. "Executive Summary." Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2007.
The following HTML text is provided to enhance online
readability. Many aspects of typography translate only awkwardly to HTML.
Please use the page image
as the authoritative form to ensure accuracy.
Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future
A company can hire nine factory workers in Mexico for the cost of one in America. A company can hire eight young professional engineers in India for the cost of one in America.14
The share of leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing capacity owned or partly owned by US companies today is half what it was as recently as 2001.15
During 2004, China overtook the United States to become the leading exporter of information-technology products, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).16
The United States ranks only 12th among OECD countries in the number of broadband connections per 100 inhabitants.17
K–12 Education
Fewer than one-third of US 4th-grade and 8th-grade students performed at or above a level called “proficient” in mathematics; “proficiency” was considered the ability to exhibit competence with challenging subject matter. Alarmingly, about one-third of the 4th graders and one-fifth of the 8th graders lacked the competence to perform even basic mathematical computations.18
In 1999, 68% of US 8th-grade students received instruction from a mathematics teacher who did not hold a degree or certification in mathematics.19
In 2000, 93% of students in grades 5–9 were taught physical science by a teacher lacking a major or certification in the physical sciences (chemistry, geology, general science, or physics).20
In 1995 (the most recent data available), US 12th graders performed below the international average for 21 countries on a test of general knowledge in mathematics and science.21
US 15-year-olds ranked 24th out of 40 countries that participated in a 2003 administration of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) examination, which assessed students’ ability to apply mathematical concepts to real-world problems.22
According to a recent survey, 86% of US voters believe that the United States must increase the number of workers with a background in science and mathematics or America’s ability to compete in the global economy will be diminished.23
American youth spend more time watching television24 than in school.25
Because the United States does not have a set of national curricula, changing K–12 education is challenging, given that there are almost 15,000
