Why other countries are feasting on our engineering jobs
Dear Education System,
You get a D. Yes, a D and that at best. I’m also going to have to report this to your parents because if you don’t start improving looks like the whole system is getting ready to repeat the 8th grade. What?!? Your parents already know you are about to epically fail…
Dear Government,
Your child, the Education System, is about to flunk. They have brought to my attention that they have already discussed this with you and, well, you don’t really seem to be doing anything about it…A little TLC goes a long way.
The Report Card
According to the 2007 TIMSS, conducted by the U.S. government and other countries, we are nowhere near the level of education as some other countries. nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/commissioner/remarks2008/12_9_2008.asp (A new TIMSS is being conducted this year)
At eighth grade, the average U.S. mathematics score was higher than those of students in 37 of the 47 other countries, lower than those in 5 countries (located in Asia), and not measurably different than those in the other 5 countries. Eighth-graders from Chinese Taipei had the highest estimated mathematics score in TIMSS 2007.
At eighth grade, the average U.S. science score was higher than the average scores of students in 35 of the 47 other countries, lower than those in 9 countries (located in Asia or Europe), and not measurably different from those in the other 3 countries. Again, Singapore had the highest estimated science score.
This Semester
In 2011, more than 60 countries and jurisdictions, including the United States, will participate in TIMSS. More than 20,000 students in more than 1,000 schools across the United States will take the assessment in 2011, joining almost 500,000 other students around the world taking part in TIMSS.
We’ve also seen over the past few months, the President traveling around the country to some of our leading technology companies. He has stated multiple times how the future lies with technology jobs.
But are we really geared up to compete in the future? The signs aren’t good according to the 2007 TIMSS. But whose fault is it? The education system, the government?
Well it’s pretty simple. The government parents the education system. The state government sets the standard for the education systems, which passes them down to the local schools. While this may help school to keep minimum education level, it also partially limits the principals, teachers and administration to push the students further. Why? Because many areas can’t get additional funding beyond the standard program or the curriculum is so tight, there is no room for innovation or creativity in science and math. So in essence the government is not supporting the local school’s educational growth.
Without its support, the Education System will not reach its potential and put us in a place to compete in the future.
That big fat D does not belong to the hard-working educators that are in the trenches day in and day out doing what they love. They get an A+ (And if it was possible to give them higher they would easily earned it.) That D belongs to the one that ties the hand of the educators.
Dear Government,
You get that D! Start being a parent, seriously!
Bryan DeLuca
21 Comments
You are correct!
State Governments = Fail
Hopefully the education system won’t follow the post office model.
Great article.
Good article, but why did you let parents off the hook?
Thank you for presenting the facts. I don’t know if your interpretation is accurate. I used to homeschool the kids. There was a study done in Missouri (I think) wherein an impoverished school district was given a big chunk of money and they got everything that was asked: computers, upgraded facilities, new textbooks. The result for the next two years were that the students tested even worse than the years before. The teachers that used to grace our classrooms are now in corporate jobs. What’s left over are teachers who either couldn’t cut it in the corporate workforce or (less often) those that truly love teaching. Teachers are not assessed for job performance. That is a far bigger problem than funding. I believe that they should be well-funded but also held accountable for their performance like any employee in the private sector.
You bring up some very good points. However, it looks to me like you are implying standards based education is the problem. I think you miss the problem completely. If most of our children actually learned all of the material required by the standards we would not be having this problem. As I see there are two fundamental problems that need to be addressed.
First, schools need authority. Authority that is underscored, not undermined by parents. This means the ability to discipline in meaningful ways, without parents coming to demand lenience. We cannot allow ill-mannered children and parents to destroy other kids learning opportunity. This also means the ability to force students to repeats grades until they have mastered the educational material as well as the relational skills to succeed at the next level.
We need to create a positive image for math and science, not just for girls. Our current social image shows engineers and scientist as social outcasts. Somehow it became good to be an idiot and bad to be intelligent, this is especially true for young men and boys. Find a TV show that extols the life of a well adjusted intelligent man, he does not exist. This trend must be turned around. There is nothing our schools or government will be able to do to solve the education problem until they solve the perception problem. Kids need to understand how cool science and technology are so they want to learn of their own will.
Reigned by the boundaries set by consistent reasonable authority kids thrive. They love to learn. We need to avoid squelching children’s inherent desire to learn. However, all of this is for not without parents that want to see it happen. At the end of the day this is not a job for “Big Brother” it is a job for mom and dad.
