Andrew J. Rotherham

In 2006 Kevin Carey and I wrote about this issue in the Christian Science Monitor. [Link here: http://www.educationsector.org/publications/expand-pool-americas-future-scientists]

Little has changed since then. Carey and I noted that the solution to this problem likely lies among students who today dropout or are unable to qualify for the scholarships and inducements we offer them:

"the best long-run strategy for boosting America's global economic standing isn't giving more students a reason to choose careers in science. It's giving more students the ability to choose careers in science. Without expanding the pool of well-prepared students who can take advantage of them, no amount of scholarships will make a difference."

In other words:

"Most of the [STEM] solutions being trotted out are similarly suspect. For the most part, the solutions to this "new challenge" are a familiar mix of scholarships and student l

Let’s cut right to the chase — I have about the same chance of being picked up by the Boston Red Sox as a utility player as President Obama does of having his proposals to control college costs get through Congress this year. But looking at what the President proposed on Friday (in a raucous speech at the University of Michigan) through the lens of short-term Capitol Hill feasibility misses the significance of what Obama is up to. Just a few years ago, the ideas the President hinted at in last week’s State of the Union and is now describing in more depth were considered fringe topics, basically the province of a few wonks and reform-minded policymakers. Talk of improving productivity in higher education bordered on blasphemy. Now the President of the United States is on board.

Obama wants to provide more data to parents and students about what colleges cost and how their students do after graduation. He also wants to change how federal aid works in order to create incentives for schools to keep costs down and keep interest on federal

(Read a longer version of this article at http://ideas.time.com/2012/01/06/in-defense-of-no-child-left-behind/#ixzz1isPjPnDo)

Bashing the No Child Left Behind Act has become so politically popular that it’s easy to forget how overwhelmingly bipartisan it was — the legislation passed the House with 384 votes and the Senate with 91. As the law marks its 10-year anniversary on Jan. 8, it’s important to look at both its successes and its failures. Did NCLB solve all of our public education problems? No. But it set a lot of good things in motion and was specifically designed to be revised after five or six years (in a reauthorization that has yet to happen and is unlikely to before this year’s election.) The No Child law didn’t get everything right the first time, but that’s the wrong yardstick. If we held other policy areas — think food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security — to the s

Right now the country has a strategy for increasing the number of STEM graduates that is basically predicated on hoping we can induce some percentage of students who can choose from a variety of careers to choose a STEM career instead. We offer scholarships and other incentives in an effort to induce them.

But people chose their career path for a variety of reasons, large and small. And it's worth asking if in this instance trying to change the choices of those who are in a position to make choices is really the most powerful leverage point here. After all, many of the people writing on this blog or reading it didn't chose STEM careers because they found other paths more meaningful for them.

So perhaps rather than wring our hands about STEM we should be focusing on all the students who cannot chose a STEM career even if they wanted to because they are getting a substandard education or, worse, have dropped out of school altogether. With dropout rates for minorities at almost 50 percent and college completion rates for low-income students at 8 percent