Description

In 2011, Beyond 100K began set an ambitious goal to recruit and retain 100,000 STEM teachers to America’s K-12 classrooms within ten years. After exceeding this goal in 2021, Beyond 100K now seeks to expand this work recruit and retain 150,000 Black, Latinx, and Native American teachers in STEM over the next ten years to inspire the next generation of scientists. All students can develop a spark for STEM subjects, but fewer adults are choosing to teach, and a persistent shortage of STEM teachers is creating barriers for more young people to grow their interest in STEM. Fostering belonging in STEM education for marginalized youth through effective role modeling is key to expanding STEM opportunities for women and minorities, and ultimately advancing America’s leadership in the sciences.
In collaboration with Kelefors Education Partners, Beyond 100K is in the early stages of developing a data-driven tool through which to measure and assess STEM classroom and teaching environments to create more inclusive spaces that center belonging. Beyond 100K seeks to create a tool that will provide learning, insights, and best practices for partners and the field to prepare Black, Latinx, and Native American STEM teachers, to enter and remain in teaching fields. The tool will provide insights into the connection between how teachers foster belonging, and the interventions that support students, while also highlighting practices that enable and empower teachers to cultivate belonging. Beyond 100K has built a network of K-12 schools, non-profits, philanthropies, think-tanks, and other expert organizations in the space to help develop this assessment tool. Beyond 100K will gather quantitative and qualitative data from K-12 partners continually, and they will share this information with its expert partners to understand the barriers to belonging and propose data-driven strategies for mitigating these barriers.
The development of this tool will be broken into four phases. First is the discovery phase, bringing together experts and key stakeholders in the K-12 STEM space to lay the foundation for work and set objectives. The second phase focuses on the designing of a measurement tool, and the third phase will test and revise these the tool developed. Finally, the fourth phase will integrate the measurement of belonging into programmatic opportunities for partners to engage more deeply and experiment with belonging holistically.
Beyond 100K seeks general operating support from the Luce Foundation so that it can focus resources on developing its measurement tool.