Urban Institute study contradicts industry claims of poor math and science performance by United States students!

All -

See the full paper here:
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411562_Salzman_Science.pdf

Study Conclusions excerpted below.

Please don't hijack this thread with unnecessary rants, and don't bother
commenting unless you have actually read the study at the link above.

I will have more to say on this topic soon...

Regards,
sjl

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Conclusion and Policy Discussion

Current policy is driven by the twin perceptions of a labor market shortage
of scientists and engineers and of a pool of qualified students that is
small
in number and declining in quality.

Math and science education are viewed as the primary policy levers to
increase labor market supply, supplemented by increased immigration.
But those policy proposals that call for more math and science education,
aimed at increasing the number of scientists and engineers, do not square
with the educational performance and employment data that we have
reviewed.

Our review of the data finds not only little evidence to support those
positions and, in fact, the available evidence indicates an ample supply
of students whose preparation and performance has been increasing over
the past decades. We are concerned that the consensus prescriptions are
based on some misperceptions about efficient strategies for economic and
social prosperity.

It is difficult to conclude that the major economic "threats" to the United
States are related to the performance levels of U.S. students as compared
to students in other countries. Our major economic competitors, particularly
emerging nation behemoths, are not among top test scoring nations.

In fact, a sizeable portion of U.S. students perform at the top of the scale
and graduate in substantial numbers.

The logic of the education crisis reports fails on several of their key
points.

These reports focus on countries that score higher than the United States,
primarily just on math, and then conclude these countries pose a "threat"
to the U.S. economy.

Should U.S. policy be driven by test score performance of students in
Flemish Belgium, Latvian-speaking Latvia, or even Singapore, with 4.5
million people and a workforce of 2.4 million (one-sixtieth the size of
the U.S. workforce)? How will these countries find the capital and the
numbers of workers needed to "steal" any major portion of a U.S.
industry?

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