[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CHALLENGES TO AMERICAN COMPETITIVENESS IN MATH AND SCIENCE
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON 21st CENTURY COMPETITIVENESS
of the
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
AND THE WORKFORCE
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
May 19, 2005
__________
Serial No. 109-18
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and the Workforce
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COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE
JOHN A. BOEHNER, Ohio, Chairman
Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin, Vice George Miller, California
Chairman Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon, Major R. Owens, New York
California Donald M. Payne, New Jersey
Michael N. Castle, Delaware Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey
Sam Johnson, Texas Robert C. Scott, Virginia
Mark E. Souder, Indiana Lynn C. Woolsey, California
Charlie Norwood, Georgia Ruben Hinojosa, Texas
Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan Carolyn McCarthy, New York
Judy Biggert, Illinois John F. Tierney, Massachusetts
Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania Ron Kind, Wisconsin
Patrick J. Tiberi, Ohio Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio
Ric Keller, Florida David Wu, Oregon
Tom Osborne, Nebraska Rush D. Holt, New Jersey
Joe Wilson, South Carolina Susan A. Davis, California
Jon C. Porter, Nevada Betty McCollum, Minnesota
John Kline, Minnesota Danny K. Davis, Illinois
Marilyn N. Musgrave, Colorado Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona
Bob Inglis, South Carolina Chris Van Hollen, Maryland
Cathy McMorris, Washington Tim Ryan, Ohio
Kenny Marchant, Texas Timothy H. Bishop, New York
Tom Price, Georgia John Barrow, Georgia
Luis G. Fortuno, Puerto Rico
Bobby Jindal, Louisiana
Charles W. Boustany, Jr., Louisiana
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Thelma D. Drake, Virginia
John R. ``Randy'' Kuhl, Jr., New
York
Paula Nowakowski, Staff Director
John Lawrence, Minority Staff Director
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON 21st CENTURY COMPETITIVENESS
HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' McKEON, California, Chairman
Jon C. Porter, Nevada Vice Chairman Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
John A. Boehner, Ohio Donald M. Payne, New Jersey
Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin Carolyn McCarthy, New York
Michael N. Castle, Delaware John F. Tierney, Massachusetts
Sam Johnson, Texas Ron Kind, Wisconsin
Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan David Wu, Oregon
Patrick J. Tiberi, Ohio Rush D. Holt, New Jersey
Ric Keller, Florida Betty McCollum, Minnesota
Tom Osborne, Nebraska Chris Van Hollen, Maryland
Bob Inglis, South Carolina Tim Ryan, Ohio
Cathy McMorris, Washington Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott,
Tom Price, Georgia Virginia
Luis G. Fortuno, Puerto Rico Susan A. Davis, California
Charles W. Boustany, Jr., Louisiana Timothy H. Bishop, New York
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina John Barrow, Georgia
Thelma D. Drake, Virginia Major R. Owens, New York
John R. ``Randy'' Kuhl, Jr., New George Miller, California, ex
York officio
------
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on May 19, 2005..................................... 1
Statement of Members:
Kildee, Hon. Dale E., Ranking Member, Subcommittee on 21st
Century Competitiveness, Committee on Education and the
Workforce.................................................. 4
Prepared statement of.................................... 5
McKeon, Hon. Howard P. ``Buck'', Chairman, Subcommittee on
21st Century Competitiveness, Committee on Education and
the Workforce.............................................. 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 3
Porter, Hon. Jon C., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Nevada, prepared statement of..................... 47
Statement of Witnesses:
Augustine, Norman R., Retired Chairman and CEO, Lockheed
Martin Corporation, Bethesda, MD........................... 7
Prepared statement of.................................... 9
Magnanti, Dr. Thomas L., Dean, School of Engineering,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA....... 12
Prepared statement of.................................... 15
Songer, Dr. Nancy Butler, Professor of Science Education and
Learning Technologies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
MI......................................................... 23
Prepared statement of.................................... 25
Streckfus, June E., Executive Director, Maryland Business
Roundtable for Education, Baltimore, MD.................... 19
Prepared statement of.................................... 21
CHALLENGES TO AMERICAN COMPETITIVENESS IN MATH AND SCIENCE
----------
Thursday, May 19, 2005
U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness
Committee on Education and the Workforce
Washington, DC
----------
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in
room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Howard P.
``Buck'' McKeon [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives McKeon, Ehlers, Osborne, Inglis,
Price, Boustany, Kildee, Kind, Holt, McCollum, Van Hollen, and
Davis of California.
Staff present: Kevin Frank, Professional Staff Member;
Allison Griffin, Professional Staff Member; Krisann Pearce,
Deputy Director of Education and Human Resources Policy; Amy
Raaf, Professional Staff Member; Deborah L. Samantar, Committee
Clerk/Intern Coordinator; Kevin Smith, Senior Communications
Advisor; and Brad Thomas, Legislative Assistant; Ricardo
Martinez, Minority Legislative Associate/Education; Alex Nock,
Minority Legislative Associate/Education; and Joe Novotny,
Minority Legislative Assistant/Education.
Chairman McKeon. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee
on 21st Century Competitiveness of the Committee on Education
and the Workforce will come to order. We're holding this
hearing today to hear testimony on challenges to American
competitiveness in math and science. Under Committee Rule
12(b), the opening statements are limited to the Chairman and
the Ranking Minority Member of the Committee. Therefore, if
other Members have statements, their statements will be
included in the record.
With that, I ask unanimous consent for the hearing record
to remain open 14 days to allow Members' statements and other
extraneous material referenced during the hearing to be
submitted in the official hearing record. Without objection, so
ordered.
STATEMENT OF HON. HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' McKEON, CHAIRMAN,
SUBCOMMITTEE ON 21st CENTURY COMPETITIVENESS, COMMITTEE ON
EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE
Good morning. Thank you all for joining us on this
beautiful day for this important hearing to hear testimony
about challenges to American competitiveness in math and
science. I want to welcome our witnesses and thank them for
taking the time to appear before the Subcommittee.
Today's hearing is to examine what is happening within
America's educational system in the fields of math and science
that is hampering U.S. advancement and what American schools
and the business community can and should be doing to reverse
that his trend and to bolster American competitiveness.
Some have suggested that we could improve our
competitiveness in math and science fields by providing
increased incentives to math and science graduates. With the
average starting salary for engineering majors approximately
$50,000, this is 66 percent more than the average for liberal
arts majors and 43 percent more than the average for business
administration majors. In addition, many high tech businesses
have high skilled jobs available, but they can't find enough
workers here to fill their needs. Clearly, there are already
ample incentives to attain degrees in math and science and
engineering.
I believe the problem is more a pipeline issue. There are
simply not enough students going through the K-12 system and
the higher education system that are really interested in
science. And for those students that are interested in science
careers, they must overcome a number of obstacles along their
educational path. For example, according to the National
Science Foundation, 46 percent of math teachers did not major
or minor in math in college. How can we get students to be
enthusiastic about math when math was not the main interest of
the teacher?
We have English teachers teaching math. We have teachers
from other fields, other majors, that are trying to excite and
motivate our students in the areas of math and science. When I
was in Hong Kong recently, all of the teachers in junior high
and high school there in math were math majors, science majors.
In addition, according to some studies, only half of the
students who begin college to pursue math and science actually
graduate with a degree in math or science within 6 years.
Institutions of higher education can and should do more to
recruit and retain these students.
Lately I've been reading the book, ``The World is Flat'',
by Thomas Friedman, where he argues that technical innovations
and investment in the 1990's made the world flat so that
countries like China and India that were once marginalized can
now compete with the United States on the global stage. We put
out all this money, we built the net, we built this worldwide
web, and all they need is a computer, and they can compete.
He even comments in the book that 20 years ago if you had
had the choice to be born a B student in Boston or a genius in
China, you would have taken the B student in Boston. But now if
you're a genius anywhere in the world, you can compete and
compete well.
I've met a number of business executives and leaders from
high tech companies from my district and around the State of
California and across the country, and they've encouraged me to
visit China and India. They said you've got to go around and
see what's happening. So we did. We took a congressional
delegation a few weeks ago. Three of my colleagues on this
Committee joined us on that trip, and it was a great trip.
We saw tall skyscrapers in Shanghai on land that 15, 20
years ago was agriculture. Our hotel room was on the 87th
floor, and I don't do well with heights, so. But it was
amazing. I look at that, and I know where I come from, we would
not have been able to go through an EIR in the time that they
build those skyscrapers. So we've got to--we really need to
wake up and see what we can do to compete.
While the U.S. still leads the world in scientific and
technological innovation, we must continue to be adaptive and
flexible to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.
Our witnesses that are with us today will testify on what
can be done at the K-12 level, what institutions of higher
education can do to increase math and science graduation rates,
and the problems that high tech companies are facing to fill
the needs of their workforce.
I want to thank all of you for being here today, and I look
forward to hearing your testimony.
I now yield to my good friend from Michigan, Mr. Kildee.
We've been at this now for a few years. It's good to be here
with him, and I yield what time he desires for his opening
statement.
[The prepared statement of Chairman McKeon follows:]
Statement of Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon, Chairman, Subcommittee on 21st
Century Competitiveness, Committee on Education and the Workforce
Good morning. Thank you all for joining us for this important
hearing to hear testimony about challenges to American competitiveness
in math and science. I want to welcome our witnesses and thank them for
taking the time to appear before the subcommittee.
Today's hearing is to examine what is happening within America's
educational system in the fields of math and science that is hampering
U.S. advancement, and what American schools and the business community
can and should be doing to reverse this trend and bolster American
competitiveness.
Some have suggested that we could improve our competitiveness in
math and science fields by providing increased incentives to math and
science graduates. With the average starting salary for engineering
majors approximately $50,000, this is 66% more than the average for
liberal arts majors and 43% more than the average for business
administration majors. In addition, many high tech businesses have high
skill jobs available but they cannot find enough workers here to fill
their needs. Clearly, there are already ample incentives to attain
degrees in math, science, and engineering.
I believe the problem is more a ``pipeline'' issue. There are
simply not enough students going through the K-12 system and the higher
education system that are interested in science. And for those students
that are interested in science careers, they must overcome a number of
obstacles along their educational path.
For example, according to the National Science Foundation, 46% of
math teachers did not major or minor in math in college. How can we get
students to be enthusiastic about math when math was not the main
interest of the teacher?
In addition, according to some studies, only half of the students
who begin college to pursue math and science actually graduate with a
degree in math or science within six years. Institutions of higher
education can and should do more to recruit and retain these students.
Lately, I have been reading The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman,
where he argues that technical innovations and investment in the 1990's
made the world ``flat'' so that countries like China and India that
were once marginalized can now compete with the United States on the
global stage. Today, anyone with a computer and access to the internet
can compete for business with anyone else around the world.
I have also met with a number of business executives and leaders
from high tech companies from my district and around the State of
California who encouraged me to visit China or India to see the
progress these countries were making to catch up with the United
States. About a month and a half ago, three of my colleagues on this
committee and I took a trip to China to do just that.
We saw tall skyscrapers on land that was rice paddies just 15 years
ago. We learned of the massive investment the Chinese were making in
higher education, particularly in the math, science, and engineering
fields.
While the U.S. stills lead the world in scientific and
technological innovation, we must continue to be adaptive and flexible
to meet the challenges of today and of tomorrow.
Our witnesses that are with us today will testify on what can be
done at the K-12 level, what institutions of higher education can do to
increase math and science graduation rates, and the problems that high
tech companies are facing to fill the needs of their workforce.
I especially look forward to hearing from Mr. Norm Augustine, the
retired Chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin Corporation. Lockheed
Martin has a large research facility located in Palmdale, California,
which I'm proud to represent.
Thank you all for joining us today, and I look forward to today's
discussion.
______
STATEMENT OF HON. DALE E. KILDEE, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE
ON 21st CENTURY COMPETITIVENESS, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE
WORKFORCE
Mr. Kildee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm pleased
to join my friend and my colleague, Chairman McKeon at today's
hearings on the importance of math and science to our future
competitiveness.
There could not be a more important topic. I'm looking
forward to the testimony of witnesses here this morning. You
assembled a very, very good panel, Mr. Chairman. I thank you
for that.
Chairman McKeon. We have.
Mr. Kildee. We thank you. America as a nation woke up when
Sputnik was launched on October 4th, 1957. I was teaching high
school that day. I remember it very, very well. This
achievement by the Soviet Union made us reassess our position
in math, science and technology. This event caused the United
States to redouble its efforts in the space race and to
maintain its place as a world economic power.
The question for us today is clear. Do we need another
Sputnik to make us realize the impact that math and science
education will have on our future competitiveness as a nation?
The problems here are clear and well documented. The percentage
of college students seeking degrees in math, science and
engineering continues to fall. While women and minorities have
increased their participation in math, science and engineering,
they are still proportionately underrepresented.
The retirement of the baby boomers will leave a
professional and technical labor market gap. Both the private
and public sector will face problems if the pipeline for
mathematicians, scientists and engineers is not widened. These
problems are undeniable and certainly need our attention.
The workforce must be knowledgeable and well schooled in
mathematics, the sciences, engineering and technology. We will
not be able to maintain our economic place in the world without
sizable investment in human capital in the areas of math and
science.
Mr. Chairman, in closing, I hope this hearing energizes our
colleagues to realize and understand the importance of math and
science to our nation's economic advantages. Today's witnesses
should spur our discussion not just of the problems we face,
but of the solutions we can provide.
And again, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kildee follows:]
Statement of Hon. Dale E. Kildee, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on 21st
Century Competitiveness, Committee on Education and the Workforce
Good morning, I am pleased to join my friend and colleague Chairman
McKeon at today's hearing on the importance of math and science
education to our future competitiveness. This could not be a more
important topic. I am looking forward to the testimony of our witnesses
today.
America, as a nation, woke up went Sputnik was launched on October
4, 1957. This achievement by the Soviet Union made us realize our
shortcomings in math, science and technology. This event caused the
United States to redouble its efforts in the space race and to maintain
its place as a world economic superpower. The question for us today is
do we need another Sputnik to make us realize the impact that math and
science education will have on our future competitiveness as a nation.
The problems here are clear and well documented. The percentage of
college students seeking degrees in math, science and engineering
continues to fall. While women and minorities have increased their
participation in math, science and engineering, they are still
proportionally underrepresented. The retirement of the baby boomers
will leave a gap in professional technical labor market. Both the
private and public sector will face problems if the pipeline for
mathematicians, scientists and engineers is not widened. These problems
are undeniable and need our attention.
I know many talented teachers and college professors who are
committed to ensuring that we have an educated workforce. This
workforce must be knowledgeable and well schooled in mathematics, the
sciences, engineering and technology. We will not be able to maintain
our economic place in the world without sizable investment in human
capital in the areas of math and science.
Mr. Chairman, in closing, I hope this hearing energizes our
colleagues to realize and understand the importance of math and science
to nation's economic advantages. Today's witnesses should spur our
discussion not just of the problems we face, but of the solutions we
can provide. Thank you Mr. Chairman.
______
Chairman McKeon. Thank you, Mr. Kildee. We have a very
distinguished panel of witnesses before us, and I again thank
you all for being here today.
First we'll hear from Mr. Norm Augustine. Mr. Augustine is
a retired chairman and CEO of the Lockheed Martin Corporation,
very important in my district back home. I grew up in Tujunga,
and Lockheed at that time was in Burbank. In fact during World
War II, my aunt was, what did they call them, the riveter?
Rosie the Riveter. My Aunt Lil was a riveter at Lockheed. And
then when they moved the skunkworks out to Palmdale, that was
great for our district.
Though officially retired from the company, Mr. Augustine
still serves as chairman of its Executive Committee. During his
distinguished career, Mr. Augustine has served as Under
Secretary of the Army, chairman of both the American Red Cross
and the Boy Scouts of America. I'd like to thank you especially
for that. My sons and sons-in-law are all Eagles, all except
one. And I think the Boy Scouts do an outstanding job and
should be commended every opportunity we get.
He's been a faculty member of Princeton University. His
experiences in the areas of engineering and technology place
him a unique position to discuss the challenges this country
faces in maintaining its competitiveness in math and science.
