Paltry salaries figure into schools' math, science failures
Wednesday, June 2, 2004 7:13 AM PDT
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E-mail this articleWant your kid to become a scientist or an engineer, careers that almost always lead to rewarding jobs with steady demand and high wages?
Those are noble goals for parents, whose children face a workforce clamoring for more people trained in science and engineering.
The United States now is the leading producer of high-technology products, according to a report released late last month by the National Science Board, a federal agency.
But there is trouble for these would-be scientists and engineers and for our country's pre-eminence in science and engineering because of increased global competition and because our own educational system is producing fewer scientists and engineers.
The warning is clear: Poor teaching, especially poor high school math teaching, and low expectations are turning students away from the sciences. In turn, low expectations are discouraging people from becoming science and math teachers.
The problem is worst in inner-city neighborhoods, but also evident in rural school districts.
The result is that the number of Americans earning undergraduate science and engineering degrees is falling. The Washington Post recently reported that half of the engineering and computer science graduate students in this country are now foreign-born.
Not all of the National Science Board's findings are bad. The interest in biological sciences -- genetics, molecular biology -- is up and so is the funding for these programs.
Curing diseases is good, and working in those fields can be invigorating. Mathematics, computer science, engineering and physics also can be invigorating. For this country to maintain its dominance in these areas, we must make sure that our priorities include better science and math instruction.
To do this, we think science and math teachers should be paid more than other teachers. It just makes sense that the laws of supply and demand should come into play. The demand for outstanding science and math teachers is strong, but the supply is weak.
We know the teachers' union will oppose this -- to them, a teacher is a teacher is a teacher -- but that ignores the challenges of getting outstanding science and math teachers. Teachers' unions need to be part of the solution, not just an obstacle to improvements.
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