Successful k-12 STEM education

Beyond just reading books, I have had to make some sense of K-12 education. I have to do this so that I can determine, for two towns competing for my businesses, which one is better.

I get barraged by educationese and get confused.
I get confused because educators often talk in incomprehensible jargon, and, even if you can get someone to define the jargon terms, these same terms will mean something different to the next educator that you listen to. It is hard to understand what good sounding sentences mean once you find out that the words in the sentences do not have a stable definition or, sometimes, any definition at all.

So here (in the title) is a report from the National Academy of Sciences about what works in STEM and another one from Brookings.