Mr. Augustine is also a constituent of my friend from
Maryland, Mr. Van Hollen. I understand the gentlemen would like
to also add his welcome to Mr. Augustine at this time.
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me first
thank you and Mr. Kildee for putting together these very
important hearings. I think this Committee will probably
discuss no more important issue than maintaining our edge and
math and science as part of maintaining our global
competitiveness. In fact, I think the Nation probably will face
very few issues of this importance.
So I just wanted to add my welcome to you, Mr. Augustine.
It's wonderful to have you as a constituent, and I want to
thank you for all the leadership you provided in the State of
Maryland, which was really one of the pioneers I think in
looking at the questions of higher education and
competitiveness. We've got a long way to go, but thanks to your
work, we're headed in the right direction.
I want to thank you for founding the Maryland Business
Roundtable for Education and all your leadership there as well.
Mr. Augustine. Thank you.
Chairman McKeon. Next we'll hear from Dr. Thomas Magnanti.
Dr. Magnanti has been a faculty member at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, MIT, since 1971, and is currently the
dean of the Institute's School of Engineering.
During his career, Dr. Magnanti has served as a visiting
scientist at Bell Laboratories and GTE Laboratories and as a
member of the advisory boards of several prominent educational
and research institutions.
Dr. Magnanti has also been involved in several
collaborative efforts between education and industry that have
sought to engage students in math, science, engineering and
technology disciplines. I was talking earlier with the doctor
and mentioned that when we were in China, one of the leaders
that we visited with over there, he was head of the Microsoft
Research and Engineering Department, and he said he had gotten
his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon. And he said the four top schools
were MIT, Carnegie Mellon and then Berkeley and Stanford. And I
said, you know, you forgot Cal Tech. Out in my part of
California, Cal Tech, we kind of figure Cal Tech and MIT are,
you know, right there. I guess we could have quite a
discussion.
I understand now Mr. Van Hollen would like to introduce our
next witness on the panel today. He has two constituents.
Mr. Van Hollen. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm very
fortunate to represent a district which, like all of us, has
many people who are involved in important issues to our
country.
And I mentioned that Mr. Augustine had been the founder of
the Maryland Business Roundtable for Education. I'm very
pleased that we also have with us today June Streckfus, who is
the current Executive Director of the Maryland Business
Roundtable for Education. I want to thank her for joining us
this morning.
As I said, she is now the executive director of that
organization which is playing a very active and effective role
in promoting excellence in education in our state, and I am
particularly looking forward to her discussion about their
experience with Maryland's scholars in Frederick County. And I
know you've seen some striking results through your work in
Frederick County.
Prior to joining the Roundtable, which was founded in 1992,
Ms. Streckfus was the Director of Government and Education
Affairs for Maryland Economic Growth Associates. She has been
recognized by the Daily Record as one of Maryland's top 100
women, and the 2002 Innovator of the Year.
We're very pleased to have you this morning. And, Mr.
Chairman, thank you for inviting these witnesses as part of a
very distinguished panel.
Chairman McKeon. And I yield to Ranking Member Kildee to
introduce our final witness this morning.
Mr. Kildee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It gives me great
pleasure to introduce Dr. Nancy Songer, a Professor of Science
Education at the School of Education at the great University of
Michigan, where I and my two sons received degrees.
Professor Songer's field of expertise centers on reformed-
based science education, particularly in urban settings,
elementary and middle school science, and the development of
learning environments which are sensitive to diversity and
gender issues. She is the director of a project called Bio
Kids. The mission of the Bio Kids project is to create
innovative, inquiry-based K-12 science curricula that utilize
current technologies for interactive study.
Student teachers, parents and scientists can participate
from classrooms, homes, after school programs or other
educational settings. The program has been a major element in
responding to the needs of students and staff alike in Detroit
public schools.
It gives me great pleasure today to have Dr. Songer before
the Committee, and we welcome her testimony and attendance.
And thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McKeon. Thank you. Before you begin, I'd like to
remind of those little lights in front of you. When--we've
given you the magnanimous 5 minutes. And the light will go
green. When you have a minute left to go is yellow and then
when your time is up, it goes red. Don't worry too much about
that. We just hold ourselves to that pretty tough standard.
Mr. Augustine.
STATEMENT OF NORMAN R. AUGUSTINE, RETIRED CHAIRMAN AND CEO,
LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION, BETHESDA, MD
Mr. Augustine. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of
the Committee. I should perhaps begin by noting that I'm here
today representing myself and not any particular organization.
I should probably also note that the issue at hand
concerning education I view as a part of a much broader issue
of America's competitiveness as a whole. I sought to address
that broader issue in the written statement that I'd like to
provide with the Committee's permission for the record.
Chairman McKeon. It will be included, no objection.
Mr. Augustine. Thank you. This morning I would like to
touch on three points particularly germane to this hearing from
that statement.
The first of those points is that American companies are
finding themselves more and more dependent upon science and
technology for their ability to compete in the global
marketplace for the very kinds of reasons you, Mr. Chairman,
referred to. That ability to compete is of course what creates
jobs in America, which in turn underpins our standard of
living.
There have been many studies that have shown that during
the last half century, over half of the jobs created in America
have been directly due to prior investments in the fields of
science and technology, and that's probably not surprising when
we think of companies like companies like Microsoft or Eli
Lilly or Lockheed Martin. But it's also true to a surprising
degree to many other companies. I would cite, for example, a
consumer products company. The CEO, the recently retired CEO of
Procter and Gamble has said that his company is principally an
R&D firm.
The second observation I would like to make is that any
lead that a company or a country has in science and technology
is inherently precarious. And the reason for that is the rapid
change in the field of science and technology. For example, if
you take dynamic random access memories, which are the building
block of the modern electronics industry, a new generation of
those appears every 30 months and has been doing so for many,
many decades. Intel has said that over 90 percent of the sales
it has today are from products that didn't exist a year ago.
The third point I'd like to leave is that once a lead has
been lost, it takes a very long time to regain it, if it's
possible to regain at all. The reason for that is the long time
it takes to educate particularly a researcher in science and
technology. A student needs to decide in ninth grade whether or
not he or she wishes to preserve the option to pursue a career
in science and technology, and that's because of the
hierarchical and integrated nature of a science and technology
education. That means, for example, that the students today
that are making that decision would be likely to receive a
Ph.D. in these fields maybe in the year 2019.
In the past, our companies have tried to offset this delay
and these shortages by relying heavily on talent from other
countries. And in fact, over half the graduates in engineering
schools today with advance degrees are from foreign countries.
That has problems that are arising that I'm sure you're
familiar with. But I might also say for a company in the
defense industry or the homeland security field, that's not an
acceptable solution because of the requirement to have security
clearances.
I'd like to read for you very briefly one of the two
conclusions from the Hart-Rudman Commission, a commission that
the Congress established and it was my privilege to serve on.
It was a commission on national security. This was one of its
two conclusions: ``. . . the inadequacy of our system of
research and education poses a greater threat to U.S. national
security over the next century than any potential conventional
war that we might imagine.''
The question arises, what might we do? I've offered a
number of recommendations in my written statement. Let me touch
on a few things that I think are particularly important.
We obviously need to strengthen our K-12 education, and I
think that could best be done by bringing the free enterprise
system to that educational system, to introduce competition,
competition among schools, among administrators, among
teachers, to pay teachers for performance and pay them in
accordance with the very important role they play in preparing
America's youth for prosperous lives, contributing lives.
We need to encourage more women and minorities to enter the
fields of science and technology. We very much need to permit
subject matter experts to teach their fields in K-12 after
passing a brief preparatory period in teaching skills.
I believe that we need to initiate something that I've
called the American Scholars Program whereby the government
would award to perhaps a thousand of the highest scoring
scholars in the fields of science and technology, including
mathematics, on a standardized national examination, a full
scholarship for their undergraduate work, and if they wish to
continue in graduate work and excelled, to continue that
funding. It would make a huge difference to the talent level in
our country.
And finally, I would mention that we need to take steps to
make productive the entire career of a scientist or an
engineer, because their careers, just like companies' strength
in science and technology, obsolesces very quickly. That means
we need to put more support and emphasis on the topic of
continuing education.
Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Augustine follows:]
Statement of Norman R. Augustine, Retired Chairman and CEO, Lockheed
Martin Corporation, Bethesda, MD
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee,
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I should
perhaps begin by noting that I am representing only myself and am here
because I, like you, care deeply about the future of our nation.
Further, I have three grandchildren who will live in the world we are
in the process of creating.
In addressing the future quality of life in America one cannot help
but notice warnings of what appears to be an impending Perfect Storm.
The elements which underlie this possibility are, first, the pervading
importance of education and research in the fields of science and
technology to America's standard of living, and the disrepair in which
we find many of our efforts. Second, the precipitousness with which a
lead in science and technology can be lost. Third, the prolonged period
of time it takes to recover once a lead has in fact been lost, if
indeed it can be regained at all. I would like today to briefly discuss
each of these considerations.
A number of studies have shown that over half the jobs created in
America during the past half century were the direct consequence of
earlier investments in science and technology. That is, the ability to
provide jobs for our citizen's and support their standard of living can
be seen to depend to a very substantial degree on our nation's
competitiveness in science and technology. But modern science and
technology do not respect geopolitical borders. We all know that if we
buy a camera or television set there is a high probability it was built
abroad. But this trend has not stopped with manufacturing. For example,
A patient in a U.S. hospital today may well have their x-
ray interpreted by a doctor in India.
Visitors to a company located a few yards from the White
House are greeted by a receptionist in Pakistan whose image is seen on
a flat-screen video display.
A person in Wichita calling the help-line of a U.S.
company is assisted by a technician in India.
A patient undergoing surgery in an American hospital is
operated on by a robot directed by a world-class surgeon seated in
another part of the room; a surgeon who could one day just as easily be
located in China.
Turning to National Security, the Hart-Rudman Commission, on which
it was my privilege to serve, stated in its final report that ``. . .
the inadequacy of our system of research and education poses a greater
threat to U.S. national security over the next quarter century than any
potential conventional war that we might imagine.'' It is noteworthy
that this was a principal finding of a panel established by the
Congress to investigate national security; not research or education.
In short, whether we are addressing the creation of jobs, the
provision of homeland security, the supplying of energy, the delivery
of health care, or almost any other important challenge confronting our
society, much of the solution will have to be found through American
preeminence in science and technology.
Turning to the second consideration, the rapidity with which our
scientific and technological seed-corn becomes obsolescent, it has been
noted that the time between the introduction of entire new generations
of dynamic random access memories, the building blocks of the modern
electronics industry, is only about 30 months. Intel has said that
nearly 90 percent of the products it sells today did not exist a year
ago. The ``half-life'' of published research articles in scientific and
technical fields, as measured by the frequency with which they are
cited, is about two to five years depending on the field. Similarly,
the subject matter reflected in university course catalogs in these
fields ranges from three to ten years. Even consumer product companies,
makers of such everyday items as soap, toothpaste and diapers, are
critically dependent upon their prowess in research and development.
The retired CEO of Procter and Gamble has described his firm as
primarily an R&D company.
Third, with regard to seeking to recover from any ill-advised
attempt to under-invest in research and education, it takes a very long
time to produce additional productive research scientists. A youth
wishing to become a mathematician, scientist or engineer must decide in
ninth grade to take courses which preserve the option to pursue a
career in any of these fields. This is a consequence of the
hierarchical and interdependent character of a science or technology
education. Further, the ``leakage'' rate in the process of producing
credentialed researchers is very high indeed. In the field of
mathematics, for example, based on current trends one must begin with
3,500 ninth-graders in 2005 to produce 300 freshmen qualified to pursue
a degree in mathematics. Of these, about 10 will actually receive a
bachelors degree in the field. Finally, one PhD in mathematics will
emerge in about 2019.
How well equipped is America to deal with these challenges? On the
positive side, we have built what is generally recognized to be the
world's finest higher education system, but it is noteworthy that over
half the PhD's awarded in engineering in our universities are granted
to foreign citizens. Until recently, many of these talented individuals
remained in America and became major contributors to our society, but
more recently fewer foreign students are enrolling in America's
universities and of those who do more are returning home once their
academic work is completed. Further, only 20 percent of bachelor's
degrees in engineering are received by women; still fewer by
minorities, with the consequence that this major potential source of
talent goes underutilized.
Even in this age of burgeoning technology the number of graduates
with bachelor's degrees in the physical sciences, mathematics and
engineering has been declining for two decades. China now graduates
about 200,000 engineers a year; India and Japan, 100,000 each; the
United States, 50,000. In the U.S., five percent of all bachelors
degrees awarded are in engineering. In China, the corresponding figure
is 40 percent. In Singapore, the fraction is still higher.
A few years ago, when America did not finish in its traditional
first-place in Olympic basketball the uproar could be heard throughout
the nation. How should American's feel about being in 15th place out of
16 nations in the advanced math, based on international examinations of
high school seniors? Or about finishing 16th out of 16 in science?
But talent is only part of the issue. The other part concerns
investing in our universities the funds needed to benefit from that
talent. Our government has done a superb job in recent years of
strengthening research in the health sciences, but somehow over the
last several decades the physical sciences, math and engineering have
been neglected. It too often goes unrecognized that much of the recent
progress in the health sciences, has been underpinned by earlier
achievements in mathematics, the physical sciences and engineering.
Deciphering the human genome, for example, was heavily dependent upon
advancements in robotics and computers. The development of modern
imaging machines was made possible to a great extent by advancements in
engineering and mathematics.
I recently had the occasion to visit factories in Vietnam where the
wage of the lowest-level assembly workers was about 25 cents an hour.
Factories that had moved from the U.S. to Mexico a decade ago are now
moving from Mexico to Asia. But the trend does not end with factory
workers: today one can hire eleven well-educated engineers in India for
the price of one in America. Further, the exodus that began with
assembly workers and then spread to software designers is now moving to
the most advanced research laboratories. The U.S. for the first time
has a negative trade balance even in high-tech products, and the jobs
associated therewith are fast becoming one of our larger exports. Let
me emphasize that this not a partisan issue--it is the result of a
decades-long trend that will take decades to fully correct.
What, then, must America do? There is but one answer: We must
compete. And we must do so while suffering a disadvantage in the cost
of labor. We must be more innovative than ever before; we must have a
vastly better K-12 educational system then we now have; we must
unburden our companies from excessive regulation, litigation and
health-care costs; we must significantly increase our federal
investment in research.
I would offer the following eight recommendations as a starting
point:
Bring the Free Enterprise System to K-12 education in
America. This system, along with Democracy, is what has made America
great and it can make our public schools great once again. We must
introduce competition among schools, administrators and teachers. We
must lengthen the school year. We must pay teachers for performance and
pay them in accordance with their important contribution to society of
preparing the nation's youth for productive, rewarding lives. We must
establish standards, standards that have consequences. This works in
our companies and in our universities and it will work for K-12.
Provide K-12 teaching credentials to subject-matter
experts who successfully complete a brief program to acquire and
demonstrate fundamental teaching skills. There is a certain irony that
upon retiring from my own career in engineering and business I was
permitted to teach in the Engineering School at Princeton but would not
have been permitted to teach ninth-grade math or science in most of our
nation's public schools.
Initiate an America's Scholars Program which will fully
fund the undergraduate and graduate education in the physical sciences,
math, biosciences or engineering of the outstanding 1,000 high school
seniors in the nation each year who score the highest on a standardized
examination and maintain that high degree of excellence during the
remainder of their education.
Double in five years federal spending on basic research
in mathematics, the physical sciences and engineering. It should be
noted that the steady-state cost of doing this is, in the overall scale
of things, modest, equaling the amount by which health care costs in
America increase every two months.
Provide non-citizen graduates of America's universities
in the fields of science and technology special consideration for
visas, work permits and, especially, citizenship. Offer expedited entry
processing to foreign-born scientists and engineers who seek to work in
America.
Provide a tax credit to corporations that fund basic
research in science and technology at our nation's universities.
Provide tax incentives to companies that fund continuing
education for their employees in science and technology. This is
particularly important if members of the science and technology
workforce are to remain productive throughout their entire careers.
Revise the capital gains tax law such that, in a manner
neutral to overall tax generation, gains on assets held for less than
six months are taxed at a very high rate, assets held ten years or more
are untaxed, and those in-between are taxed in a continuous fashion
between these limits.
