The Miami Herald – Christina Veiga
“Miami-Dade County’s hiring department may get 1,000 applications for an elementary school teacher position. But when the nation’s fourth-largest district is looking for a high school chemistry teacher, it’s lucky to get 20. In the race to educate more students in STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — a major obstacle is finding enough qualified teachers. “There’s always an opening, basically,” said Arlene Diaz, Miami-Dade’s director of instructional certification. With growth in STEM jobs projected to outpace many other fields, the White House has called on American schools to graduate 1 million new students in fields like physics and biomedical engineering. To get there, the federal government says the U.S. needs 10,000 new STEM teachers every year for the next decade.”(more)