Dive Brief:
- An Obama administration push towards training 100,000 K-12 STEM teachers by the year 2021 is being carried out by the 100Kin10 coalition and gaining traction, with 49 new businesses, non-profits, foundations and academic institutions agreeing to collaborate.
- The formalized partnership and organizing efforts formed in 2011, after the presdent's State of the Union address, and now boasts 280 member organizations. The organization funds its work through grants and private contributions.
- Today, the program is at a halfway point, Campus Technology reports, and "over 28,000 STEM educators" have been trained.
Dive Insight:
Thus far, the success of the initiative is largely due to its collaborative and cooperative approach. Member organizations keep joining, and they bring valuable resources to the table. Texas A&M University, for example, is one new member that has proposed that three of its colleges, the College of Science, the College of Education and Human Development and the Dwight Look College of Engineering, will participate by training teachers to have STEM skills.
The ongoing success and development teacher training is a notable win for the Obama administration in education. Previously, experts worried that his federal budgets oversimplified STEM training by wrapping funding from the Department of Education, the National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution together.
Powerful corporations have taken note, and companies like Chevron are helping efforts. Intel and Boeing have also committed to helping improve STEM learning in the U.S. Last January, AT&T also announced a partnership with the Consortium of Florida Education Foundations (CFEF) aimed at increasing interactive STEM learning opportunities for Florida students.