Rising to the Challenge

America’s Math and Science Curriculum Is Key to Future Competitiveness

by Joe Mullich

As America fights to regain its economic footing, there is a rising drumbeat for the country to raise its performance in science and math.

The indications of decline in these areas are widespread: Last year, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued more patents to foreigners than Americans for the first time ever. The two primary sources for graduate students in science and technology at American universities are now China and South Korea. Science scores for fourth- and eighth-grade students in the U.S. have remained flat since 1995, while other countries have soared.

The United States National Academies, an influential advisory organization, issued a blue-ribbon report in 2005, called “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” warning that America was losing critical ground in math and science skills — “the scientific and technical building blocks of our economy.”

The report traced America’s decline to “a recurring pattern of abundant short-term thinking and insufficient long-term investment.” The mosaic of culprits included: decades of declining or flat spending on research in most physical sciences, mathematics and engineering; dwindling education funding; and aggressive pushes by other countries to improve their math and science education.

Turning this situation around is “key to our future competitiveness,” says Dr. Francis Eberle, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association in Arlington, VA. “I don’t know that we’re going to have a ‘Sputnik moment.’ More likely, we will experience a growing awareness, where people will acknowledge the key role that science and technology has played in the lifestyle we enjoy today.”

Economic Implications

In the last half-decade, the campaign to improve science and math has seen both progress and stagnation. The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2007, an ongoing project to measure the skills of fourth- and eighth- graders in different countries, shows steady improvement in U.S. mathematics since 1995.

Still, America lags behind many other nations. And U.S. performance on the TIMSS science test has not improved in the past decade.

[Chart Source: National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), Highlights from TIMSS 2007:Mathematics and Science Achievement of U.S. Fourth- and Eighth-Grade Students in an International Context]

“Science has almost been eliminated from the K-sixth grade classrooms,” Eberle says. “The focus of the No Child Left Behind Act (which requires schools to administer annual math and language arts tests with the goal of steadily improving performance) has been on literacy and mathematics, and so we have a whole group of students not being adequately prepared for science careers.”

The decline in science and math may have directly affected the nation’s pocketbook. Last year, Eric Hanushek, a Stanford University professor, did a study in which he concluded that raising U.S. test scores in math and science would have a dramatic impact on America’s economy. Hanushek’s study was significant in that it measured quality (improvement in test scores) as opposed to quantity (years of schooling), which has usually been the focus of such studies in the past.

He concluded that raising U.S. test scores to levels of top countries would add two-thirds of a percentage point to the annual growth rate in gross domestic product. Because this applies to the total goods and services that America produces in a year, it has enormous implications for the country’s financial well-being. “The evidence on quality of education in math and science is starting to get people’s attention,” he says.

Other benchmarks are drawing notice as well. For example, the number of engineering degrees awarded in the U.S. has dropped 20 percent since its high point in 1985. China, for example, graduates some 400,000 engineers a year, compared to 70,000 in the U.S.

Rigorous Standards Yield Results

While some people feel outsourcing could resolve some of the shortfall, Don Giddens, dean of engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, disputes that notion. “The U.S. advantage is the innovative, free-thinking engineers we produce,” he says. “Some countries emphasize a ‘crank and grind’ engineering education. That’s all right for commodity engineering, but R&D requires a broader thinking that we need to keep at home.”

There are clear indications that improvement can be had. Two states, Minnesota and Massachusetts, have seen huge leaps in science and mathematics performance by putting a rigorous focus on standards and teaching. In 2007, as a result, Massachusetts’ eighth-grade TIMMS science score zoomed to 556, well above the U.S. average of 520. If Massachusetts were a country, it would have had the third best science performance in the world, trailing only Singapore and Chinese Taipei. The United States as a whole ranked only eleventh.

[Chart Source: National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)]

In the same testing, “Minnesota had more than three times the gain than the United States as a whole,” says William Schmidt, a Michigan State University professor who worked on the state’s standards effort. “They have left the U.S. behind.”

Corporate America Steps Up

Many feel it’s imperative for the rest of the U.S. to catch up. “Corporate America can play a powerful role in this,” Schmidt adds. “The public was worried about climate change for a long time, but the green movement didn’t get on the front burner until the business world became involved.”

Indeed, companies are stepping up and wielding a tremendous influence, moving beyond the bully pulpit and going into the trenches. They are running TV commercials designed to raise the standing of science and math careers. They are having their scientists visit classrooms and sponsoring student trips to laboratories. They are funding — and developing — programs to fill gaps in the mathematical education of elementary and middle school teachers.

Last October, for example, Intel committed $120 million over the next decade to stimulate more interest among young people in math and science. The company already runs a host of programs, including the nation’s oldest pre-college science competition, Intel Science Talent Search, whose finalists have gone on to win seven Nobel Prizes.

“It’s essential we do this because math and science form the foundation for innovation,” says Julie Dunkle, U.S. education project manager for Intel. “Fluency in math is needed to understand science, and science creates the innovations that will help solve the challenges we face, such as Swine Flu and global warming. As an innovation company, it makes sense for Intel to get involved and it’s critical to our country’s ability to create a deeper talent pool that the country needs to compete and thrive globally.”

Joe Mullich has received more than two dozen awards for writing about education, technology and other topics for publications including the Los Angeles Times, The Scientist, Men’s Health, and Reader’s Digest.

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