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Sep 24
2010
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Rising above the gathering storm, revisited: The rapidly approaching Category 5 storm.Posted by: Dave Moursund Tagged in: Education Reform
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Click here to learn about Dave Moursund's free book on science and technology education for teaches and parents of K-8 children.
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In September 2010 the National Academies made available a report titled: Rising above the gathering storm, revisited: Rapidly approaching Category 5. This is a follow-up to a much longer report published five years ago: Rising above the gathering storm. The new report can be downloaded free in PDF format from http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12999.html. The 2005 report has a publication date of 2007 and is available for free download at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11463.
In terms of hurricanes, a Category 5 story is the worst it gets. The new report’s title is designed to tell its readers that we are in deep trouble. Here is a quote from the 2010 report, with bold added for emphasis:
The recommendations made five years ago, the highest priority of which was strengthening the public school system and investing in basic scientific research, appears to be as appropriate today as then.
The Gathering Storm Committee’s overall conclusion is that in spite of the efforts of both those in government and the private sector, the outlook for America to compete for quality jobs has further deteriorated over the past five years.
Pages 6-11 of the report provide a number of factoids in a manner designed to show deterioration. Here are a few:
- The United States has fallen from first to eleventh place in the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] in the fraction 25-34 year olds that has graduated high school. The older portion of the U.S. workforce ranks first among OECD populations of the same age.
- The United States ranks 20th in high school completion rate among industrialized nations and 16th in college completion rate.
- In the 2009 rankings of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation the U.S. was in sixth place in global innovation-based competitiveness, but ranked 40th in the rate of change over the past decade.
- Sixty-nine percent of United States public school students in fifth through eighth grade are taught mathematics by a teacher without a degree or certificate in mathematics. [For the physical sciences, the figure is 93%.]
Final Remarks
Spend a bit of time reflecting on what you have just read. How does the information fit in with your current knowledge, beliefs, and activities? How can you make use of the information to help improve our informal and formal educational systems? Who do you know that might benefit from reading the IAE Blog entry?
If the IAE blog entries are useful to you, then consider signing up for a Free Subscription. (See the menu on the left side of the page.) You will automatically receive email about new postings to the blog. Typically, there are about three new postings per week.
Links to Related IAE Documents
Assessing Our Schooling System. IAE Newsletter - Issue # 54 November 2010.
Assessing Student Achievement in Difficult to Assess Curricular Areas: Social Knowledge and Skills. IAE Newsletter - Issue 57, January, 2011.
Criticisms of our educational system. Ways to improve education. IAE Newsletter - Issue 6, November, 2008.
Crowdsourcing to Improve Education.
Discussion about US Education Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recent statement: “I fundamentally believe that our school day is too short, our school week is too short, and our school year is too short.” AE Newsletter - Issue 15, April 2009.
Education for now and the future. IAE Newsletter - Issue 21, July 2009.
Federal Approaches to Improving Education.
Improving Education: A Political Agenda. IAE Newsletter - Issue 29, November 2009.
Mile Wide Inch Deep ICT Education.
Past and current criticisms of our educational system. Authentic content and assessment. IAE Newsletter - Issue 5, November, 2008.
Science is repeatable and accurate measurements. IAE Newsletter - Issue # 56 December 2010.
Talented and Gifted Education.
The quality of our educational system. Newsletter - Issue # 43 June 2010.
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The Blog entry “Rising above the gathering storm, revisited: Rapidly approaching Category 5.” contains a long list of quotations. Many are of the apples versus oranges variety. I think the authors should be ashamed of using these as arguments for funding major changes in our STEM education system.
Here are a few of their arguments that I feel are unbecoming to such learned authors. As is sometimes said when playing poker, “Read ’em and weep.”
"United States consumers spend significantly more on potato chips than the government devotes to energy R&D."
"During a recent period during which two high-rise buildings were constructed in Los Angeles, over 5,000 were built in Shanghai."
"Forty-nine percent of United States adults do not know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun."
"The total annual federal investment in research in mathematics, the physical sciences and engineering is now equal to the increase in United States healthcare costs every nine weeks."
"For the next 5-7 years the United States, due to budget limitations, will only be able to send astronauts to the Space Station by purchasing rides on Russian rockets."
"In 2008, 770,000 people worked in the United States correction sector, a number which is projected to grow. During the same year there were 880,000 workers in the entire United States automobile manufacturing sector."