Math and Science Education Initiative (STEM)

The Initiative

American students lag far behind their international peers in science, technology, engineering, and math. Currently, the United States ranks 25th in math and 17th in science among developed nations. Teach For America is addressing the urgent need to improve math and science education by recruiting, training, and supporting outstanding corps members (teachers) to become effective leaders in STEM education in low-income urban and rural communities.

Teach For America's targeted STEM initiative is designed to:

• Increase the number of STEM corps members by partnering with organizations like 100Kin10, a movement that is committed to having 100,000 excellent STEM teachers over the coming ten years.
• Improve our preparation and support program to enhance the effectiveness of our STEM teachers.
• Maximize the leadership and impact of our alumni in STEM education.

We aspire to have 5,000 STEM first and second-year corps members by 2015. At that scale, our STEM teachers would impact over 350,000 students in 2015 alone.

The Impact

Today, more than 3,200 first & second-year STEM corps members are teaching math and science, making Teach For America one of the largest providers of math and science teachers in the country. A rigorous body of research has shown that Teach For America corps members who teach math and science have a measurable, positive, and statistically significant impact on student achievement.

We support our STEM alumni beyond their two years to bring their leadership, talent, energy, and innovation to the front lines of this important work, both inside and outside of the school systems.

• There are more than 6,000 alumni who taught math or science.
• Teaching is the most common career for our STEM alumni.
• 56% of STEM alumni stay in education and 32% stay in the classroom.