Fox News – Vince Bertram
“American students’ alarmingly bad performance on domestic and international assessments highlights the need to better educate them in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Although schools and districts across the country are making tremendous strides in providing opportunities for quality STEM education, outdated teacher qualification standards in many states make it difficult to find teachers who are trained and experienced in these subjects. Right now, one-third of math and science teachers in our country’s public schools did not major in math and science in college and/or are not certified to teach them. Yet professionals with degrees and work experience in STEM fields often cannot teach K-12 students without a lengthy and costly certification process. In fact, 24 of the 50 states have eligibility restrictions for who may teach STEM courses.”(more)