Finally, and most difficult to accomplish, America must change its
attitude toward careers in science, technology and teaching. Probably
everyone in this room knows who Allan Iverson and Shaquille O Neill
are. But how many know who Bob Noyce and Jack Kilby are? The latter two
arguably affected the lives of Americans in a manner matched by only a
handful or so of people who lived in the previous century.
We are living in a time of intense competition, a time in which the
quality of life in America will be severely tested. In this regard, I
would like to close with a poem by Richard Hodgetts that I used to
quote to my colleagues at Lockheed Martin who were chosen to represent
our company in intense business competitions. It goes as follows:
Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must
outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning in Africa a lion wakes up. It knows it must
outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve.
It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or a gazelle, when the
sun comes up, you'd better be running.
Thank you.
------------
Norman R. Augustine is the retired Chairman and CEO of the Lockheed
Martin Corporation and a former Under Secretary of the Army. He serves
on the Boards of Black and Decker, ConocoPhillips and Procter & Gamble
and has been a trustee of MIT and Princeton and is currently a trustee
of Johns Hopkins. He was a founder of the Maryland Business Roundtable
for Education, chaired the (National) Business Roundtable's Education
Initiative and has been Chairman of the National Academy of
Engineering. He has served as a Lecturer with the Rank of Professor at
Princeton and is a recipient of the National Medal of Technology. He
holds eighteen honorary degrees.
______
Chairman McKeon. Thank you very much. Dr. Magnanti.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS L. MAGNANTI, DEAN, SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING,
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, CAMBRIDGE, MA
Dr. Magnanti. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the
Committee. It's a pleasure to be with you this morning. I also
have in my testimony addressed I think a somewhat broader set
of issues than the purview of this Committee and hope that you
might be willing to enter those into the record.
I'm going to speak today about engineering, math and
science, but I'm going to be using the word ``engineering'' in
some broad sense to represent all three of those through this.
And I'd like to make four points if I could today.
The first I think is rather obvious to all of us.
Engineering is essential to our nation's well being and
prosperity. Imagine, if you will, America in 1900. America
without the pervasive availability of electricity and purified
water; without mass communication and transportation;
aeronautics and flight; without air conditioning and
refrigeration; without contemporary health technologies;
without agriculture mechanization; without computers,
electronics and wireless communication; and without petroleum
and petroleum technologies. Engineering has made a difference
to our lives.
Over the last 60 years, as Mr. Augustine has indicated,
economists tell us that over half of our economic growth has
been due to technology. And closer to home, a recent study done
in the Boston area indicates that the eight Boston research
universities provide $7.4 billion of a boost to the local
economy. $7.4 billion of boost to the local economy.
My second point, engineering practice and engineering
content is changing. And again, this will echo some of the
Chairman's earlier remarks. I think one indication of this is
MIT's new president, Susan Hockfield, who has just joined us
several months ago, the first woman president of MIT and the
first life scientist to lead the Institute. I think this
signals something about the changing demographics of our
university and something about the changing content of our
universities as well.
But we see in engineering practice profound changes. One is
globalization, as indicated by our Chairman, in terms of
manufacturing and research and development being done offshore
as well as in the U.S.
We see employment shifts from larger corporations to
smaller companies and more of a focus on entrepreneurship.
We see the United States becoming increasingly a service
economy, with 70 to 80 percent of our economic output being in
the service industries.
And we see information technology and biology adding to the
traditional make/build work of engineering in other substantial
ways. In fact, much of what's driving engineering these days is
driven by the life sciences and driven by the ultra small--
micro and nano technologies.
A few sobering statistics. The U.S. graduates 75 percent as
many engineering and science degrees per million population
than it did in 1985. So as a percentage of the population, 75
percent.
India and China graduate three times as many bachelor's
engineering degrees; in Asia, eight times as many engineering
degrees as the United States. Sixty percent of all bachelor's
degrees in China are in science and engineering. Only 30
percent in the United States. And the U.S. graduates 50 percent
more MBAs than it does BS degrees in engineering.
You'll see from these comments that the practice and
content of engineering is indeed changing. I think you also see
some rather troubling and disturbing statistics.
My third point, engineering education in America needs to
change. We need improvements in undergraduate education in
teaching and learning. We need a better use of technology. We
at MIT, for example, have had a program with Microsoft for the
past 5 years called iCampus to try to bring technologies to
bear upon the educational enterprise.
We need more kinds of active learning, learning that will
be exciting to our students. And again, we see this both at MIT
and elsewhere in the Nation with more design contests and
involvement in hands-on learning. And we need a broadening of
engineering education, not only to educate our students in the
underlying technologies, but also on aspects of management,
business and some of the social and political attributes that
we deal with.
To echo comments that have already been made, we also need
to attract and support the best and the brightest. We've all
heard about the pipeline issue, and I won't try to retread all
the statistics there, but we need clearly more women and
minorities and attracting them to engineering and science.
We need to promote in K-12 education more interest in
science and engineering. I'll come back to that later. And we
need more feeder programs that are going to feed both women and
minorities into our educational enterprise. For example, we
have a 30-year-old program at MIT which attracts about 80
students a year and sends them to the Stanfords and Berkeleys
and Cal Techs of the world for their education.
We also need engineers as leaders. About 15 years ago when
the national faced a manufacturing crisis, I was involved in
starting a program at MIT called the Leaders for Manufacturing
Program. And that program is helping us to infuse more leaders
into manufacturing in the nation. Perhaps the best example of
an engineering leader is sitting to my right, Norm Augustine.
But through that program we graduated Tim Copes and Pat
Shanahan, VP of Technical Services and Rotocraft Systems at
Boeing; Liz Altman, who is the VP and Director of Business
Development at Motorola's Personal Communications systems; and
Jeff Wilke, the Senior Vice President and head of all
operations at Amazon.com. So people have gone into both
traditional industries and new economy industries.
And we need a meritocracy and an openness to our
environment. I myself am the grandson of an immigrant laborer
and a father who worked loading rail cars at night so that he
could attend college during the day. Our Associate Dean, Dick
Yue, his family escaped from China many years ago, and his
life's dream was to come to MIT and to study engineering and
science, as did his two brothers.
If you just look at our Engineering Council at MIT, our 14
leaders in terms of our Engineering Council, only six of those
14 leaders are U.S.-born. Eight are foreign-born. And if you
look at MIT's eleven Nobel Laureates, four are foreign-born.
America profits enormously providing opportunities to all our
citizens and to a flow of talent into the country.
And one last item is, we have it at MIT, is our
OpenCourseWare Initiative. This is a program for taking all of
our courses at MIT, putting them on the web, providing them to
the world for free. We now have 1,100 of our 1,800 courses
online. There's 20,000 unique visitors every day.
As examples, the chairman of a high school science
department in Toms River, New Jersey, uses OpenCourseWare
material in electricity and magnetism to excite his students.
Ken Magnum, a high school computer science teacher in
Chandler, Arizona uses OCW courses to educate himself and his
students and to support his after high school Artificial
Intelligence Club.
In Colorado, Dan Stivers uses math courses in OCW to
educate his 10- and 12-year-old daughters. There are hundreds
of stories like this.
I will conclude with several recommendations. The first is
to create an engineering curriculum in K-12 to complement this
math and science curriculum and bring the excitement and thrill
of actually building and creating engineering artifacts to the
world of K-12 education, using tools like OpenCourseWare.
Second, develop more active learning approaches for
engineering and science as well as an exposure to engineering
practice to broaden engineering education. Here I see a role
for both the Federal and local governments, industry and
universities.
Third, create and support professional graduate programs in
engineering as an analog to those of business, law and
medicine.
And finally, two broader recommendations that deal with the
ecosystem more broadly and not necessarily the content of
today's activities.
My fourth recommendation, create a National Innovation
Education Act, an NDEA for our times. We talked about Sputnik
attracting us to students. To provide an NDEA that would
provide portable graduate fellowships.
And finally, develop laws and policies to attract and
retain international talent. For example, provide automatic
green cards to all foreign-born Ph.D. graduates in the U.S.
Thank you for providing me this opportunity to share some
thoughts with you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Magnanti follows:]
Statement of Thomas L. Magnanti, Dean, School of Engineering,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you on a topic that is so
important to all of us. By way of background, I am the Dean of
Engineering at MIT where I have been a faculty member for 34 years. For
most of my career at MIT, I have been a member of the Sloan School of
Management, and many of my activities before becoming Dean involved
developing professional master's programs at the interface of
engineering and management. Since becoming Dean six years ago, I have
focused much of my attention on improving undergraduate education and
diversity in the School. I have also, in recent years, become
increasingly concerned by the tremendous forces of change in
technology, in society, and in the world, and the impact, challenges,
and opportunities these present to engineering, to education, and to
our nation's leadership and competitiveness.
I'd like to cover four areas today:
1. Reemphasize the significance of engineering to the nation and
to the world;
2. Outline some of today's challenges and how engineering and
science education are changing;
3. Suggest some areas in which engineering and science education
need to change; and
4. Offer some recommendations.
The significance of engineering to the nation and to the world
Less than two weeks ago, we inaugurated a new president at MIT, Dr.
Susan Hockfield, and I would like to borrow the words she used to
describe MIT's values as a description for those of engineering
generally. She listed them as rigor; implacable curiosity; disciplined
creativity; an appetite for good, old-fashioned hard work; and a
passionate, enthusiastic, can-do, hands-on, fix-it-now attitude.
Keeping that description in mind, I would ask you to imagine a
world without the fruits of engineering: a world without the pervasive
availability of electricity and purified water; without mass
communication and transportation; aeronautics and flight; without air-
conditioning and refrigeration; without contemporary health
technologies; without agriculture mechanization; without computers,
electronics and wireless communication; and without petroleum and
petrochemical technology. The industrialized world at the turn of the
20th century was just such a world. By creating, developing,
organizing, and managing complex technologies and products, the
engineers of the last hundred years shaped our nation and the world
\1\, altering the essential fabric of society and dramatically
improving the quality of life. In purely economic terms, during the
last 60 years, over half of the growth of the U.S. economy has been due
to technological innovation. Our universities have played a major role
in this development. In the year 2000 alone, Boston's eight research
universities provided a $7.4B annual boost to the regional economy \2\.
Silicon Valley and the Research Triangle in North Carolina provide
other powerful examples of how universities impact the regional and the
national economies.
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\1\ The U.S. National Academy of Engineering's list of ``Greatest
Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century.''
\2\ ``Engines of Economic Growth: The Economic Impact of Boston's
Eight Research Universities on the Metropolitan Boston Area,'' March
2004
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As we face some of the most difficult challenges of our day in the
physical, economic, human, political, legal, and cultural realms, we
will increasingly depend on engineering to provide the tools and the
solutions; indeed to help ensure the continual progress, health, and
prosperity of our country in the 21st century.
The rapidly changing environment of engineering and the challenges we
face today
Engineering in the 21st century faces an environment that is very
different from even a decade ago. The practice of engineering is
changing: with globalization of manufacturing and research and
development; employment shifts from large to smaller entrepreneurial
firms and to non-traditional, less technical engineering work
(management/finance/policy); movement to a knowledge-based U.S.
``service'' economy; diminishing half-life of engineering knowledge in
many fields; and introduction of new interdisciplinary fields as well
as the growing impact of information technology and biology on the
traditional make/build work of engineering.
In research, engineering is poised to bear the fruits of
revolutionary developments in the life sciences and the ultra small
(micro- and nano-technology) and to benefit from continuous but
sometimes disruptive advances in information technology. Emerging
opportunities often cross (and blur) traditional disciplines, and flat
government and industry funding for science and engineering, as well as
the increased cost of space and facilities, are stressing the
university system.
To develop engineers prepared to address today's challenges,
engineering education faces major dilemmas. As the world becomes
increasingly technologically driven, students need to be more deeply
grounded in underlying science, mathematics, and engineering
disciplines and require greater depth in their chosen field of
expertise. Simultaneously, society has a strong need for engineer/
leaders and engineer/entrepreneurs who have a broad understanding of
the context of engineering and business, and are well grounded in
teamwork, organizations, and leadership. Concurrent with increased
demands and rapid, technological changes, this period is also marked by
a limited net resource growth.
Longer-term trends and outlook relative to maintaining our nation's
leadership in engineering are ominous. For 20 years, the U.S. share of
high tech exports has declined. While the demand for workers highly
trained in science and engineering has continued to increase, in terms
of engineering bachelor's degrees per million population, we grant only
75% as many degrees as a country as we did in 1985. Today, India and
China graduate three times, and Asian countries altogether eight times,
as many bachelor's degrees in engineering than the U.S. While 60% of
all bachelor's degrees in China today are in science and engineering,
only about 30% of those in the US are. In fact, as a nation, we
graduate 50% more MBA's than SB's in engineering.
Recognizing the tremendous challenges and opportunities, leading
universities have made significant investments in engineering. Harvard
and Princeton announced major financial commitments to engineering;
Stanford is investing heavily in a new Engineering and Science Quad;
and universities such as UCSD and Purdue are adding large numbers of
new engineering faculty and investing in high tech infrastructure. Over
the last five years, MIT Engineering has created two new divisions, in
Engineering Systems and Biological Engineering, with close to 50
faculty members. We have just completed a major new complex, the Stata
Center, which houses the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory, the Laboratory for Information Decision Systems, and the
Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. Throughout MIT's campus,
there is more excitement about education innovations today than any
time in the 34 years I have been at MIT. And yet, what we have done is
only a tiny fraction of what we need to do meet the many challenges.
Engineering education in 21st century America needs to change
Because the world is increasingly technically dominated, we need
all the engineering talent we can get, not only as individuals in
engineering professions, but also as technology conversant decision-
makers and leaders in all spheres and echelons of society \3\.
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\3\ A recent letter from an MIT alumna from San Antonio provides an
illustration of how MIT-educated technologists are impacting her local
community outside of their own careers: one alumnus is the architect of
the revitalization of the vocational/workforce programs in local high
schools; another graduate is active in 21st century career track
training, and distance learning to reach the huge sprawl of San
Antonio; a graduate in Materials Science and Engineering heads the
Education Committee of the San Antonio Manufacturers Association which
is about to graduate the first high school seniors from the
Manufacturing Technology Academy there; a young alumnus is
enthusiastically working with the Brownsville community to help develop
a research/incubator facility to help that community grow beyond the
maquiladoras as an economic base.
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Maintaining engineering as a meritocracy:
Engineering has always been a meritocracy, perhaps the ultimate
meritocracy, providing a road to upward mobility. I myself am the
grandson of an emigrant laborer and the son of a father who loaded rail
cars at night to support his young family while attending classes
during the day to be the first in his family to attend college. Our
Associate Dean of Engineering, Dick Yue, provides another example.
Dick's family escaped Communist China as refugees. Eventually all three
boys in his family came to MIT, earning multiple undergraduate and
advanced degrees in engineering. (Dick's sister went through Wellesley
and Yale and is now a surgeon in Seattle.) We need to ensure that
engineering, mathematics, and science education continues to provide
opportunities for people like Dick and me and for all members of our
society. As President Hockfield said in her inaugural address, it
doesn't matter where you come from, what you look like, who your
parents are, or how much money you have, the only thing that matters is
whether you can do the work. To be the best we can be, the diversity of
the engineering workforce and leadership of the engineering profession
must grow to match the growing racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity
of the United States. We need to attract people of talent and high
capability broadly, and especially more underrepresented minorities and
women, to science and engineering, drawing from all segments of
society, independent of gender, race, and family background.
While more women and underrepresented minorities have entered
science and engineering programs in recent years, concerning numbers of
them drop out or switch out before graduation, and the total number of
degrees granted to them are not nearly commensurate with population
demographics. The situation at the graduate level is even more
disturbing. The PCAST 2004 Report noted the worrying levels of
``pipeline leakage'' among women and underrepresented minority
students. Much smaller percentages of these student groups continue on
to complete science and engineering graduate degrees, leaving
underdeveloped an important segment of the U.S. talent pool.\4\
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\4\ At the doctorate level, women receive only 10-12% of
engineering degrees awarded nationally, African Americans 2% and
Hispanics 4%. (National Science Foundation WebCASPAR database, NSF
Survey of Earned Doctorates/Doctorate Records File, 2002 numbers.)
