White House announces STEM education initiative

Ride, who is now chief executive of Sally Ride Science, a K-12 science education company, said she is excited about the new organization and hopes it will help improve the quality of science and math teaching in the U.S. She said the goal is to improve STEM teaching at all grade levels, with a particular focus on increasing enrollment among female and under-represented minority students.

Among the programs the new group will fund are summer science camps for girls, robotics competitions for teenagers, professional development for math teachers and efforts to increase the number of teachers entering the field with a STEM undergraduate degree. The organization will also create a scorecard for each state to help track its progress.

Obama is also expected to announce new partnerships with science museums and electronic games in hopes of using both to stimulate student interest in science and math.