Dive Summary:

• Funding for inquiry-based, experiential science learning programs—like the Summer Fellows program at Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center—may be in danger in the Obama administration's budget for fiscal 2014.
• The 2014 budget would cut down on inefficiency from overlap by consolidating STEM education into the Department of Education, the National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution, but despite STEM funding increasing 6% to $3 billion, support for initiatives offered by the National Institutes of Health, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would face cuts.
• For example, the NIH's $15.4 million Science Education Partnership Awards—which funds around 60 programs, including the aforementioned Summer Fellows—would face the chopping block.

From the article:

Ayah Idris, 14, spent two weeks of her summer isolating strawberry DNA at a Seattle cancer research center, watching heart cells pulse in a dish and learning about ethical guidelines for animal research.

The Summer Fellows program “sparked a little passion in me,” says Ayah, a rising 10th-grader whose parents are from Eritrea. “I was kind of interested in science before, but I didn’t really know that much about it. Now I know that science in the real world is what I want to do.” ...