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A most important factor in this context is the high cost of science
and engineering education to the student and to the university. We do
not want to lose the talents of some of our best and brightest citizens
because they cannot afford a college education. The implications can be
dramatic. In a recent program to encourage underrepresented minority
student applications to graduate school, students listed financial
support as a primary concern in the decision to apply to graduate
school.\5\
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\5\ MIT Converge Program, participant survey, 2004.
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Improvements in undergraduate teaching and learning:
While retaining a strong foundation in the fundamentals, science
and engineering education needs to be more exciting and provide more
hands on experience and context. MIT, which was a member of the ECSEL
coalition, has worked actively to improve teaching and learning in our
science and engineering programs. MIT's iCampus project has focused on
the development of educational technology systems for science and
engineering education. MIT's new Undergraduate Practice Opportunities
Program enhances the development of professional ``soft'' skills our
students will need in engineering practice, within a curricular context
of real world case studies and active learning. Across engineering
departments at MIT and nationally, inclusion of engineering design
experiences using real world case studies and the use of active
learning pedagogies have improved the undergraduate educational
experience. The momentum for curriculum reform to address teaching and
learning and real world practice is strong. Yet more could be done.
Providing engineering support and feeder programs:
Beyond making changes to the undergraduate curriculum, institutions
can and have done more to support students who enter science and
engineering programs to complete them. Most institutions now offer
counseling, tutoring, and mentoring programs for undergraduates. Others
have developed communities of learners to provide support networks for
students. One example at MIT is its 30-year-old Minority Introduction
to Engineering Entrepreneurship and Science (MITE2S) pre-college
preparatory program.
Finally, more should be done in our K-12 to promote interest and
motivation in science and engineering. Recent education research has
highlighted the importance of a positive classroom learning environment
and active learning methods for improving K-12 student academic
achievement and motivation. Engineering would be a wonderful context
for such active learning and a great motivator not only for technology,
but also science and math.
Professional master's level education programs:
Graduate programs that intertwine technical education with
professional practice improve graduates' ability to productively
contribute as members of the U.S. technology labor force and to
participate in global technology businesses and research. Such programs
could also address the ``pipeline leakage.'' As noted by the PCAST
Report (June 2004), the problematic trends could be stemmed if new
graduate programs could capture these students'' interests and more
closely meet their career plans.
MIT has been a leader in developing professional engineering
degrees to meet industry needs, including its Leaders for Manufacturing
(LFM) and System Design and Management Programs, exemplars that unite
technical and management education with professional real world content
and experiences. LFM graduates have become leaders in U.S. technology
based companies, ranging from mature industries (such as Tim Copes and
Patrick Shanahan, Vice President, Technical Services of Boeing
Commercial Aviation Services, and Vice President and General Manager of
Boeing Rotocraft Systems; and Liz Altman, Vice President and Director
for Business Development of Motorala's Personal Communications Sector)
and new economy companies (Jeff Wilke, Senior Vice-President at
Amazon.com).
Openness:
In engineering and science, we need to sustain an environment of
openness to productive collaborations across disciplines and across
institutions and organizations in the public and private sectors. We
also need to maintain an intellectual openness to the flow of
international students and scholars who contribute so much to our
universities and economy. As examples close to home: (a) of the 11
living MIT faculty who have been awarded the Nobel Prize (8 current and
3 emeritus), 4 were born outside the United States \6\; (b) I chair the
Engineering Council at MIT, an advisory/governance body made up of
leaders of our Engineering departments and divisions. Of the 14
members, all but 6 are foreign born; (c) among MIT Engineering faculty
40 and under, 50% are foreign born, while that percentage is only 28%
for faculty over 60. Nationally, 8% of bachelor's degrees, 46% of
master's degrees, and 55% of doctoral degrees in engineering are now
granted to non-US students. As the economies and higher educational
institutions of these non-US countries develop, there is a need for us
to continue to attract and retain this critical talent flow.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Ketterle (Germany), Khorana (India), Molina (Mexico), and
Tonegawa (Japan)
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Openness is also a powerful way to raise the quality of education
in our country at all levels. In April 2001, MIT announced that it
would make all the course materials used in the teaching of its
undergraduate and graduate subjects available on the World Wide Web
free of charge, to any user anywhere. Four years later, this MIT
OpenCourseWare project has put online 1,100 out of an eventual 1,800
courses. The OCW materials attract more than 20,000 unique visitors
each day. Among these are self-learners, educators, and students at all
levels: the chairman of a high school science department in Toms River,
New Jersey, now utilizes OCW materials, and the video lectures of MIT
Professor Walter Lewin about electricity and magnetism, to get his
students excited about physics. Kenn Magnum, a high school computer
science teacher in Chandler, Arizona, has utilized materials from
several OCW computer science courses to educate himself and his
students. With more than 100 course offerings from the MIT Department
of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Magnum sees MIT OCW as
an invaluable professional development tool. And he is referring
students in his after-school Artificial Intelligence Club to OCW
courses on Artificial Intelligence and Electric Power Systems. In
Colorado, Dan Stivers, the father of 10- and 12-year-old daughters, is
using the lectures and course materials of noted MIT mathematics
professor Gilbert Strang to teach his daughters. These are just a few
examples of hundreds of stories from around the U.S. (and the world)
about the impact OCW is having.
Recommendations
I have spoken about the areas in which engineering and science
education need to change. Let me now offer a few recommendations for
comprehensive approaches that could go a long way in addressing these
needed changes and ensure our nation's continuing leadership,
prosperity, and security:
1. Create a National Innovation Education Act, including an ``NDEA
for our times'' with government supported portable graduate fellowships
for students in math, science, and engineering \7\.
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\7\ ,\8\ These recommendations have been embraced by leaders from
industry and the academy (see the December 2004 Council on
Competitiveness report, ``Innovate America'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Develop laws and policies to attract and retain international
talent. To harvest our national investments, we should provide every
foreign born Ph.D. graduate in the US in science and engineering with
an automatic green card\8\.
3. Create an engineering curriculum in K-12 to complement,
enhance, and enrich the curriculum in math and science. Let's bring
mathematics and science and the thrill of teamwork and technology to
life by making engineering part of the K-12 curriculum. Promote
connections between K-12 communities and top science/engineering
universities through projects such as OpenCourseWare.
4. Develop more active learning approaches in engineering and
science as well as exposure to engineering practice to broaden
engineering education, with the development of such educational
innovations funded by government, in partnership with industry.
5. Create and support of professional graduate programs in
engineering leadership, as an analog of professional programs in
business, law, and medicine.
Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you today and thank you
for all you are doing to enhance mathematics, science, and engineering
education and in doing so to contribute to the nation's well being.
______
Chairman McKeon. Thank you very much. Ms. Streckfus.
STATEMENT OF JUNE E. STRECKFUS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MARYLAND
BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE FOR EDUCATION, BALTIMORE, MD
Ms. Streckfus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the
Committee. I'm June Streckfus, Executive Director of the
Maryland Business Roundtable for Education. And as you heard,
it was created by Norm Augustine in 1992, and it takes time to
get results, but we're starting to see some really wonderful
results occurring in our state.
Ed Mitchell was our second chair, of Pepco and Chip Mason
is our current chair, of Legg Mason, so we've had strong
business leadership to stay the course and these business
leaders had a long-term commitment to support education reform
in Maryland, but with a strong focus on making sure that
student performance was improving. We believe that we work at
the intersection of academic expectations, economic success,
and a thriving workforce.
We were founded based on the nine principles of the
National Business Roundtable, and at the core of that were
standards, assessment and accountability, and those words are
very familiar now to this Committee. And we now have really
wrapped our arms around No Child Left Behind in Maryland and
are working to find ways to ensure that it's implemented in
every school and for every child in our state.
We have a widespread commitment that includes K-12,
prenatal-5, which is housed with the Maryland Business
Roundtable, a nonprofit group, and higher ed and the business
community. Our focus is to make sure that all kids in Maryland
are prepared for a future and a wonderful future for
themselves. But our problem is that we have 1.4 million in the
workforce in Maryland. Thirty-two percent, particularly like at
NASA and Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, are boomers, and
the desperation from those three alone and their support for
the for the Maryland Business Roundtable is overwhelming.
They'll be beginning to feel the effect of that as early as
2006, and we're really at functional full employment in
Maryland for 2 years now, but we have 140,000 open jobs and
130,000 unemployed. And 60 percent of our corporations are
prevented from upgrading technologically by low educational and
technical skill levels of our workers.
So what we've put in place in Maryland is a more rigorous
high school curriculum with new high school assessments. And we
have just passed, students entering in 2005, the fall of 2005,
will be required to pass the tests to get their diploma. So
we're beginning to feel that rub.
One half of the students in Maryland hit the mark in
English, math and science this past year. So we looked at what
was business uniquely positioned to do in this process, and we
created a campaign in 1999, and we had been working on a lot of
policy up to that point, but we created an on-the-ground
campaign called Achievement Counts.
At the core now of that is the Maryland Scholars Program.
We were funded 2 years ago as one of the first five states in
the country to put that program in place, and we are part of
the national network of 15 states. The Scholars program is a
step-by-step pathway for achieving future success, because we
want all kids, not just a few, to complete that course of
study.
As you now, the single most significant determiner of
success in college and the workplace is the quality and the
intensity of the coursework. It's a very prescriptive program.
It's primarily, and most of our districts say Scholars is for
Maryland a math and science program, because we're requiring
math through Algebra II. Our state requirement is through
Algebra I.
We are encouraging that all students take Algebra I by
middle school preferably, but by ninth grade. That Algebra II
is expected of all of our Scholars, because we know it's a
benchmark course for highly paid jobs. McCormick Spice, for
instance, just put in a new math test for their entry level
people who are high school graduates, and a big chunk of that
is Algebra II.
So when we do focus groups with students, they say--we ask
them what they want out of life, and they want a job with
benefits. When I was in ninth grade, I really didn't know what
a benefit was. But they're hearing from their parents that if
they take a day off, they can't go on that trip or they can't
do something because they aren't getting pay for that day, or
they don't have health care benefits and they can't take them
to the doctor.
So, benefits is very important. So that's our big pitch
with our campaign. If you want a job with benefits, if you want
a job that will pay well, you're going to have to complete a
course of study that will allow you to get those jobs. And then
the other basis for the Scholars program are three lab sciences
completed in high school: Biology, chemistry and physics
preferred.
We have a speakers bureau of 2,000 businesspeople who speak
to the students at the beginning of ninth grade, letting them
know that all 4 years matter, that just getting by isn't good
enough, and that we talked to 73 percent of the students in
Maryland last year in ninth grade, and our board told us that
this year we need to get to 100 percent because of the urgency
that they feel.
We answer the questions for kids, why should I care? What's
in it for me? And why should I work hard? And to get to another
issue that this Committee deals with, when we ask them what's
the most important factor that limits their thinking about the
future and about college, and it is still scholarship. And the
Pell Grant link, the increase of Pell Grants for the Scholars
is a very important step to help kids realize that they can get
there and they can do it.
We are sending strong messages to kids early on that we
link for them achievement in school to success in life. We
deliver it early, often and by multiple influencers. We have a
teen magazine that one of our--our Daily Record magazine works
with us to produce 90,000 of them for distribution. We've just
created a teen website, ``be what I want to be,'' that let's
kids know what workers do all day, how they get their job, and
what do they make.
Our results in Frederick have been stellar. That's our
first Scholars country. Fifty-five percent more students in
poverty completed Algebra I by ninth grade, and that's 70 more
students. In chemistry, 57 percent more African Americans
completed chemistry this year over last, and 80 percent more
Hispanics completed a fourth science, which we think is a very
important indicator.
How we've gotten there, it is a complex interplay between
academic and nonacademic factors. We got the results because we
have agreements with the local districts that there is a set of
closely watched metrics that include math and science that we
will not budge on. And as a result, they're watching those
metrics and they're problem solving around why more students
are not taking those courses.
Access to the coursework is important; a belief that all
students can do it is important; establishing smaller learning
communities, for instance, our Algebra I classes in Frederick
are smaller for children of poverty and children of color; and
real people from the real world giving real good advice we
believe is a critical success factor.
And this year, we are developing a strategic partnership
with higher ed to bump up those numbers even more. So we
believe that students can do it if adults stand firmly behind
them. And we're very, very happy with the first year--second
year results from Maryland.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Streckfus follows:]
Statement of June E. Streckfus, Executive Director, Maryland Business
Roundtable for Education, Baltimore, MD
The Maryland Business Roundtable for Education (MBRT) is a
statewide, nonprofit coalition of leading employers that has made long-
term commitment to support education reform and improve student
achievement in Maryland.
Since 1992, the Maryland Business Roundtable for Education has
played a major role in transforming education. Led by an outstanding
Board of top corporate CEOs, MBRT provides a consistent, strong voice:
pushing for achievement of high standards; demanding a system of
education that prepares all students for the rigor of college and the
workplace; building strong, effective partnerships with all those who
have a stake in educational excellence and a quality workforce; and
challenging and motivating students to perform at high levels.
In Maryland, the bar has been raised on what students are expected
to know when they graduate. State Superintendent Grasmick and the
Maryland State Board of Education have set challenging academic
standards that are rigorous, but reasonable, and have strengthened
graduation requirements. Students entering high school in 2005 will be
required to meet these standards in order to receive a diploma. Yet,
nearly half of Maryland's high school students did not meet the
standards in 2004.
Many of today's high school graduates are entering the ``real
world'' seriously lacking the knowledge and skills they need to be
successful in college, the workplace, and in life. This not only limits
their chances to lead productive, rewarding lives, but it profoundly
diminishes the economic health, leadership potential and future
prosperity of our communities, our state, and our country.
MBRT's ``Achievement Counts'' campaign is an award-winning,
comprehensive campaign that mobilizes the community at large to
encourage students to achieve academic success. Each strategic and
interwoven component of Achievement Counts provides students with
strong messages delivered early, often, and by many.
Maryland Scholars--Letting students know that choices matter,
courses matter
Speakers Bureau--Showing students that hard work in school pays
off in life
Teen Website--Engaging students in career exploration and
academic preparation
Parents Count--Helping parents help their children succeed in
school
We believe that the student voice is paramount not only to the
success of Achievement Counts but to the education reform movement in
general. Too often, without intending it, adults in school systems and
in school policy positions have missed out on a powerful source of
energy for academic improvement--students' desire and ability to be
responsible partners in their own learning.
We conduct systematic research with students, create ways for
students to participate in designing the program and crafting the
messages, and empower students to be more directly engaged in guiding
their learning and shaping their future.
Through the newest component of Achievements Counts--``Maryland
Scholars''--MBRT, in partnership with the Governor and State
Superintendent of Schools, provides middle and high school students
with compelling information about the rigorous math and science
coursework they need to take and complete in high school in order to be
successful in life--whether they go to college or directly into the
workplace.
Maryland Scholars Course of Study:
4 credits of English
3 credits of Math (Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II)
3 credits of Lab Science (Biology, Chemistry, and Physics
preferred)
3 credits of Social Studies (U.S. History, World History,
Government)
2 credits of the same Foreign Language
Through Maryland Scholars--part of a national initiative funded by
the U.S. Department of Education through The Center for State
Scholars--more than 1,500 business volunteers were recruited, trained,
and managed. This year, these volunteers made 3,000 interactive
classroom presentations in 204 schools in 14 school districts to more
than 70,000 middle and high school students (73% of the state's 9th
graders and 27% of the state's 8th graders). Plans for 2005-2006
include reaching 100% of Maryland's high school freshman through this
program.
Maryland Scholars was piloted in two districts (Frederick and
Harford counties) in the 2003-2004 school year. A comparison between
baseline and year-one data show significant increases in the percentage
of students completing Algebra I (by 9th grade), Algebra II, Chemistry,
Physics, and a 4th science course--particularly among low-income and
minority students.
In Frederick County, for instance, in the span of one year: 55 %
more students living in poverty completed Algebra I by ninth grade; 57%
more African American students completed Chemistry; and 80 % more
Hispanic students completed a fourth science credit.
