLonde
Wow, I think that is just such a wonderful question. And what it takes me back to is at the most recent SDSS conference, the Symposium on data science and statistics, right, so one of one of our meetings, there was a plenary panel about careers in data science, right. And someone raised their hand and asked the question of the plenary panel, which included and I think Kathy Enza was the chair and you know, sort of a number of other folk but raise the question. So what's the difference between data science and statistics? Right. And so and I gotta admit, I think that that is a really important question. And I think it's one we're struggling to answer. Right? I feel like what we do know, though, is that statistics and statistics education has a rich history. And there is some foundational knowledge that you need to acquire. And I think that's what gays is bringing to the table. But that said, the revision of gays acknowledges that our approach to teaching statistics can can be more data driven in the sense that it can involve more real world data, right? So we can get students at an early age dealing with messy data understanding that when you collect the data, that there are transformations that you might need to make to actually make that usable to answer your specific question. So I think at the K 12, especially at K 12. That's what I'm seeing with the influence of data science. I think we're becoming more aware that real world experiences open ended questions, questions that deal with the uncertainty and so you have to be comfortable that there is not a single answer.
John Bailer
Now, I'm thinking about the way that this bill was framed, and it was very clearly bipartisan, which I thought was very interesting. So right from the start, you were trying to get the broadest possible support for this bill. And, you know, it sounds like that it's still it's still a goal, and it's still continuing, but you're trying to generate more supporters and Congress and the House side and then ultimately at the Senate side, so are you going to be asking all of all the people listening to the show, to write to their representatives and encourage them to sign on is not just?
Steve Pierson
Right, John, but also to meet with them and the NSA is happy to support those meetings. I get to sit in on a lot of these meetings, and it's really a pleasure because I get to hear the passion of our members and others in the community speaking to this, and I've got to say that the reception has been really terrific. People get data science and data literacy, right. And there are people putting it alongside reading literacy, right, and math literacy, and recognize as an example, I was on with a dean of a University in Indiana speaking with an office and the staffer grew up on a farm. And he immediately said, I get it, you know, data, we've got all of these sensors in our combine, and then in the cedars, right, agriculture is hugely dependent upon it. And I could give you a number of examples, how people get that now, a challenge is, we are looking to add a program at the Department of Education in lean budget times. And, you might have heard in the first presidential Republican debate, that there are people who want to just eradicate, get rid of the Department of Education. So that is the challenge for us. But people get this and it's gonna allow us to explore other ways to data science and literacy education.
Rosemary Pennington
Well, that's all the time we have for this episode of Stats and Stories. Good luck getting it through Congress. I will definitely be watching it as it moves through, hopefully, both houses. Thank you both so much for being here today. Donna and Steve. Stats and Stories is a partnership between Miami University's Department of Statistics and media, journalism and film and to the American Statistical Association. You can follow us on Twitter @StatsandStories, Apple podcast, or other places where you find podcasts. If you'd like to share your thoughts on the program, send your email to statsandstories@miami.oh.edu, or check us out at statsandstories.net, and be sure to listen for future editions of Stats and Stories, where we discuss the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics.