If you were looking for another reason to support the types of education reform Terry Stoops has been touting for years, a Bloomberg Businessweek article about the presidential race might help you.
The biggest question for U.S. policymakers will be whether they can recalibrate domestic priorities fast enough to catch up to a changing world. Nowhere is the challenge more daunting than in the U.S. public education system. A Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force report, released in March, concluded that American schools “are not equipping the majority of students to effectively participate in an increasingly fast-paced and interdependent global society.”
The report found that only 4.5 percent of U.S. college students graduate with engineering degrees; in China, 33 percent do. Beyond hurting American economic competitiveness, the knowledge gap is affecting the ability of the U.S. to defend itself. Among eligible high school students, 30 percent score too low on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery to qualify for military service. The U.S. diplomatic and intelligence services report a shortage of applicants with the language and analytical skills needed to serve in key posts around the world. And even as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warns that a cyber-attack “could be as destructive as the terrorist attack on 9/11,” the U.S. education system isn’t giving students the technical knowledge to deal with it. According to the CFR task force, “The United States is arguably unprepared to mount a strong defense against [a cyber-attack], partly because there are not enough people with the kind of technological expertise needed to do so.”
