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. "

An Engineer's Incisive Take on Deconstructionism

Read Chip Morningstar's trenchant analysis of deconstructionism. A naive engineer-scientist, he encountered it in spades at the Second International Conference on Cyberspace in Santa Cruz, CA, April 1991 from the humanities types attending the conference.

Shocked and perplexed by the mumbo-jumbo so many were taking seriously, he devoted serious time reading up on it. His analysis is dead-on.

Remember, this is the theory that many, many, many humanities professors use to teach our children, in high school and college - the brighter, the more likely they will be introduced to it and their minds deformed.


Hattip to John Enright.

Building a Better Engineering Education

Great article in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, April 24th about robot-building competitions and how they're exciting students into engineering careers. Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, is behind some of the best programs.