What caused this dramatic increase? High expectations, creating an
atmosphere of access to rigorous courses, making it feel possible for
all kids, establishing small learning communities, redesigning how
rigorous courses are offered to accommodate slow learners, extending
learning time, providing students with credible reasons, good
information, targeted support, and a vision of what is possible for
them.
As I have traveled to nearly every school district in Maryland over
the past two months, superintendents, administrators, teachers,
parents, and employers are speaking candidly and acting resolutely to
ensure that all students are well grounded in English, math and
science. We are participating in honest dialogue on barriers and
shortcomings and innovative thinking about policies and strategies that
will improve teaching and accelerate learning.
At a time when No Child Left Behind is demanding academic success
for all children and the State has raised the floor on what we expect
student to know, many Maryland school districts are raising
expectations even further. In all my years in education--including some
as a teacher and 14 as a business advocate for education reform--I have
never seen such widespread commitment, belief, focus and determination
that all children must be better prepared for the future.
And through our partnership with Maryland's K-16 Council, higher
education is playing, and must continue to play, a crucial role in
improving student achievement by: preparing teachers who are competent
to teach rigorous math and science content; providing academic support
to struggling high school students; offering incentives and rewards to
encourage students to complete rigorous coursework, including needs-
based scholarships; and facilitating processes that maximize the
analysis and use of crucial data.
We are working at an intersection of academic expectations,
economic success and a thriving workforce; creating a new model of
interaction among high schools, students and employers; and attempting
to deliver education in a 21st century context with 21st century
content and 21st century tools.
Students can do it if adults stand firmly behind them.
______
Chairman McKeon. Thank you. Dr. Songer.
STATEMENT OF NANCY BUTLER SONGER, PROFESSOR OF SCIENCE
EDUCATION AND LEARNING, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, ANN ARBOR, MI
Dr. Songer. Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member Kildee and
Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to
discuss the challenges to American competitiveness in
mathematics and science.
Collectively, the information we have so far indicates that
perhaps never before has the issue of student preparedness in
math and science been so complex and important. Congressman
Kildee asked if we needed another Sputnik, and I believe this
is our wake-up call, our Sputnik moment, as Governor Romney
mentioned in testimony earlier this week.
What can we do to improve American students' global
competitiveness? Based on my work in the last 9 years in one of
our nation's most challenged school districts, the Detroit
public schools, I will share two stories and three suggestions.
First, I recently asked a handful of Detroit public school
teachers to list challenges to helping Detroit students to be
globally competitive. The teachers list nine factors, but I'm
going to only focus on two of those. The last two the teachers
mentioned were: Eight weeks or more of standardized test
preparation in every academic year, and approximately 7 weeks
of testing windows, where a testing window are times when tests
are given at some point during the week and therefore regular
classroom schedules are disrupted for the entire week.
Of the 36 weeks of instructional time in the academic year,
approximately 15 weeks therefore are spent in test preparation,
test taking and related activities. Detroit teachers, this
means, are using approximately 40 percent of their
instructional time in test-related activities. This leads me to
ask the question, are we currently doing all we can to support
American students' preparation and learning of math and science
with only 60 percent of the possible instructional year?
My second story refers to my work a few years ago in Japan.
As a part of a National Science Foundation research study, I
examined the teaching and learning practices of Japanese
classrooms as compared to American classrooms. We discovered
several interesting findings, including: Japanese science
instruction relied less on textbooks than American science
instruction, and the Japanese science curriculum was much more
focused and coherent than the American curriculum.
To illustrate the focus, the Japanese eighth grade science
textbook covered eight topics, compared to an average of more
than 65 topics in American eighth grade textbooks.
Concerning coherence, concepts in ecology are introduced to
7-year-olds and then built upon and revisited by 10- and 14-
year-olds to deepen students' conceptual understandings.
Here in the U.S., are we currently doing all we can to
support American students' preparation and learning of math and
science when we provide only a weak opportunity for these
students to develop deep understandings of essential science
and math concepts, and a hit-and-miss approach to teaching and
learning?
So what have we learned? I provide three suggestions.
My first suggestion addresses the issue of instructional
time. We need to counter the growing trends seen in Detroit and
elsewhere where teachers are told to stop teaching the
curriculum 2 months or more prior to standardized tests. While
increased accountability is very important, the cost of 15
weeks of test preparation and test taking is too high, and it
outweighs the need for accountability evidence.
We need the Federal Government to promote smart and
efficient testing systems that will reduce the need for
multiple national and state assessments each year. We need
tests that are strong measures of critical thinking as opposed
to tests that emphasize declarative knowledge. And we need
models of test preparation and test taking that respects the
preservation of instructional time to allow the development of
deep conceptual understandings.
Second, rigorous standards rigorously applied are
important, but they're not sufficient to promote systematic
exemplary teaching and learning practices in American
classrooms. Educational research helps us know how people
develop deep conceptual understandings. We know that
understanding science and math involves increased time on
topics, systematic guidance in developing more complex ideas,
and an ability to revisit and deepen understandings in a
systematic manner.
Applying these practices to science instruction within
Detroit middle schools has resulted in increasing the Detroit
public school students' state science test scores by 10
percentage points, thus reducing the gap between the statewide
and Detroit passing averages from 30 to 20 percent.
While national standards have begun to provide the needed
systematicity, these are not nearly enough. We need continued
Federal funding to support research to provide convincing
empirical evidence of successful programs and to scale these
programs to thousands of schools or more. Pockets of success
are wonderful, but to take on global competitiveness, we need
much more than national standards and a handful of exemplary
cases.
Third, the crisis of global competitiveness is particularly
severe in urban schools. If we are serious about improving our
global competitiveness across the nation, it's essential that
we marshall our resources toward all science and math students,
and in particular the 30 percent of our nation's children in
urban settings. With the increasing role and importance of
science, math and technology in our future, we cannot afford to
continue to provide an inferior education to urban children.
In addition, what kind of future do we envision in 20 years
without the brainpower of a third of the possible scientists,
mathematicians and engineers?
In Detroit, like other districts nationwide, we have
excellent teachers and pockets of success. However, what is
needed is so much more than my anecdotes. Global
competitiveness is a crisis of substantial magnitude. I believe
we know a great deal about what works and what we need to do.
The question is whether or not we're serious about confronting
this challenge.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Songer follows:]
Statement of Nancy Butler Songer, Professor of Science Education and
Learning Technologies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Chairman McKeon, Ranking Member Kildee, and members of the
Subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to discuss the challenges
to American competitiveness in mathematics and science. It is pleasure
to appear before you today. My remarks draw from my work focusing on
preparing students to be competitive in science, particularly students
within high-poverty urban school districts such as in the Detroit
Public Schools.
As is well known, the status of American students' global
competitiveness in mathematics and science is catastrophic and
declining. A very small percentage of the doctorate degrees in
mathematics, science and engineering are being awarded to American
students. Comparative international standardized test results in
mathematics and science often show American students performing in the
top half in fourth grade but dropping considerably by the eighth grade
and beyond (Schmidt, McKnight and Raizen, 1996; Gonzales et al, 2004).
Consistently, international tests demonstrate that American science and
mathematics students under perform on achievement tests relative to
peers internationally.
In one recent international test specifically designed to measure
fifteen year old students' problem solving and reasoning abilities as
applied to real world problem situations, students in 28 of the 40
countries outperformed American fifteen year olds in math and problem
solving. Students in 22 of the 40 countries outperformed American
fifteen years olds in science (OECD, 2004).
Collectively, the indicators suggest that perhaps never before has
the issue of student preparedness in math and science been so complex
and important. Our status right now is like standing on a dangerous
cliff, a precipice, looking towards a future with grim consequences for
our economy and our nation.
A Particular Focus on Urban Science and Mathematics Education
My work over the past fifteen years involves large-scale projects
to improve the competitiveness of American science students. The past
nine years have focused exclusively on American students in one of our
nation's most challenged school districts, the Detroit Public Schools.
My focus in Detroit leads me to suggest, first and foremost, that in
our challenging work ahead, we place considerable focus on urban
students. While the underperformance of American students relative to
peers internationally is dire, the performance of American urban
students lag behind national averages by twenty percentage points or
more, a difference that is nearly the equivalent of one U.S. grade
level (Songer 2004; Ravich, 1998).
Our nation's urban schools enroll approximately 2.3 million
students or 30 percent of all public school students in the United
States. Urban students account for about 40 percent of the nation's
poor and 45 percent of the nation's minority students. In Detroit, our
students have nearly three times the average poverty rate of the state
of Michigan (70 percent free/reduced lunch as compared to 26.7 percent
state average) and 94 percent are ethnic minorities. Nationwide, the
proportion of American students enrolled in urban schools is growing.
Therefore if we are to fix the problems of global competitiveness in
math and science within the United States, we must combat these issues
in districts where there is the potential to have the greatest impact,
such as in the Detroit Public Schools.
Reversing the Trends
What can we do to reverse the trends of global competitiveness?
Much is known about how to combat these issues. Research has provided
us with tested strategies to alleviate these problems and to reverse
current trends. Some of the well-documented strategies include:
Teachers make a difference. We need to continue efforts
to increase the professionalism of K-12 public teachers such as are
commonplace in many Asian countries.
Strong school leadership is essential. We need to
continue efforts to evaluate and support high standards for school
administrators.
Strong evidence of student learning and ``what works'' in
schools is needed. We need accountability evidence for teachers, school
administrators, parents and other key stakeholders.
Rigorous standards make a difference. We need to continue
to improve our national standards, and to apply them rigorously.
Our work in Detroit supports the importance of professional
teachers, school leadership, evidence and rigorous standards. These
strategies are essential to increase students' competitiveness in
mathematics and science, but they are not sufficient. Nor do they
comprise the complete list of what we have learned in the past fifteen
years. Let me elaborate through two stories.
Story One: Reflecting on Detroit Teachers' Viewpoints
In preparation for my testimony today, I asked a handful of Detroit
Public School teachers to list particularly daunting challenges that
impeded their ability to prepare their students to be competitive in
math and science. The list the Detroit teachers provided is as follows:
Below grade level reading abilities
Truancy from school
Teachers' low comfort levels with math and science
leading to reduced time on challenging material (most common in
elementary classrooms)
Lack of consistency in what is being taught across the
district
Timely dissemination of information across the district
Financial resources
Parental support and parental help with homework
Eight weeks or more of standardized test preparation, and
Approximately seven weeks of testing windows (for MIP,
MEAP--Michigan state standardized tests and Terra Nova tests. Testing
windows are times when tests are given at some point during that week
and therefore regular classroom schedules are disrupted for the entire
week).
While all of the points raised by Detroit teachers are important, I
draw your attention to the last two items. Of the 180 days or thirty-
six weeks of instructional time in their academic year, approximately
fifteen weeks are spent in test preparation, test taking and related
activities. Collectively, Detroit teachers are using approximately
forty percent of their instructional time in test taking and test
preparation. As these numbers are suggestive of numbers systematic
across the school district, we can estimate that Detroit Public School
students have available only sixty percent of their academic year for
instructional activities.
In general, I am supportive of the federal government's role in
encouraging greater accountability and high academic standards in
education. I also recognize that time spent in test preparation and
test taking is often higher in urban schools than in suburban schools.
Nevertheless, the numbers from the Detroit teachers illustrate a
pattern we are observing across the nation, that of test-related
activities ``crowding out'' available time for instruction. Personally,
I found the Detroit teachers' numbers shocking, and I was left with
many unanswered questions. How widespread is this phenomena? What
evidence do we have of its impact on student comprehension of science
and mathematics material? Is there enough instructional time to ensure
American students can solve arithmetic problems, ask scientific
questions, or gather scientific evidence to perform a scientific
experiment? Most importantly, are we currently doing all we can to
support American students' preparation and learning of math and science
with only 60 percent of the possible instructional year?
Story Two: A Study of the Comparison of Japanese and American Science
Classrooms
My second story refers to my work a few years ago in Japan. As a
part of a National Science Foundation research study, I examined the
teaching and learning practices of Japanese classrooms as compared to
American classrooms. We discovered several interesting findings:
Many of the topics taught in K-12 science are the same in
both countries (e.g. electricity, motion, food webs).
In addition, there were many similarities between
exemplary American classrooms teaching practices and the Japanese
classrooms we observed.
However, Japanese science instruction relied less on
textbooks than American science instruction. Japanese instruction
placed more instructional time on experiments in science, and
The Japanese science curriculum was much more focused and
coherent than the American curriculum. To cite one example, the
Japanese eighth grade science textbook covered eight topics compared to
an average of more than 65 topics in American eighth grade textbooks
(Linn, Lewis, Tsuchida and Songer, 2000).
Cross-cultural comparisons are often difficult because it is easy
to oversimplify both similarities and differences. For example,
American science instruction varies considerably from teacher to
teacher and from city to city, and this variety is much more pronounced
than what we observed in Japanese classrooms. Such variety makes it
difficult to speak about what constitutes the practices of a
``typical'' American classroom.
Despite the variety among American classrooms, our study suggested
that, in general, Japanese students were spending longer amounts of
instructional time on each science topic than their counterparts in
America. In addition, there was tremendous consistency in the teaching
and learning approaches used in the Japanese classrooms with a strong
emphasis on many of the practices that American educators see as
exemplary. For example, concepts in ecology are introduced to seven
year olds and then built upon and revisited by ten and fourteen year
olds to deepen students' conceptual understandings of the concepts.
Japanese students' science activities nearly always includes the
exemplary practices listed below even though these same practices are
inconsistently present in American science classrooms:
Connecting lessons to students' interests and prior
knowledge
Eliciting student ideas then planning scientific
investigations
Conducting investigations
Systematically analyze or organize information
Reflect and revisit hypotheses and predictions
Connect to next lessons and identify unanswered questions
(Linn, Lewis, Tsuchida, Songer, 2000)
Perhaps as a result of my inquisitive nature, once again these
study results left me with many unanswered questions. Despite
widespread understanding of how children learn and the exemplary
practices that lead to deep conceptual understandings of scientific
concepts, why are these practices commonplace in Japanese classrooms
but only present infrequently within the American educational system?
Are we currently doing all we can to support American students'
preparation and learning of math and science when we provide only a
weak opportunity to develop deep understandings of essential science
and math concepts and a ``hit and miss'' approach to teaching and
learning?
What Have We Learned?
I conclude my testimony with three suggestions representing what we
have learned about how to reverse the trends that are contributing to
the inability of American students to compete with Japan and other
industrialized nations in mathematics and science.
My first suggestion addresses the issue of instructional time. We
need to counter growing trends seen in Detroit and elsewhere where
teachers are told to stop teaching the curriculum two months or more
prior to standardized tests. While increased accountability is
important, the cost of fifteen weeks of test preparation and test
taking is too high, and it outweighs the need for accountability
evidence. We need the federal government to promote smart and efficient
testing systems that will reduce the need for multiple national and
state assessments each year. We need tests that are strong measures of
critical thinking as opposed to tests that emphasize declarative
knowledge. And we need models of test preparation and test taking that
respect the preservation of instructional time to allow the development
of deep conceptual understandings.
Second, rigorous standards rigorously applied are important but
they are not sufficient to promote systematic exemplary teaching and
learning practices in American science and math classrooms. Educational
research helps us know how people develop deep conceptual
understandings of concepts. We know that understanding science and math
involves increased time on topics, systematic guidance in developing
more complex ideas, and an ability to revisit and deepen understandings
in a systematic manner. Applying these practices to science instruction
within Detroit middle schools has resulted in increasing Detroit Public
School students' state science test scores by ten percentage points,
thus reducing the gap between statewide and Detroit passing averages
from 30 to 20 percent (Songer, 2004). While national standards have
begun to provide the needed systematicity, these are not nearly enough.
We need continued federal funding to support research to determine best
means for determine successful programs and to scale successful
programs to thousands of schools or more. Pockets of success are
wonderful, but to take on global competitiveness we need much more than
national standards and a couple of handfuls of exemplary cases.
Third, the crisis of global competitiveness is particularly severe
in urban schools. If we are serious about improving our global
competitiveness across the nation, it is essential that we marshal our
resources towards all science and math students and in particular
improving science and math education among the 30 percent of our
nation's children in urban settings. With the increasing role and
importance of science, math and technology in our future, we cannot
afford to continue to provide inferior education to urban children. In
addition, what kind of future do we envision in twenty years without
the brainpower of a third of the possible scientists, mathematicians
and engineers?