I would have to agree with GUY. The whole time I read this article I thought, where is the parents’ accountability? The truth is, education starts in the home, and if the parents take no interest in their child’s education then the child is going to fail. Many parent(s) in America think that school is just a day care center to drop their kids off at, never caring about whether or not they are learning anything. I grew up with many friends who had failed out of high school by our senior year – but if you compared their parents to mine, you would have seen something drastically different. While their parents let them play video, watch and listen to trash like MTV from the time they got home from school until the time they went to bed – mine forced me to do my homework before anything else, and stressed the importance of good grades and going to college. Consequently, I ended up with two engineering degrees by age 25 – and you do not want to know what they are doing today. Why don’ you compare the culture of China, Japan, Korea, and Singapore to the United States? You will also see something drastically different. You bring yourself and your family honor by earning top marks in school there, whereas we live in a country where kids think of nobody but themselves – a narcissistic generation that thrives off of trying to look cooler or more individualistic than everyone else rather than caring about getting good grades and making their family proud. Accountability does not come from the government, it comes from the home – put the blame truly where is belongs.
I agree with Wyatt:.
Here in California education quality went down when the state took control. It went down some more when the Federals got involved.
The biggest enemy of education is the ACLU a tool of the left.
I remember in my lifetime when the Parent Teacher organization was gutted.Power was taken away from parents and teachers.
What do you expect parents to do now? Fight wind mills ?
There has been a steady take over of education by the leftist socialist at all levels of education.
The intention is to enslave us to a national government after brain washing as many as possible.
Most people like others to take over for them .That way they do not have to be responsible.
The solutions to education have to be done locally. Large Government only makes things worse and non functional in most cases.
Better education is not going to solve our economic problems or loss of engineering jobs problem. It may actually make it worse by spending money and resources on education that cannot be utilized. There is a huge discrepancy between our wage and income structure and that of the third world that we are forced to go offshore for not only our basic needs but our engineering needs. When the third world catches up to our wage structure we may get some jobs back but by that time the world’s resources will be so depleted that it will be little consolation. Imagine one billion people in China and one billion in India consuming at even half our rate of consumption. Additionally, our industrial infrastructure will be thoroughly disintegrated and it will take a lot of time if we had any resources left to rebuild it. Right now we can have 10 million more PhD’s and it won’t make any difference unless our wage structure gets closer to the third world. In a democratic capitalistic system that will not happen voluntarily though mother nature may enforce it some day. We cannot stipulate that other countries will have inferior brains than ours so the wages dominate the equation.
In America, we are mandated to educate everyone and prepare them for college. Other cultures, particularly those whom I have visited in the Far East, have parallel educational tracks for young people who do not have the aptitude, attitude, or (unfortunately in some cases) parental wealth to allow them to attend the best schools. Don’t beat up on the American educational system based solely on standardized test scores of other nations, particularly Far Eastern, but focus on acting locally (volunteer, attend school board meetings, tutor and mentor, etc.) while thinking globally e.g. acknowledge that there is no Constitutional role for the Federal government to be involved in education whatsoever, and act accordingly.
@David: Actually I’m beating up on the government for tieing the hands of the education system.
I believe that, even though our educational system is in dire straits, these numbers presented are not realistic.
It has been shown that countries like China do not test all of their children, only the ones in cities receiving good educations. Many of the rural children do not even have access to an education and would severely pull their numbers down.
In America pretty much all the children are thrown into the testing pot. Including the unfortunate inner city children getting a sub standard education.
I believe if you compare America’s top achievers with the rest of the world, you will see that we are still #1.
@Chris – Great point.
We definately have the best education system in the world, reguardless of the test results.
This article ignores the negative social bias that is present in U.S. society, against intelligence and intellectual pursuits by young people. Most schools have a built-in culture of negative peer pressure that ridicules, puts down, isolates, and discourages any student who tries to exceed the minimum requirements for academic success. Raising your hand to answer questions in class, doing science projects, having hobbies that involve any form of technology other than computers — these are a ticket to becoming an instant outcast, a pariah to one’s fellow students. To top it off, many teachers are intimidated by bold curiousity expressed in the classroom.
Yes, the Government fail. However, it is the states because when the Federal gives them a check and the state says “no” because of states rights etc, then they layoff teachers etc.
