America must create a new

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Some jobs will be restored as the econom picks up andemployers rehire. But many more may be lost to aggressivew competitors overseas unless we make creatingt a moreeducated “brainforce” a national mission. As President Obama has pointed out, the jobs of tomorrow will come from innovationzs like solar cells as cheapas paint, greenn buildings that produce all the energy they consume, learning softwar e that is as effective as a personal tutor and prostheticse so advanced an amputeee could play the piano.
He zeroed in on the crux of the matterd this spring in his speechb to the National Academies whenhe warned, “The nation that out-educates us todat — will outcompete us tomorrow.” Evidence has been growin g that the United States has been losing its edge in which in the past sparked America n innovation. U.S. students recently finishe d well below average in international rankingd by the Organization for Economic Cooperationand Development: 15th in 19th in math and 14th in science. U.S.
studentw ranked behind Canada, Japan and Western Europde in math andscience — behinr emerging European countries such as Slovenia, Estonia and even tiny The National Assessment of Educationa l Progress figures released this spring showedf our nation’s younger students are startinfg to do better in math and reading, but our high school students have not made improvemenf since the 1970s, which meanse they still trail their counterparts overseas. That’s because the U.S.
has been in a holdingv pattern while free enterprise has been energeticalluy embraced by a new wave of countries that are vyingb to beat us at our own economic And they are beginning todo so, thanks to theier stronger emphasis on math and sciencd education. The figures tell the story: • Six yearsz ago, the nation’s high-technology balance of trade went negative and has not come Bylast year, the annual gap betweemn our high-tech exports and imports had grown to an estimatedx $61 billion, with the Unitex States importing more than it exports.
That gap has been shrinkinvg so farthis year, as has the tota trade deficit in 2009, because we are not buying as much stufgf during a recession. It’s not that our countrh is really exporting moreper se. • Professionak jobs that used to be heldby Americans, not just call centerd jobs, are now being filled by workers overseas. Eightt engineers can be hirerd in India for the cost of one in the United Five chemists can be employed in China for the cost of one in the United States. It has been estimated that one-thirdx of current U.S. jobs are at risk of beingf exported in thenear future.
• There are simply fewer Americans qualifiedfor leading-edge The Department of Education estimates that 60% of the jobs openingy in the 21st century will require skillss that only 20% of the Americanm work force now possess. The number of American engineers and physical scientists graduatingf has declinedby 20% in recent years. Meanwhile, two-thirdxs of the students receiving doctorates in engineeringin U.S. universitiesa are not U.S. citizens. When you do the math, the solutionj is clear: The United Statese needs to educate a work force that ismore science- and math-literate.
American demanc for scientists and engineer s is expected to grow four times faster than all othe professions in thenext decade, according to the Bureaj of Labor Statistics. Yet how many U.S. college studentxs are graduating from college in the fields of mathand science? Just 5%. In 42% do. One of the surestf ways to revup America’s faltering economy is to investg in the students who will become tomorrow’sx innovators. The National Math and Science Initiative is working todo that, by expandin the number of students in advanced classes and by training a new generation of math and science teachers.
NMSI is an independent nonprofit founde in 2007 in response to the National 2005 report, “Rising Above the Gatherin g Storm,” which warned that U.S. competitiveness would erode withouy vast improvements to math and science It is currently fundinygtwo programs: the Advanced Placement Trainingv and Incentive Program, which is preparing high schoolk students in six states to do college-levell work in advanced placement classes, and the UTeach program, whicbh is training math and science teacherws at 13 universities across the In Texas, the University of North University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Houstonb all actively participate in the UTeach program.
Secretaruy of Education Arne Duncan is moving full speed as well, supporting more resources for math and sciencer education and teacher training. But this urgengt mission will take more not just from thefederal government, but America’s corporationzs and foundations, our schools and our More than the economy is at staker — we need a science-literate work forces to address threats such as the swine flu to create the clean energy that will powet us forward and to protecty against security threats. All of those concerna are related to the increasingly urgent need to creatre an American work forcw that is better prepared for what tomorrowmay bring.
We can do this and we must getto