In Detroit, like other districts nationwide, we have excellent
teachers and pockets of success, however what is needed is so much more
than my anecdotes. Global competitiveness is a crisis of substantial
magnitude. I believe we know a great deal about what works and what we
need to do. The question is whether or not we are serious about
confronting this challenge.
Thank you.
Works Cited
Gonzales, R., Guzman, J.C, Partelow, L., Pahlke, E., Jocelyn, L.,
Kastberg, D., Williams, T. (2004) Highlights from the Trends in
International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2003. (NCES
2005-005). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for
Educational Statistics. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government
Printing Office.
Linn, M.C., Lewis, C., Tsuchida, I., and Songer, N.B. (2000) Beyond
Fourth-Grade Science: Why do U.S. and Japanese Students
Diverge? Educational Researcher 29(3) 4-14.
OECD (2004) Programme for International Student Assessment: PISA 2003
test results available at: http://www.oecd.org/.
Schmidt, W.H, McKnight, D.C., and Raizen, S.A. (1996). Splintered
vision: An investigation of U.S. and mathematics education.
Michigan: U.S. National Research Center for the Third
International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Michigan
State University.
Songer, N.B. (2004) Persistence of Inquiry: Evidence of complex
reasoning among inner city middle school students. Paper
presented at the American Educational Research Association
(AERA) annual meeting. San Diego, CA.
______
Chairman McKeon. Well, thank you very much. There's lots of
thought-provoking meat in what you've given us here today. I
referred to the trip that we took to China. And while we were
there, we met with government leaders, we met with industry
leaders, we met with education leaders, we met with students,
we visited schools. And our purpose was to see what they are
doing in education and how we can prepare ourselves to compete,
because we are in a big competition.
And they agreed I think pretty much universally that their
students did better than our students in math and science, and
that our students did better in creativity and in the soft
skills. And I think a lot of that, as I was thinking about it,
is cultural.
They pointed out to us that there they have one child, they
have two parents and four grandparents focus on that one child,
and a lot of pressure put on that child because for them, I
mean, our poor in this country would be considered a whole lot
better off than their poor in their country. And somebody can
drop out of school in our country and still kind of get by.
Over there, their poverty is so deep that the only way for
them out is education. And they have this tremendous
competitiveness. If they don't do well on that test in their
junior year of high school--in some places the screening starts
much earlier--but if they don't do well, they don't go to
university. If they don't go to university, their life is not
very good.
So they understand culturally how important and how
education is everything to them. And they don't look at a high
school education or even a bachelor's or even a master's. In
fact, Harry Shum I think was his name, the head of the
Microsoft research and development lab over there, who was born
in Beijing, educated in Hong Kong, came here to get his higher
education degrees, said when he got his Ph.D. his parents said,
wonderful. Now you can start your post doc. I mean, to them,
it's--their goals are so much higher than ours, so it's a
really, really tough thing.
Derrick Bock, a professor at Harvard, wrote recently that
in contrast to nearly every other sector of the economy, the
actual method of instruction in college hasn't really changed
in over 40 years. ``I see lots of good things happening in
school, K-12, universities, colleges, proprietary schools, lots
of exciting things happening. But I notice that some of the
schools have not changed a whole lot,'' as he says in his book,
``in over 40 years.''
If schools aren't willing to change, if they're not willing
to change their methods, adapt so that they can be more
effective and efficient, how are we going to be able to
compete? How are we going to expect our students to be
creative, innovative and to do well if the schools are not
adapting to new methods and new ways? What can we do to change
this culture and this environment? Anybody?
Dr. Magnanti. Mr. Chairman, if I may. One, I would echo
some of those concerns. Clearly the concerns about people in
China, India seeing education as the road to upward mobility,
as we had in this nation for a long, long time. I would suggest
that, at least as I see it, many of our universities are
changing at this point in terms of their educational pedagogy.
And again, I'll just give an example or two from MIT, but I
think I could cite examples from many.
One program that we have right now is called Eye Labs or
Web Labs. These are laboratories at a distance. So in order to
use laboratories more effectively, you can sit at your
computer, you can actually run, physically run a laboratory,
whether it's a wind tunnel, it's a MEMs testing device. And the
notion is to provide 24/7 access to that lab, to integrate
laboratories more effectively with the lecture material that we
have in our classes, and also then to provide more access to
those facilities so that we can have students at high schools
having access to those facilities, students at universities
having access to facilities at corporations that we can't
afford to have in terms of our activity. That's one example.
I think another example is one of our signature courses at
MIT, an introductory computer science course, which about two-
thirds of all the students at MIT take. That course is now
taught without lectures. It used to be it was taught in big,
300-person lecture halls, a very sort of impersonal lecturing.
It's now taught with voice annotated Powerpoint slides done
then in small sessions of recitation sections which the
students are interactively more actively with the professors
and getting more engaged with the professors.
So I actually think that what's happening right now, at
least at the university level, is we're seeing a bit of a sea
change. I think we did fall asleep for many years in terms of
changing the pedagogy and changing what we're doing. But I see,
not just at MIT, at Michigan and many of our other
universities, significant changes in the pedagogy that we're
developing. And I think it's--we need government and industrial
support to help us make that transition. But I think it is a
time of transition right now.
Chairman McKeon. My time is over, but what kind of--you
need government support. In what way?
Dr. Magnanti. Well, I think we could use government support
for providing the infrastructure, for this technology
infrastructure.
Chairman McKeon. Money.
Dr. Magnanti. Some money, in terms of money for the
infrastructure. I think we could also provide opportunities for
government, universities and industry to get together to create
local consortiums that could help us to have better access to
shared facilities between the universities, local industry. I
think there's actually a wide variety of ways in which we can
do such things.
Chairman McKeon. Thank you very much. Mr. Kildee.
Mr. Kildee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When I was teaching in
Flint, Michigan, AC Division of General Motors, now Adelphi,
separated from them, and DuPont, from time to time would raid
the public schools, the high schools particularly, for math
teachers and science teachers and we'd lose them to the private
sector because they could offer them, you know, more money.
They never tried to raid me. I was a Latin teacher and they
never approached me for any need at Adelphi or DuPont.
How can we address this? Because there is a temptation to
go into the private sector rather than have a great crackerjack
science or math teacher stay in the public school system. Any
of you have any response to that?
Mr. Augustine. Well, I'd be happy to touch on that from the
business perspective. Currently we need to make the rewards of
a teaching career much greater, both financially and socially
and culturally. We clearly badly underpay our teachers, the
best of our teachers. And that's something that as a nation I
think we need to deal with.
But I think that's not the only issue. We need to make
teaching where it's a very attractive career, that people take
pride in it. And then people will stay in that career. It is
true that business seeks the most talented people it can find
anywhere, and it probably will continue to do that, and we
probably wouldn't want it to do anything else. So I think the
solution is not so much to change business but to change our
dealing with the career of teaching.
I taught a brief period myself, and I discovered teaching
is very hard work. Very hard work. And people who have not
tried it I think don't fully appreciate that. So I think there
are things that can be done.
I think there are also things that companies can do, for
example, in the university level. I would like to see tax
consideration given to companies that fund research in
universities. I think that would be a win-win for everyone. But
those are the kinds of things one might do.
Mr. Kildee. Dr. Songer, you're experienced with the Detroit
school system. Do you have any comment on that? Do they retain
their math and science teachers there?
Dr. Songer. In Detroit? No. We are not terribly successful
in retaining the good teachers, and that's true for urban
districts nationwide. Recruiting teachers to teach in urban
settings is very challenging, because the teaching environment
is such a challenging teaching environment.
I think that the key here that is common across the
education community is that we really need to focus on the
professionalism of teachers, which is what Mr. Augustine was
talking about. It's just--the teaching profession has lost its
glamour. And, it's not only challenging, it's not safe, it's
not fun, it's not rewarding. And that--it's really frustrating
for us that are promoting teaching as a profession to have to
face the challenges that we see when actually the rewards of
teaching, just the teaching itself, are very, very valuable for
many people. And I think people go into it hoping that that
will be consistently a part of their job. And what happens is,
some of these other issues just overshadow their ability to
really enjoy the pleasure of the teaching.
So I think the professionalism of teaching is just an issue
we can't get away from. We have to work with that in a serious
way.
Mr. Kildee. And if a student is not getting involved in
math and science in the K-12, they're not likely to have an
epiphany when they're in college, are they?
Dr. Songer. Absolutely. It's the pipeline issue where we
want to keep them engaged from middle school on. The
standardized test scores show that in fourth grade, for
example, American students are doing very well in math and
science. by eighth grade, the declines have gone down. By 12th
grade, we're in about the lowest 10th percent in terms of
industrialized countries.
So, we do need to get in early and keep it engaging for a
longer, sustained period of time.
Mr. Kildee. Dr. Magnanti?
Dr. Magnanti. If I could just add, I'm echoing Mr.
Augustine. I think salary is an issue, but I think a rewarding
career path I think is an issue. And I think for perhaps modest
sums of money, one could think about providing funds for
teachers to spend summers at corporations, to spend summers at
universities and get them engaged so that they continue to be
engaged with the underlying math, science and engineering
activities, so they can then bring that back to the classroom.
I think there's some ways of making it just a much richer
career for these people, so that they'll be more excited about
being teachers and would provide I think a little bit more
incentive for them to participate in the teaching enterprise.
Mr. Kildee. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McKeon. Mr. Osborne.
Mr. Osborne. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I'd like to thank
members of the panel for being here today. We appreciate your
presence very much. Mr. Augustine, you mentioned that we need
to strengthen K-12 education. You talked about the value of
competition and maybe doing something to compensate teachers
better. I'm assuming merit pay or something like this. Do you
have any specifics on the compensation of teachers? Because
ofttimes you run into the teachers unions and various
regulations that make this very difficult. Have you heard of
anything or do you have any ideas that would be helpful?
Mr. Augustine. You're quite correct that it's a very
difficult issue to deal with. The teachers union issue and
tradition. But I think we're dealing with a problem here that
goes beyond the band-aid stage. We need major surgery. And I
think we're going to have to do some things that we don't like
at all perhaps if we're to accomplish what we want.
It's often pointed out that how do you evaluate a teacher?
Is it just the results of the students on a standardized test?
And I would certainly hope not. In business, we reward people
based on their contribution. And when we measure contribution,
we use, to take an analogy, I grew up in the West in rodeos.
The rider of a bull gets two scores. One is how hard the bull
bucked, and the other is how well they rode. And one has to
take that into consideration.
If you're teaching in an inner city school with children
that haven't had great opportunity, the fact that you may be in
the bottom 20 percent, but instead of the bottom 2 percent, you
should be given credit for that. And I realize this is not an
exact science at all. But in the business world, we exercise
judgments every day as to who gets to keep their job, who gets
promoted and what they get paid, and it's made America's
business thus far as successful as any in the world. And I
believe in the free enterprise system. It works in our
universities. I think it could work in K-12.
Mr. Osborne. OK. Thank you. And Dr. Magnanti, just a very
quick question here. You mentioned that we are now producing 75
percent of the Ph.D.s that we were in 1985 per unit of
population, and more MBAs and that type of thing. Do you have a
quick answer as to why you feel this is the case?
Dr. Magnanti. Well, one I think is just monetary return. I
think if you look at salaries and the like, our chairman quoted
some salaries for various professions, but if you think of
salaries for MBAs versus engineers, they're quite stark in
terms of the difference in terms of salary. So, part of this is
an issue I think of all of us honoring and having a better
sense of economic value of our engineering workforce. I think
that's certainly one issue.
And I think also is providing the right instruments and
incentives to make engineering exciting. And I think if we
could develop some long-term important national initiatives
that we could work on, the Sputnik of our era. Governor Romney
mentioned some of these, whether it's energy and greater energy
independence or greater activity in terms of the energy sector,
but some exciting national imperative that we could work on as
a nation, again, to sort of try to attract talent to the
engineering and sciences. I think that would be one useful
instrument for trying to do this.
Mr. Osborne. OK. Well, I noted you also mentioned a shift
toward entrepreneurial smaller companies. And sometimes a blend
of engineering and technical know-how with MBA skills serves
those companies well.
I'd like to move on to Ms. Streckfus and Dr. Songer. I'm
assuming, I'm just guessing from listening to you that I think
Ms. Streckfus mentioned that you had embraced No Child Left
Behind. And Dr. Songer, I gathered from listening to you that
maybe you didn't embrace it very much, and wanted to--and that
may be a generalization on my part. But at any rate, you know,
testing is part of No Child Left Behind, and if you have any
comments there, I'd be interested in having you flesh out your
thoughts a little bit, either one of you, as to how you feel
this is working.
Ms. Streckfus. In Maryland, we believe that you need to
measure and need to have focus and need to have data, and that
the only way you can do that is through assessments. And we
believe that there's value with state assessments, because
prior to this, we really didn't know what Algebra I was in any
district in Maryland or in any school in Maryland. So what No
Child Left Behind has pushed on is to make sure if we're
assessing in that area, we need to have rigorous standards, and
then the assessments need to reflect accomplishment of those
standards.
We hear the argument frequently that there's a lot of focus
on how to take the test, that everything stops in a classroom
prior to that. We've just met with 20 superintendents district
by district in Maryland. I have never seen--and I taught school
in '68, so I've been with this for a long time--I've never seen
such focus, such look at what are we going to do to get all
kids to hit the standards, a concern about adequate yearly
progress, but not an overwhelming concern. The concern is more
around how are we going to get more students to these higher
levels of learning.
So, could you go to an extreme with No Child Left Behind
and testing and--yes. Do you have to constantly be vigilant to
make sure that that doesn't happen? Yes. But bottom line, what
we're trying to do with that legislation and how it's being
enacted in Maryland I think is a model for what Maryland
Business Roundtable would like to see continue.
Dr. Songer. I would just like to add a few comments to what
Ms. Streckfus said. In general, I'm actually very supportive of
the ideas behind No Child Left Behind. I think it's a wonderful
way to get the conversation going about the need for high
standards and accountability, and those are exactly the right
conversations we need to have.
I think the problem is that whenever you put any piece of
Federal legislation into place like this, the way it's
manifested is sometimes difficult. And unfortunately, the piece
of my testimony that I spoke about is only a small section of
the piece in the written testimony that talks about No Child
Left Behind and some of the things and ideas behind it. And
actually, I believe that in some ways this is exactly what we
need to be doing right now. We need to be raising--having high
standards and putting pieces into place that will allow schools
to be accountable and to reach those high standards.
I think it's just that in the process of implementing these
things, sometimes some of the details overshadow the general
idea, and I think that's what's happening in Detroit when
they're spending so much time in test preparation because the
stakes are so high for them.
Mr. Osborne. Thank you. And I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McKeon. Mr. Holt.
Mr. Holt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the
witnesses. It's hard to think of any more important topics than
what we're covering today. It's particularly dear to my heart
as a scientist, as a physicist, along with my colleague, Mr.
Ehlers. We often talk about this and point out that the low
comfort level with science and math goes beyond just teachers.
It's in society at large, which creates something of a chicken-
and-egg problem if we're trying to build interest and support
for science and math teaching throughout the schools.
There's a lot to be said about standards. I was interested
to learn just this morning that a survey of the graduation
exams, high school graduation exams, in a number of states,
find that to pass the math tests, students have to demonstrate
math skills that in other countries would be taught in the
seventh or eighth grade.
But let me refer back to some work that I was involved in,
well now nearly a half dozen years ago. I served on the John
Glenn Commission, the National Commission for the Teaching of
Math and Science. I think we did a good job. We focused on
teachers, the teaching of math and science. There's a lot that
can be done with curriculum. There's a lot that could be done
with parents. There are lots of other things, but we decided to
focus on teachers.
And I just wanted to quickly run through the
recommendations from that commission. Some of you may be
familiar with them. And in the little time that will then be
remaining, I'd appreciate your comments, and if there isn't
time this morning, your subsequent comments.
Goal one was to establish an ongoing system to improve the
quality of math and science teaching in grades K-12. So it
called for summer institutes, continuing education, that sort
of thing. Not just occasional in-service days, but school
districts reward and incentive programs and that sort of thing.
