Last January, U.S. President Obama challenged the nation to train 100,000 high-quality science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) teachers in 10 years. Google in Education decided to answer his call to action and became one of the founding members of a community of action called 100Kin10.

Google shared the plan with U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, and his staff in April, who gave their full support. With this backing, Google was able to announce 100Kin10 in June at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) America meeting in Chicago. CGI also identified STEM education as one of its focus areas for its new branch of U.S. Initiatives.

This past week, 100Kin10 officially kicked off with 80 partner organizations, all contributing to a threefold mission: to reverse the United States’ decades-long decline in STEM subjects, to ensure that all children have the basic STEM literacy to be full participants in our economy and democracy and to enable U.S. students to address the most pressing national and global challenges.

Google has made commitments to increase the supply of high quality teachers and retain excellent STEM teachers. Specifically:

• Working with The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT to create a high-profile recognition program for the top 5% of STEM teachers nationwide and are well on our way to this.
• Inviting districts nationwide to join Google for talent academies that will facilitate and fund HR pilot strategies for education.
• Working with university faculty training future teachers throughout California to integrate educational technology across curriculum and scale the practice by funding research on the topic. To that end, Google has established the Google Faculty Institute this August and it’s already funded nine pilots across the state.

Google states that they believe every student should have access to high quality teaching and educational opportunity. They say they also recognize that as a collective, we can better measure our progress and take significant strides toward fulfilling the commitments the Department of Education has made around STEM teaching.

Watch as Former President Bill Clinton, in an interview with Brian Williams at the conclusion of NBC News 2011 “Education Nation” Summit, focuses his opening remarks (3:16 – 4:57) on 100Kin10 commitments to recruit, develop, and retain 100,000 excellent STEM teachers for public schools over the coming 10 years. (September 2011)

Portions via the Official Google Blog by Jordan Bookey, Manager, K-12 Education Outreach Team, Google