The Great Connections Seminar

The Great Connections Seminar
Discussing ethics

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

No Child Left Behind Leaves the Talented Behind

City Journal writer Sol Stern explains how No Child Left Behind has caused talented students to do worse, and contributed to the decline of high-achieving math, science, and engineering American students.

scientific innovation has generated as much as half of all U.S. economic growth over the past half-century, on some accounts....[but] bachelor’s degrees in engineering granted to Americans peaked in 1985 and are now 23 percent below that level.” 

One of my favorite quotes, because these regulations make me furious: "Among the worst regulations is the prohibition against hiring instructors who, though they may have advanced science or math degrees, lack the useless graduate-level education courses needed to qualify for a state teaching license. "

2 comments:

cellurl said...

I fell victim to the "advanced degree required". I had worked on a PhD in Engineering, but as you mentioned I had 3 years to finish a teaching certificate which proved arduous at best. After a week of those classes, I quit teaching altogether and went back to Engineering.

Now I teach cellphone programming.
http://goo.gl/9gtgC

To me, if kids are going to play video games all day, they might as well build a game once. It combines art, marketing, logic and could become a career.

Unknown said...

Good point about students building games - and there are a lot of other activities and skills they could practice in school that would be beneficial after graduating.

Time was, trade skills were taught in school for those who excelled at that kind of work. But these classes, along with art, music, and recess, were dropped to fulfill the pursuit of "academic excellence."