President Obama will honor the nation’s top teachers at a White House event Tuesday where an outside group will announce its plan to train 100,000 new teachers specializing in science, technology, engineering and math teachers by 2021.
The group, 100Kin10, said its plan marks a major milestone in reaching Obama’s ambitious goal laid out five years ago.
“Five years ago, this ambitious and unprecedented goal sounded impossible, but we have reached this milestone because hundreds of diverse and lading organizations across the country have stepped up, collaborated and committed to innovative solutions to address our severe STEM teacher shortage,” said Talia Milgrom-Elcott, 100Kin10’s co-founder and executive director.
Hundreds of national partners have collectively pledged more than $90 million to the effort and 100Kin10 has already trained 30,000 teachers in STEM topics.
Obama also plans to announce new financial commitments to another public-private collaboration, called TEACH, led by the Department of Education and Microsoft with support from Facebook and the College Football Playoff Foundation, as well as MyCollege Options, the nation’s largest college-planning platform.
The program, in partnership with the Ad Council, will run ads encouraging college graduates to become teachers by highlighting the benefits of the job, including creativity, leadership and personal fulfillment.
Microsoft is renewing its support by chipping in $3 million, and Facebook is providing pro-bono creative work and donated media on its platform to help reach students and recent graduates interested in STEM subjects.
The College Football Playoff Foundation will provide another $100 million over the next 10 years for teacher-related initiatives. Over the last two years, the Foundation has funded 6,000 classroom projects reaching 1.2 million teachers and students through its Extra yard for Teachers project.
The president first proposed adding 100,000 STEM teachers to the nation’s schools in his 2011 State of the Union address. 100Kin10 formed in response to that call and organized the campaign with a network of partners across a range of education, business, government, non-profit and community-based organizations across all 50 states.
The partner organizations include the Clinton Global Initiative, Teach for America, the American Federation of Teachers, as well as organizations such as the Girl Scouts and government agencies such as NASA.
The California State University system has trained nearly 10,000 new STEM teachers since the campaign began and will train tens of thousands more by the end of this 10-year goal, according to Dr. Loren Blanchard, executive vice chancellor of California State University.
