Talk, no action on education

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Education is a bit like the weather—everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it. A recent bloviater on the subject is Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who told members of Congress on March 12 that unless the US takes steps to reform immigration policies, education, and investment in scientific research, it will soon lose its competitive edge in technology.

To remedy what he called a dangerous shortfall of skilled scientists and engineers who can develop breakthrough technologies, Gates called for a serious commitment from and partnership between both the public and private sectors to strengthen America's educational opportunities, as reported in Electronic News ("US needs H-1B visa, education reform to stay competitive").

On the need for education reform, Gates called for full funding of the America COMPETES Act, which I wrote about in my September 2007 “Editor's Note.” The act, Gates told Congress, would provide funding for about 1000 more science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) graduate students than were funded in 2007, allowing the National Science Foundation to support more than 35,000 STEM graduate students during 2008 and approximately 41,000 during 2009.

Meanwhile, efforts at developing engineering talent are ad hoc. For example, in this issue's cover story, I profile Hung Nguyen, chief scientist at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems, who won this year's Test Engineer of the Year award in part because of his ability to mentor entry-level engineers, who are often more adept at playing video games than in working in a real-world laboratory.

The state of American education looks particularly dim when viewed in the light of education elsewhere. In her March 12 “Beautiful Country” column in the online Wall Street Journal, Li Yuan recounts the case of Jack Li, whose father, a Caterpillar employee in Beijing, was transferred to Peoria, IL. “Jack enrolled in high school as a ninth-grader,” she writes, adding that his parents weren't worried about their son's academic prospects in a new school, because “They believed that China has better K–12 education than the US.”

“Jack didn't disappoint them,” Yuan continues, adding that three months into his new school, “he scored high enough on the SATs to put him in the top 3% in math and well above-average in writing and reading.”

Yuan notes that “Chinese students like Jack are examples of why Microsoft's Bill Gates asked Congress today to spend more to improve American education in math and science.” She cites the documentary “2 Million Minutes” (the four years of high school), which concludes that Chinese high-school students spend almost twice as much time on schoolwork as their American peers.

It's nice that parents from other countries can expect their children to excel in American schools. But there is a not-so-nice flip side to that. I serve as a tutor in English as a second language in a local adult literacy program, and I work with many Chinese families who are in the US for a few months or a few years. The parents' main concern? How far behind their children might find themselves on returning to school in China.