We called for increasing significantly the number of math
and science teachers, partly by identifying exemplary models of
teacher preparation, working with the schools of education,
finding ways to attract additional qualified candidates, partly
through such things as selecting 3,000 annual academy fellows,
teaching academy fellows.
We called for improving the working environment in the
schools, which would focus on induction programs to help
beginning teachers of math and science become acclimated, so
that we wouldn't lose so many new teachers. As you know, most
teachers don't last beyond 5 years, and that's at least as true
in math and science as in other areas.
Part of this improving working environment, we called for
business partnerships. And that gets to a key point that I hope
in your subsequent comments today you'll address as really what
is the role. I mean, we hear an awful lot of complaints or
horror stories from business and industry. Part of what we're
looking for is what's their role in addressing this.
I think we need to provide incentives to encourage math and
science teachers to remain in the field as well as to enter in
the field, and of course, salaries.
So that's a quick summary of what the John Glenn Commission
recommended. Do those recommendations still hold up?
Mr. Augustine. If I might, I would comment briefly. I think
they are very sound indeed. And I would like to just site one
example of a business partnership that some years ago in a
company I then served, Lockheed Martin--or actually, it was
Martin Marietta at the time--we wondered how we might help in
K-12. And we concluded that the most leverage was to be had by
helping teachers, exactly as you site. And the reason is that
teachers have such impact on people, and if they affect a few
students each year during a career, it adds up.
And we began a program of fellowships during the summer for
outstanding teachers to go to a university that we had an
affiliation with and spend part of the summer in a summer
program trading ideas on teaching, taking courses on the latest
trends in science and mathematics. And we tried to do it so it
would be very pleasurable, not on the cheap, something that
people would really look forward to being able to do. And I
think that's an example of the kind of thing that I assume your
commission was referring to that could make a difference.
I would just have on caution, and that is that,
particularly at the university level, there's also the danger
of too much involvement of the business community in education,
a danger that it begins to exert pressures on what you teach.
And one has to guard against that, too.
Thank you.
Chairman McKeon. Thank you. Mr. Ehlers.
Mr. Ehlers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really want to thank
you for calling this hearing. This is an extremely important
topic. I'm of course prejudiced on this. I have spent a good
many years of my life in this starting in 1966 when I became
concerned about what was then called scientific illiteracy. And
I asked myself what a simple little college professor could do,
and I started a special course for future elementary school
teachers, teaching them physical science and how to teach
science in the schools. And that started a lifetime interest.
But I'm very pleased with the hearing for another reason,
because I started in 1996 in the Congress to make this my No. 1
priority, and literally I was a voice crying in the wilderness.
I could not get attention, very little support. No one believed
me. And today, every week I read a quote in a newspaper or a
magazine from a leading industrialist saying this is the No. 1
problem in our country, as our panel has said.
I'm going to act more like a witness than a questioning
congressman, because I want to reinforce some of the points
that were made. I may start preaching, too, and I hope you'll
forgive that, too.
But first of all, I agree with my colleague, Rush Holt, my
fellow physicist. The Glenn Commission did good work. It was a
real disappointment to me that the report essentially fell with
a dull thud on American society and has not really been
followed as it should have been.
I believe we have a major crisis in this country in math
science education. And I call it a major crisis because it is
causing a major crisis in innovation and manufacturing in this
country. And you've heard the figures from Dr. Magnanti, and
I'm sure all the witnesses are aware of that. Things look very
grim for our prospects in global competition if we don't
improve in our math science education.
I'm tremendously pleased with the growing interest in it.
I've been asked and gave three speeches already this week on
the topic. So people coming to Washington are actively
interested in it and want to hear what's going on.
One key factor I didn't pick up here which I think has to
be included is starting early. I have concentrated my efforts
on the K-12 system, and primarily K-8, because that's often
neglected. And if we don't get students coming out of the K-12
system with the necessary background, they are simply not going
to pursue science, technology, mathematics, engineering at the
college level, because it would take them 5 years, maybe even
longer, to get caught up and get out. So we really have to make
sure they have the background.
Another problem is math and science tend to be sequential,
particularly the physical sciences. If the students get off
track or miss something at some point, it hurts them for the
rest of their educational track. And so there are I think
strong arguments for developing common themes in all math and
science curricula throughout the country. I know the Federal
Government can't control the schools, can't control the
curricula, but at least can we agree on certain ideas,
principles, concepts that must be taught at each grade level,
so that when the students transfer, as they often do, they
don't lose the track and the sequential nature of this?
Another problem I've encountered in my experience that
fairly often, math and science are considered optional in the
early grades, particularly elementary school, but sometimes
even in the high school, and I fail to understand that. And I
have experienced that with my own children. My son loved
science. He was in a school that had an excellent science
program, went through 4 years of it. In fifth grade, he wasn't
getting science. So I inquired of the teacher, and she says,
well, we just have too much to do in the fifth grade. We have
band gets added on and this and that and the next thing. And we
just don't have time to teach science. And I said, well, my son
is disappointed. He enjoys it. Well, we have this good science
kit. We'll let him work on it in his spare time. He's a bright
student. He has extra time, he can do it.
So I went to see the principal and talked to him about it.
He says, oh well, teacher doesn't like science, she doesn't
like to teach it, there's not much I can do about it. And I
said, well, if you have a teacher who decided not to teach
reading or some other subject, wouldn't you do something about
it? Well, yes, but, you know, science isn't that important.
We have to get away from that attitude. And that's not an
isolated example either. School boards in general do not give
full support to it.
One of you made the comment that it's very important to
have real people giving real advice. I heartily concur. In all
the speeches I've given from coast to coast on this to
scientists and engineers and mathematicians, I encourage them
to go to the school nearest them and volunteer, not on a
regular basis so much, but just say, look, I'm an engineer.
It's really exciting to me, and I want to make sure your kids
understand what engineering is so that they can make a good
choice about it. And I think this can have a real impact on
students.
And perhaps my own life is an example of that. I grew up in
a small community. I never met a scientist. I had some interest
in science but no one to talk to. And in high school, I ended
up sitting in a diner next to someone one time. We started
talking. He was a mechanical engineer at Ford Motor Company. We
had a 15-minute conversation about what he did, and I thought,
that sounds neat. I was working part time as a mechanic. I
loved to work on cars. Maybe I should be a mechanical engineer.
So 2 years later when I went off to college, they asked what's
your major? I said mechanical engineering. On the basis of a
15-minute conversation with an engineer in a diner, someone I
never knew.
And I think it's very important for scientists, engineers,
mathematicians to get out in the public, talk to kids, and not
go to the school with the attitude, I'm going to tell you how
you should teach this. Just the attitude, I want your kids to
know how much fun it is. And kids do enjoy it in the elementary
school.
Dr. Songer, my fellow Michigander, you commented about the
one-third of students in urban areas, and that's a very real
problem. We have to deal with that. But I also want to remind
everyone here and the Committee Members, let's not forget the
half of our population that is female. America I think has a
unique cultural problem. Because in other countries--China,
Russia, Europe--by and large, half of the science students are
females. In America, there's a cultural disposition that women
should not do that. And I encountered it first when my daughter
was--who had gotten A's in math all the way through elementary
school and got to high school algebra, the first test was an A.
The second one B-minus--or B-plus. The next one B-minus. I had
a little talk with her and said, what's going on here? And she
says, well, you know, girls can't get math. That's the peer
pressure in America. That's the culture in America. And we
should tackle that.
Fortunately, it's changing. But today still, women
graduating as engineers, I believe they're 7 percent of the
total. There's no reason it shouldn't be 50 percent. And we as
a nation have to work on that.
My final point, I think three things we have to work on.
No. 1, in my experience working in the schools, and I've worked
in a lot of elementary schools as well as teaching at the
university level for 22 years, in my experience, the single
greatest factor in the success of the student is to have at
least one interested and involved parent. It's very hard for
the government to impact that. But it's something we absolutely
have to communicate. If you have that, then the teachers in the
schools have an opportunity. If we don't have an interested,
involved parent, it's very difficult for the schools or the
teachers to have an impact.
Second, we need qualified, well trained teachers. We've
talked about that enough. And your comment, Norm, about summer
opportunities for them and things industry can do to help,
that's also true of government labs, it's true in a number of
things. Very valuable experience for teachers at the high
school level and perhaps even elementary.
And last, we need good curricula. I think that's the least
of the problems now. We do have good curricula out there, but
most schools are not using them, because school boards don't
want to pay the extra money for the equipment that a good
program has. Teachers don't know how to manage the equipment,
and one other thing in my experience, the single biggest factor
in the success of a good science program in a school was to
have a go to person, so if the guppies die, the beans don't
sprout, the teacher can go to that person and say, oh, my
guppies died. What did I do? And he's, no problem, and she has
new guppies the next morning.
If you have that, in my experience, the program succeeds.
If you don't, the program founders in a few years, and they go
back to the traditional textbook approach.
Thank you for your generosity and time, Mr. Chairman. But I
just had to get my little sermon off my chest. I'm the son of a
minister, and you can probably tell that. Thank you.
Chairman McKeon. Thank you. Mr. Kind.
Mr. Kind. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I do want
to thank you for holding what's perhaps the most important
hearing that we're having this year, and hopefully we'll have
an opportunity for some future hearings on this topic area. And
I want to thank all the witnesses for your testimony and for
all the good work you're doing in the subject area.
I had the pleasure of joining the chairman on the
delegation that went to China over the Easter recess, and I
think all of us came home with a profound sense of anxiousness
or urgency in regards to what our own country is doing to
better prepare our students and workers for the competition of
the global marketplace.
Just this morning I attended Progressive Policy Institute
Forum over at Union Station that had Thomas Freedman there, who
wrote the recent book, The World is Flat. It should be required
reading for every member of the U.S. Congress in regards to
what's happening today and where we're going with the global
economy. And you get the impression that both China and India
are making a huge investment in their education infrastructure,
especially emphasizing the math, science and engineering
fields. And this debate that we've been having in this country
in regards to trade agreements or just globalization generally,
I'm convinced is not so much a race to the bottom of cheap
labor or no environmental standards and jobs being outsourced
as it is today a race to the top. And China is a country that's
not content in being good at just copying and mass producing.
They want to be on the cutting edge of science and technology
and medical research.
And they're catching up very quickly. And that forty, fifty
year cushion that we've had since the second world war because
the rest of the world lay in the ashes of ruin has changed. The
other countries are modernizing. They're investing, they're
catching up. And we're seeing that now in the students and the
skills that they're producing in those countries. And yet you
feel a sense of frustration in regards to what it's going to
take for our country to wake up. With industry leaders,
policymakers, people in academia who I think get this already,
but Dr. Magnanti, I'm not sure what the spark is going to be,
what the new inspiring vision will be to really ramp this all
up to where I think we need to go.
And, Dr. Songer, we're hearing a lot about the Sputnik
analogy. And I think it's true. We are at a Sputnik moment. But
it's frustrating, because just saying we're at a Sputnik moment
doesn't make it so, because there's nothing tangible or visible
or something we can grasp and embrace to wake us up, as Sputnik
did, when oh my God, we're losing the race to space. And it got
everyone's imagination, and everyone got it immediately, and we
marshalled the resources then, back then, to deal with that
situation, and it worked. And yet we're missing the Sputnik
moment, and I'm not sure what it's going to take in order to do
it. Thomas Freedman thinks it's going to be energy independence
could be the vision and the excitement to spur a lot more
interest of our students to enter these areas.
And there is cultural differences, Mr. Chairman, that you
recognize in regards to the emphasis of education in China with
the parents and grandparents. And Tom Freedman is out on tour,
and in his book is fond of saying that when we were growing up
as kids sitting at the dinner table, parents would always
admonish us by saying, make sure you eat everything your plate,
because there are kids in China and India that are starving.
Now today the message from the parents should be, hey,
kids, make sure you study very hard, because there are students
in China and India that want your jobs. And I don't think we
have that sense of urgency with our own parents and the kids
and the active involvement which is crucial to the education
success that these kids have.
I've recently reintroduced legislation that I had in the
last session of Congress we just reintroduced this year, H.R.
2325, the 21st Century Innovation and Creativity Act. And it
would establish competitive grants from the National Science
Foundation, the Department of Education to increase education
and job training opportunities in the math and science and
engineering and technology fields.
The goal is to be more innovative and creative in
attracting students into these fields. Schools can provide
students with scholarship stipends, for instance, to deal with
the cost. They can expose students to different industries
through internships, mentorships, fellowships, part time work.
It also aims to increase the number of traditionally
underrepresented students in these fields.
Schools could also use the money for research equipment,
facilities construction, repair and upgrading of your own
infrastructure, which I think is desperately needed out there,
create interdisciplinary programs in these fields that deal
with industry and the rapid changes that are occurring there.
I just think we really do need to ramp this up. And
unfortunately, this year we've wasted almost five-and-a-half
months talking about how to dismantle the New Deal when we
really should be talking about the New, New Deal we should be
offering the American people, and especially our students in
getting into these fields. And we're not.
And I appreciate the Chairman's and so many other Members'
interest on this Committee, and hopefully we'll be able to find
some common ground and work together and work with something in
a bipartisan fashion, because I'm afraid if this Committee
doesn't do it, the other Members of Congress are stuck on their
own issue areas and on their own important topics, that I don't
see it getting done at all, unless the leadership is going to
come from this Committee.
Just a quick question to the panelists. I mean, you guys
are experts in what we're dealing with. But if you had to
assign a grade to our country right now in regards to what
we're doing to prepare the next generation for the competition
of the global marketplace, and even more specifically, what
we're doing in the math, science and engineering fields, what
grade would you give us right now on an A to F scale? Mr.
Augustine, do you want to give that a shot?
Mr. Augustine. It's very difficult, because the system is
bimodal. The best is very good and much of the rest is very
poor, but to try to go along with the spirit of your question,
it's probably somewhere between a D-plus and a C--D, Dog,
plus--and a C-minus.
Dr. Magnanti. I make it a practice not to give out grades
unless I have the exam in front of me. So I like to, you know,
sort of----
Mr. Kind. And we're not looking for any grade inflation
here either.
Dr. Magnanti. Let me just offer maybe two comments. One is,
Mr. Augustine played a central role in the Council on
Competitiveness deliberations, and you may have seen the
report, Innovate America. But very consistent with your comment
in terms of your legislation, that council recommended the
creation of a National Innovation Education Act that would be
comparable to the NDEA. And you could argue whether it was
Sputnik or whether it was the NDEA, but the NDEA played a
prominent role for people like myself of going to graduate
school and studying math and science. And that committee
recommended 5,000 portable graduate fellowships. And would be a
statement by the government that's saying science and
engineering is important and we want to invest in it. So one
could think of that.
I think at the K-12 level, and I'm reluctant to say
anything with an expert like Dr. Songer here in terms of an
education expert, but educators tell us that people learn best
when they're learning by doing and action learning.
And I would say that if we could think about this math and
science, bringing it more to life, and ask a simple question:
Why do students like math and science? Some of them like math
and science because they have attitudes, they've just got
attitudes for doing this. Some do it because they're attracted
to it, because it's exciting.
And I think one of the things we can do is try to make math
and science more exciting by making it more relevant, more
learning by doing. I think in part we could do that by adding
some engineering to math and science we're teaching in K-12,
and also think of this as a system of embracing engineers in
your local community to come in and help with those courses, to
provide the role models that Mr. Ehlers was talking about. I
think there's a sort of systematic way we can think about that
of really infusing some new life into the K-12 system and
really making it exciting for these young people.
Mr. Kind. Ms. Streckfus, Dr. Songer, can you offer any
grades to give us a sense of where we are?
Ms. Streckfus. I was fortunate enough to attend the
National Education summit a few weeks ago, and the data that
was presented by the Governors and by Achieve is that for 100
students who enter ninth grade in this country, about 16 are
completing a 4-year degree by four to 6 years into the higher
ed stream. So with that in mind, I would have to say D.
Dr. Songer. I just want to add to Dr. Magnanti's comments.
