Foundations Collaborate to Build Science-Teaching Ranks

Companies and foundations have poured at least $175-million over the past four years into efforts to improve how Americans learn science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM.

Much of that money has been directed not to students but to teachers, to increase their numbers and improve how they teach.

“The standards for science teaching haven’t changed for 30 years,” says Gerald Solomon, chairman of the STEM Funders Network.

Since the network’s founding in 2010, its 17 members, which include the Carnegie, S.D. Bechtel Jr., and Gill foundations as well as companies like Chevron, Motorola, and Nascar, have poured “tens of millions of dollars” into advocacy of more stringent science-education standards, says Mr. Solomon, who also leads the Samueli Foundation, founded by the semiconductor mogul Henry Samueli.

The United States ranks 52nd among nations in the quality of its math and science education, according to the World Economic Forum. That state of affairs will make it difficult for Americans to tackle “grand challenges” like environmental sustainability, says Paula Golden, executive director of the Broadcom Foundation, the semiconductor company’s philanthropy.

“The world is fighting for the same limited pool of STEM talent,” she says. Meanwhile, she adds, technology is evolving so fast that “the types of jobs and, more importantly, the types of thinking required to do them will require us to change how we’re teaching kids, from pre-K on up. We’re not moving fast enough.”

Driving Force

The Carnegie Corporation of New York has been a driving force behind efforts to produce more trained teachers.

It has spent $19-million on 100kin10, a nonprofit dedicated to fulfilling the goal, set by President Obama three years ago, of adding 100,000 math and science teachers to the nation’s classrooms by the year 2021.

The project, under the auspices of the National Center for Civic Innovation, has been joined by other grant makers, including the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the NewSchools Venture Fund, and the Overdeck Family Foundation. To help support the project, grant makers must award at least $500,000 each to organizations that are part of 100kin10.

“From the beginning, there’s been an appetite among funders for this,” says Talia Milgrom-Elcott, executive director of 100kin10.

The group says its research shows that its money is helping to ensure that 37,000 people will graduate and acquire the certification needed to teach science and math by 2016. If the numbers hold, they would represent about a 5-percent increase in STEM graduates each year.

“We want to continue to find the best ways to put high-quality, excellently trained people into the classroom for a long time,” says Ms. Milgrom-Elcott.

Plenty of Teachers

But the problem, say some researchers and advocates, is not a shortage of educators capable of teaching high-school STEM courses. There are plenty of qualified teachers, they say. It’s just that those educators are not working—or staying long—in the places where they’re needed most.

With 25,000 STEM teachers leaving the classroom each year and only 7,000 retiring, the supply of STEM teachers exceeds the number of jobs available, according to research conducted by Richard Ingersoll, a professor of education and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Many of those who quit are leaving jobs at low-performing schools in poor neighborhoods.

“The problem is we’re losing people because they don’t get the support from principals,” says Ms. Milgrom-Elcott. “We’re trying to find methods for changing that so people stay on the job longer.”

Some shortages do persist, she says. Her group hears of the need for more math and science teachers from sources that include rural school districts and some educational associations. Officials have told 100kin10 leaders that certain types of teachers, such as physics instructors, can’t be trained fast enough to meet the demand.

Grant makers and advocates need to stay the course, Ms. Milgrom-Elcott and others say. While STEM graduates are leaving college in a glut, tech industries still struggle to find suitably skilled workers.

“There were 2 million unfilled STEM jobs during a period of high unemployment,” she says. “From everything we’re seeing, we’re confident that the demand for STEM workers is much greater than the numbers we’re producing.”