[EricH]

Originally Posted by JamesBrown

Do we have any concrete proof that participation in FIRST at any level increases Math and Science scores? Further more you would need to prove that there isn't a way to get more kids involved with FTC or that FTC wouldn't offer the same benefits.

Take a look at the summary I linked in my first post (Bill's Blog). Concrete proof? No. Anecdotal evidence? Well, this isn't the first survey they've done... and I seem to recall that earlier ones showed something similar.

Proving that there isn't a way to get more kids involved with FTC (or VRC) isn't exactly difficult. It also isn't exactly easy, if you don't like anecdotal evidence. Read the first post: they had an FTC team for multiple years with a few students (IIRC, that's somewhere below 10 due to FTC rules allowing a max of 10). This means that they barely recruited enough to maintain numbers, I'll assume not for lack of effort. The year they go to FRC, they have 15 students for the next year--not counting freshmen, I'd think. At minimum, that's a 50% increase (10-15), if not more.

Short version of the long paragraph: For years, they seem to have had trouble maintaining membership; in a single year, they increased membership significantly just by going up to FRC.