I think there are real pockets of success, and those pockets
are A. I mean, when you look at the places where things are
working, they're doing more of these hands-on science, they're
doing really engaging math that applies to people's lives, it's
very exciting. The problem is that in any one child's
trajectory of K-12 education, they might get one or two of
those, and that's not enough to sustain them in becoming a
science or math major in all cases. Sometimes they get that 15-
minute conversation that makes a big difference, but a lot of
times the pockets of success they get in their own life is not
enough. So the overall system I would say is a D.
Mr. Kind. Thank you. I thank you again, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McKeon. Dr. Price.
Dr. Price. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the
opportunity to ask some questions. I apologize for being late
and missing your opening statements. By way of introduction,
I'm a physician, which in some circles makes me a scientist, in
most circles not. And as an orthopedic surgeon, even in the
physician community, I'm not a scientist. But I believe that
there are very few things that we will deal with that are as
important as the topic that we're discussing today.
As a physician and a surgeon and one of those that likes to
see what you're trying to fix and then be able to prove that
you fixed it, it's a very simplistic way to look at things, but
there are wonderful ideas flowing around here from your
testimony and others who have spent, if not a lifetime, a
number of years trying to increase the visibility and the
importance from a policy standpoint of science and math
education.
My concern, my belief is that it is cultural, as has been
stated, and I don't mean from a diversity standpoint, I mean
from an American culture. We don't have a culture now that
seems to encourage young people to get into math and science. I
think we did at one point. I don't know what it was that
necessarily changed, because it wasn't Federal involvement. It
certainly wasn't money from the Federal Government that
inspired the United States to be No. 1 in the world from a
scientific and math standpoint for years.
So I--there's somewhere a spark that I think ought to be
identified. I'm not bright enough to figure it out, but that
ought to be identified that will allow us then to open up those
doors once again.
So my question to you is probably more expansive than you
want to answer, and there isn't anybody recording this, so you
can feel free to say anything you like, and we won't tell
anybody, I promise. If you, in your wildest dreams, if you
could do one or two things that would create that spark, and
I'm not talking about specific programs, but something to
change the culture, because I sense that the culture in China
and India is not one that is like ours that is making it so
it's difficult to find those kids who are interested.
What--is there a spark, or am I tilting at windmills here?
Dr. Magnanti. At one point, somewhat facetiously, I
suggested that we have this intelligent program called L.A.
Law. We needed one called Detroit Manufacturing. And it's
somewhat facetiously, but I think in some ways to have some
public expression that celebrates math, science, engineering,
however you want to think about it, and to have again a public
expression of that in a way that young people find exciting.
And so I can imagine something of that order. I can imagine
a public campaign that we could all undertake with the
educational system working, the government working with
industry to try to make the case that math, science and
engineering is exciting to the world. And I can imagine a wide
variety of ways in which we could map that out.
But I think something that truly sparks the Nation in that
sense would be useful.
Ms. Streckfus. We did focus groups a few years ago with
parents, and what we found was that parents didn't want their
kids to be like academicians. They thought they were boring.
They thought they didn't have fun. I'm sorry. These were just
our findings, and this isn't recorded, right?
[Laughter.]
Ms. Streckfus. But it was a major obstacle in getting
parents, in the conversations that we had in the focus groups,
in getting parents to see the value in high levels of math and
science, because they thought their kids would be in a cubicle.
They thought, you know, they wouldn't have social interaction,
particularly the girls wanted that when we talked to the
students.
So, part of what I think needs--and what we're trying to do
with our teen website is to frame exciting opportunities of the
future. What will it be like in 20 years, and do you want to be
part of a team that will be able to do that? For instance----
Dr. Price. Excuse me. Why didn't the generation--why didn't
a generation ago, why didn't those parents say, I don't want my
child to be in a cubicle? I mean, what's different now that
makes it so that the parents of a generation or two ago said
that this is a great idea, and now not?
Ms. Streckfus. All kids, all kids are different, what No
Child Left Behind is trying to do. And there's still that small
group that is interested, that wants to do. But we need in this
country to get many, many, many more students to high levels of
math and science, not just if they're going in a career for
math and science, but if they're going to live in a world where
they have to think about their own health care.
Dr. Price. We all agree about that.
Ms. Streckfus. Yeah. So I think that what we were trying to
do is to work with Hopkins to look at these world health
problems that will be solved in 20 years, and if you want to be
part of a team that will do that, this is the kind of work that
you're going to have to do while you're in K-12 or higher ed to
be part of that exciting team.
Dr. Songer. When they look at or talk to scientists about
why they became scientists, they almost always have some
seminal experience where they've experienced the science in a
very meaningful, personally meaningful way. So I think that has
to be the spark. And how we get that on a wider scale is a
really good question, because it's very hard sometimes to
provide those kinds of really engaging experiences where you
delve deep into a topic within the traditional formal schooling
that we have right now.
So, does that mean it has to be part of a community
experience, or you know, some kind of program that AAAS
sponsors? I'm not really sure. But I think that they key idea
that we'd want to remember is that it is that engaging personal
experience that will be make a difference.
Dr. Price. Mr. Augustine?
Mr. Augustine. May I just try to address your specific
question of what has changed? And I think something has
changed. And being by far the oldest member of this panel, when
my--in my generation, I think our parents knew that the way to
a better life was education, because most of them didn't have
it. I was the first in my family to go to college, the second
to go to high school. But my parents knew that that was where
it was at.
And you had a choice. You could become a lawyer. That means
3 years of law school. You could become a medical doctor. That
means, what, four or 5 years. You could become a Ph.D., six, 7
years. You could become an engineer in 4 years. And so
engineering for my generation was the opening door. My
children, my daughter is a lawyer, but engineering for our
generation was the chance, and I think that's changed.
Dr. Price. That's interesting. Fascinating. Thank you so
much. I yield back.
Chairman McKeon. Thank you. Ms. McCollum.
Ms. McCollum. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think this has been a
good conversation for a lot of reasons. For one reason, those
of us who were able to attend the hearing I think realize the
need of us talking to each other more about the future of our
country.
I'm going to give a couple of examples, because I think
you've really done a good job of answering the question. I
recently attended a visit to a Boys and Girls Club in Minnesota
in St. Paul in a very, very poor urban neighborhood. And I met
a young man who was approached by one of the site supervisors
at Boys and Girls Club saying, nice to meet you, and why are
you launching rockets on the back of our area? And he thought
he was going to get in trouble. He thought the police were
going to get called, whatever. And he said, well, you know, I
don't know. I saw a book and I just was kind of curious. And
they invited him in.
A couple of years later, this young man now teaches the
rocket program at the Boys and Girls Club where we have
children of very diverse language, social, religious
backgrounds, but they all have the commonality of poverty, with
a young person that they look at, even though he's Spanish and
not Somali, that they can relate to. That young man is going to
be going to school because of the TRIO program, because it
provided an opportunity through TRIO to have someone in the
high school to be there to kind of mentor him, because his
parents didn't graduate necessarily from high school let alone
go to college to figure out how to fill out all the paperwork
to apply for college and to have someone help that family even
with the financial aid paperwork.
So, we have a lot that Congress can be involved in, in
creating opportunity for students, whether it's supporting
after school programs, supporting college opportunity for
families who might have someone who would be eligible to help
that family and that student work through it.
Then I've had two science teachers, one at Hancock
Elementary--and these are both in St. Paul--and I have great
suburban teachers, too, but you mentioned especially the target
of urban schools, and Gaultier School in St. Paul where I met
science teachers who helped and reinforced and mentored one
another in grade schools but the last science teacher, Mr.
Childs, his wife was talking to me about how things started
coming home from Home Depot, and things started happening down
in her basement. She kind of held her breath. She said, I
thought for a minute I was going to get that cabinet I had been
asking for. She didn't begrudge the family income going toward
the students at Gaultier Elementary.
But when we start talking about public education is a black
hole, always having their hand out, how teachers repeatedly
have these cushy jobs where there's no accountability and all
of our students are failing, why in heaven's sakes would
anybody in their right mind decide, I want to be a teacher?
When I decided to go into public education and get my license
to teaching, teaching was a respected education. People were
proud of our public school system. Do we need to improve it?
Absolutely. Does it have changes that need to happen? I agree.
Do we need to have high standards and accountability? You bet.
But this Committee and the way it presents the challenges
facing public education, we often do a great disservice and
discredit to our public school system in the way that even we
discuss the challenges and the problems that are out there. We
always hear about the problem teacher in public schools. We
don't hear about Mr. Childs, who takes money out of his own
income to create that active learning.
The testing concerns me, and I'm a social science teacher.
I like to say science, but it's social science. I don't do math
or solve the problems of the world like Mr. Holt can through
physics. But we tried to have an interdisciplinary curriculum.
In other words, when I would teach World War II, I would talk
about all that was going on with science and physics. The
excitement, the good things, the bad things that can come out
of science, the challenges.
When teaching geography, teaching the ecology, how water,
soil, land, resources can make a difference in populations
settling and being successful. When we start doing all this
testing, and we do need to have accountability standards and
testing, I agree--do we lose not only in your field of science,
I think we lose in the social sciences, in literature, to
chance to do that link to bring science in. And I think the
point that got made about, you know, do we need I think you
said Detroit engineering, you know, 1 hour, see what he's up to
this week on television, I'm understanding that forensic
science is kind of going through the roof right now with
interest because of all the forensic science that's on. What
role does media and does message have to do, you think, in
order to keep people engaged?
Chairman McKeon. Thank you.
Ms. McCollum. I know. Everybody else went over their time,
but we've got to go, so.
Chairman McKeon. I'm sorry. Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I
appreciate your all being here, and I can't help but feel as I
sit here and I had a chance to look at this quickly, the road
map that you were so involved in, Mr. Augustine, the road map
for national security and how imperative it is.
We've all talked about the Sputnik moment. You know,
sometimes I wonder where's the sense of outrage that we haven't
been able to make some progress in some areas that had been
talked about for a long time? And I think you've certainly
itemized some of those areas in which we need to work harder.
I wanted to ask you, because--and I admit this has been a
personal interest of mine. But it sometimes surprises me that
there hasn't been more emphasis on nationally board certified
teachers. Is that a program that you're familiar with in the
states? North Carolina, California have done a lot with this.
And part of my question is, I appreciate the fact that in your
company, Lockheed Martin, that you got involved, that you
helped teachers with fellowships, you brought people into the
workplace. Am I wrong in saying where is everybody else in
this? I mean, I think that you can cite a number of really
fine, wonderful examples, and certainly we have them in San
Diego, and I applaud those companies.
But in many ways, I don't see that this is something that
really has taken hold in the country, that people feel a real
investment in. When I mention nationally board certified
teachers, we've created a lot of hoops for people to get into
that program. And it seems to me that if companies would invest
even in one teacher, what kind of a statement that would make
to do that. I may be talking about something that you're not
familiar with, but I'm wondering, you know, where is more of
that coming from the private sector? Because they're the ones
that are suffering. I have trouble even when I interview for
positions finding well qualified people. I know what it's like
for the private sector, and certainly in math and science.
Mr. Augustine. Well, I'm probably not as well qualified to
comment on that as my colleagues, so I'll be brief. But if I
understand the program you're describing, it's a program
whereby people who are subject matter experts can teach. Is
that correct?
Mrs. Davis. Well, the nationally board certified program is
one in which teachers can demonstrate their excellence in a
particular area, all the way elementary through high school.
And it's--when we talk about people demonstrating performance
and being paid differently, some states have given some
additional dollars to people. They have compensated them in
some way. They've encouraged them to go into low performing
schools. And it's a tool that could be more widely used.
And if in fact you're not familiar with it, that tells me
something. I'm not concerned that you're not familiar on a
personal level, but that tells me something. And, Mr. Chairman,
I think, you know, generally it's just something that we can
use as a tool. It's not a silver bullet. I don't think there's
a silver bullet out there. I think it's a combination of
factors.
Mr. Augustine. I like the concept that you describe. And
you say why doesn't it work better than it does, and I suspect
it comes back to the point of unfortunately, teaching doesn't
command the respect that it once commanded. And it's a cultural
issue, and I don't know how you legislate respect.
I do think one thing we could do much better is to put up
examples of successful teachers, particularly to attract young
women in to science and technology and minorities. If they
could see people who have succeed, who were excited about what
they did and that made good contributions, I think that may be
the best way to change this cultural problem we face.
Mrs. Davis. Perhaps I can just focus on Dr. Magnanti for a
second then, because I think one of the problems as I
understand it is how many women, how many minorities are
serving in top faculty positions at your university.
Dr. Magnanti. This is a significant issue, though I'm glad
to say we see some progress at the University of Michigan,
Princeton University, RPI, MIT have women presidents now. We
see I think more women in academic leadership positions in our
country.
I can't help but think, as a bit of an aside, given our
last two Committee Members to speak, and I looked to my left,
we ask what has changed in terms of the educational system, and
I think Mr. Augustine pinpointed it well in terms of education
as a road to upper mobility. But if we go back thirty years
ago, forty years ago, maybe even longer, when I was in K-12,
we'd go back a long time ago, what opportunities did women have
at that point in terms of career opportunities, and what were
their opportunities? It was teaching and nursing, by and large.
And being secretaries, right?
Now it's great for the nation. We've got this enormous set
of other opportunities that women have in our society, and it's
a wonderful thing for us. But it means that we I think have
extracted some of that wonderful talented women from the
education, K-12 education, are now doing other things. And I
think to think of that systemically, and what's the systemic
effect of that. And I think things like salary and other things
I think are a measure of this in terms of how we think about
it. But we didn't need maybe as high salaries then because
women didn't have other opportunities.
So I think thinking this as a system, and I think it's
another rather significant change in terms of the overall
landscape of the K-12 system.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. I appreciate that. And if you can
continue to help us out with the kind of investment that's
really required to get the doctoral students in to make the
connections between K-12 and the universities and then into the
private sector, public sector, I think that's important.
And it is a national security issue. And I think that we
really don't get that yet.
Dr. Magnanti. If I could also offer, I think the situation
with women in terms of engineering and science is improving
some. We're up to about half of our incoming class now are
women at MIT, which startles people when they hear it, and the
Nation is about 17 to 20 percent. But the issue of minorities
is much more drastic, and I think it's a much, much more
serious concern. Both are of concern, but we're just not
attracting enough minorities to engineering and science.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McKeon. We've been called to vote. We have just a
couple of minutes to get over there now. But, you know, I think
it's not just teachers that have lost respect. I think it's
attorneys, it's bankers, it's policemen, it's across the board
I think our sixties didn't help a lot. And I think it's going
to take some work to get that respect back, and it has to start
at a young age with children, and then we develop--we're going
to have to work hard to develop that.
Thank you very much. I think this has been an outstanding
panel, an outstanding hearing. I hope that you'll stay in touch
with us as we go through the higher ed reauthorization and as
we work more in this area. We have a lot to do.
Thank you very much. This panel stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:53 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Additional material submitted for the record follows:]
Statement of Hon. Jon C. Porter, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Nevada
Good Morning, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased that the subcommittee is
holding today's hearing on the challenges our educational system faces,
particularly in the fields of math and science. I appreciate our panel
of witnesses for joining us today and the diverse perspectives that
they can provide us on this important issue.
One of the building blocks of our nation's success throughout our
history has been the ingenuity and invention which allow us to
continually overcome the challenges we face and fill the needs that we
have. This ability has traditionally been the product of a free-
thinking and open society, in concert with the excellence of the
education available to us. As our dynamic economy continues to grow, we
must continue to rely on this ingenuity and vitality of thought.
Excellence in the fields of math and science must be a priority for
this to occur, as our increasingly technological society requires
increased research and scientific engagement.
The basis for these abilities lies firmly in the ability of our
elementary and secondary schools to provide the highest quality math
and science education available. To ensure that this education is of
the finest quality, Congress, in concert with States, local education
agencies, and institutions of higher education, must strive to provide
the necessary incentives to bring our best and brightest math and
science teachers into the classroom.
In my own school district, we hire approximately 2000 new teachers
per year. A significant portion of these slots are teachers of math and
science. Our tremendous growth has brought significant challenges in
recruiting the finest teachers. We can all work together to engender
greater interest in these fields, so that we can continue our strong
tradition of technological advancement.
Again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this hearing today on
this most important issue. I look forward to the testimony of our
witnesses and am hopeful that we can work together to provide
excellence in math and science education to all of our students.