It is also the School Board level because they need to infuse new ideas into their curriculum, such as using mathmatica or Wolfram alpha into their curriculum instead of memorizing formulas. Formulas are great but can we “spice it up” and apply it to real world applications?
Same with science. How many frogs do we need to dissect? None, because we can use computer to drill down to organs and cell level with out the squeemish or the smell of formalthehyde.
The article draws the incorrect conclusion that more funding would solve the problem. Lets face it, the education system becuase it is overfunded. We invest too much money in forcing children to be educated when they clearly don’t have any interest in it. Nations that score highly in education surveys have children that have a hunger for education. In several notable examples these children have been placed in the US system and have achieved statistically significant success when comparred to our US children. Our education system is failing becuase it is now populated with its own product and we seem to think that pouring more money into the system will reverese the results. We continue to increase the spending and the resutls get worse, seems we can’t learn from our own experience. Our children are not scoring well because they are not interested in learning (it’s more fun to play xbox). What seems to be the elephant in the room is that in prehistoric times (50 years ago) we had a successful system that included parents, children and a simple school system. Now we essentailly have a parentless population of children and an education system (not a school system) that is expected to achieve equal or better results. As we proven over and over again this doesn’t work. Better to realize that our present state will produce children that score well on sureveys. Uless we are interested in going back to a traditional family society we will not solve the scoring problem. No matter what we say, our actions say that that we prefer to leave a children behind. Lets all hail Murphy Brown!
Yes, the article draws the incorrect conclusion. The US Education System created all those educated generations which built America to be #1. I just came from China, and I found that factory we had in Baltimore was transferred in China because it could not afford the healthcare cost of the work force here in US. The average salary of workers there was $200-$300. They just copied our technology and sell the product with low price because of cheap labor cost. The majority of the engineers over there (different nationalities) have been educated in US. I think US failed in global economic policies because of high labor cost. One day you will hear that the healthcare provider headquarters will be in rural China, India, Qatar, etc….
A somewhat misleading article. The average scores of students (or the scores of average students) are irrelevant since they are not the one’s becoming engineers. The question is more: Do enough students at the high end of the curve meet the basic requirements to study engineering and do they choose engineering? Are we providing jobs for all our engineering graduates? This is then followed by the repeating of the time honored mantra that more computers and software will somehow make students that don’t understand basics more competitive. Get real.
It is truly preposterous to think that the government that gave us this substandard educational system can somehow create a better one! Only when people take responsibility for educating their children will there be any improvement. I’ll echo HR Lewinsky’s sentiments: “Unless we are interested in going back to a traditional family society we will not solve the scoring problem. No matter what we say, our actions say that that we prefer to leave our children behind.”
The ranking data reveals a very serious problem that has persisted for decades. While I completely agree with the need for improvement, I believe Mr. DeLuca’s conclusions to be significantly in error.
If the same test were to be given to parents and teachers, how well would they score? Perhaps not much better than the children. And if worldwide test scores at the 12th grade level were compared, the US would rank even lower.
Of course governments (national, state and local) are responsible for the problem but cannot fix the problem; they are part of the problem.
Teachers and their unions are a major culprit. They prevent the replacement of inept teachers with highly qualified and motivated teachers. Teachers are often overpaid considering the quality of the work product. School administrators are vastly overpaid and additional funding often results in even more over-compenstation without improvement in education.
Parents are equally responsible because they do not demand improvement and allow themselves to be guided by inept educators, whose self interest is primary and education only secondar.
Bright students who should be advanced are often held back in order to make average test scores look better. Schools lack teachers who are qualified to teach math and other technical subjects. Social and athletic development take precedence over the hard sciences. The curriculum is outdated and misguided without a view to future educational needs.
Years ago, Allen Bloom wrote about the Dumbing down of America. He was wrong only because he understated the problem.
I agree with Bryan’s comments on the educational system here. The situation is pathetic. I was an engineer who changed into a Tech Ed teacher because of the bad job market. I spent 4 and 1/2 years teaching 12 to 18 year old boys at a DYS (juvenile detention) school. I also work with adults at a jail now. I have taught at public schools an have experienced the lack of leadership and money. It’s a wonder the kids know anything. I don’t think there’s any hope until the government starts some kind of science program so that there’s a real need for competent help instead of cheap labor. The corporations are just as guilty of causing this as the education management.
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