If we’re weak, why are we No. 1?

It’s our numbers, but educators fear U.S. is losing status to other nations 

By JEAN TARBETT and FREDREKA SCHOUTEN
The Herald-Dispatch
 

Tim Johnson/The Herald-Dispatch Rhiana Dyer, left, helps Qiauchu Zhou, center, move her finger to get a LEGO robot to move its head during class at Spring Hill Elementary. Dyer, Zhou, Doniaetta Garner, right, and others are using LEGO robotics and computer programs to learn about math and science.

WASHINGTON -- Education Secretary Rod Paige appeared somber as federal officials unveiled dismal test results this year: Despite a decade of school reforms, less than one-third of America’s fourth-graders tested could read proficiently at grade level.

"These results are not good enough," Paige declared. "Not in America."

Other recent education news seems equally grim: An international math and science study showed our eighth-graders rank somewhere near Latvia on their math performance, behind their peers in other developed countries.

Nearly one-third of incoming college freshmen are so far behind that they must take remedial courses. And a report released earlier this year by a blue ribbon panel described our weak science and math preparation as a leading national security problem.

This is no time for educators to slack off in trying to spark student interest in science and mathematics, said Linda Hamilton, a Marshall University math instructor who visits local schools and teaches physics and engineering with LEGO.

"We could stay at this level, but that’s not how computers work or how the economy works," she said. "You have to keep moving ahead. We’re just going to have to figure out more clever ways to do things."

But if our education system is so dismal, how did the United States achieve unprecedented economic prosperity during the past decade?

For starters, experts say, think scale. Singapore eighth-graders lead the world in math performance in recent tests, but the country has fewer people than Louisiana.

"We’re four times as big as anybody," said Anthony Carnevale, an economist with the Educational Testing Service, who has studied the link between the economy and education. "In Britain, they better produce a very good engineer, because he’ll be competing against four of ours."

In addition, the U.S. economy is more nimble than bureaucracy-laden systems in many Asian and European countries, where economists say heavy regulation thwarts innovation and productivity.

But education policy experts and business executives insist those competitive advantages won’t last long.

"You can’t have the least-educated work force and have the highest standard of living," said Intel Corp. President and CEO Craig Barrett in an interview with GNS. "We graduate fewer and fewer engineers every year. We graduate fewer high school kids who understand any science and math.

"I don’t see how that can be anything other than a ticking time bomb."

Already, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Finland and Russia boast higher percentages of young adults with science and engineering degrees. And for the first time, four other countries -- Great Britain, Finland, the Netherlands and New Zealand -- have surpassed America’s college graduation rate.

At the same time, the nature of work is changing.

Just ask Tracy Koon, now director of corporate affairs for computer-chip giant Intel. When she joined the company 18 years ago, even high school dropouts could find work there as entry-level factory operators.

"They were repetitive jobs that required facility with your hands more than anything else," Koon said. That job title doesn’t even exist anymore at Intel.

Today’s new entry-level post: a technician with a two-year degree in applied science and the mathematical skills to monitor chip-making equipment that costs millions of dollars.

Everything from coal miners to rail workers to electricians need a new understanding of high-level mathematics, said Robert McClain, director of the Cabell County Career Technology Center in Huntington.

"Math and science play a vital role in any field," he said. "Now, one coal miner can do what maybe 10 could do in the past, but that person needs to be able to run highly technical pieces of machinery." 

Forecasters say technical skills needed in this information economy will make it much harder for workers without post-secondary degrees to earn a living. 

High school graduates, on average, earned $506 a week in 2000, down from $529 in 1980, government figures show -- even with the numbers adjusted for inflation.

And experts say the skills gap could grow even worse when millions of baby boomers retire.

By 2020, 46 million Americans with at least some college education will be older than 55 and poised for retirement, Carnevale predicted. If current patterns hold, another 49 million adults with some college will take their place -- a gain of 3 million.

But the jobs requiring college-educated workers will grow by about 15 million -- creating a shortfall of at least 12 million workers over the next two decades, he said.
 

On the Web: Council on Competitiveness’ 2001 report.

"We’re seeing the very beginning of employers starting to panic about their ability to find skilled workers, and the baby boom has just started to walk out the door," Carnevale said.

"That replacement work force doesn’t exist right now," McClain said. "That’s why schools are trying to tie in post-secondary education. They’re telling us to work together, and that’s what we’re doing with Marshall University very well. That’s all geared toward higher-level disciplines."

The Cabell County Career Technology Center, like other technical centers throughout the region, offers programs in which students can earn dual credit for high school and toward a post-secondary degree. It helps them flow more smoothly into a two-year degree program, encouraging students to partake by saving them time and money.

Meanwhile, to close the gap, U.S. companies increasingly turn to talent from abroad.

The information technology sector has just 5 million workers, but generated about one-third of the nation’s economic growth in the late 1990s, said B. Lindsay Lowell, director of research at the Pew Hispanic Center. And a whopping 20 percent of those workers were foreign born.

Industry demand for foreign talent is so great that Congress has increased dramatically the number of temporary employment visas that immigration officials can grant foreigners with specialized skills. The number of these visas shot up to 195,000 last year, from just 48,600 in 1992.
 

Many of the dire predictions about the future of U.S. science and math education find their roots in the influential Third International Mathematics and Science Study, which showed U.S. 12th-graders ranking near the bottom of a 23-nation comparison.

But some scholars, like Iris Rotberg, a research professor of education policy at George Washington University, said the comparison is flawed, in part, because students taking the tests in countries outside the United States ranked among their nations’ smartest. Some even attended highly specialized schools that focus on math and science.

By contrast, the pool of U.S. students tested came from the general population of high school seniors.

But the report’s implications -- along with industry’s growing reliance on foreign labor -- are helping drive U.S. education policy.

This month, the House of Representatives approved a spending bill that included $5 million to give $7,500-a-year stipends to math and science majors who agree to teach those subjects for least two years.

Hamilton of Marshall helps children apply and learn to enjoy mathematics through computerized programs with LEGO. 

"We do what they think is playing with LEGO and I think is mathematics," Hamilton said. Students build working machines and robots from LEGO and program them to do various tasks. They build and program pulleys, gears, levers, wheels and axles. And through the Internet, some of her students have worked with classes in other parts of the world. 

"I don’t think some of the students had realized some of these things are careers," Hamilton said. "They have to realize this when they’re young that this math and science stuff goes someplace."

Becky Chenoweth, a math teacher at Spring Hill Elementary, invites Hamilton to her class weekly and has watched her students’ understanding and enthusiasm for math climb.

Why so many students struggle with it may have something to do with how it’s taught, she said. This year, Cabell County Schools has implemented new math programs that integrate the use of manipulatives into math education. And that’s what children need, she said.

"I think it needs to be a hands-on subject and made relevant to everyday life," said Chenoweth, whose 13-year-old daughter, Maggie, has worked extensively with LEGO robotics and enjoys them. "So many teachers just teach it at the board and from the textbook. I think you need to use a lot of different approaches."

Herald-Dispatch reporter Jean Tarbett may be reached at jeant@herald-dispatch.com. Fredreka Schouten is a reporter for Gannett News Service.