Wednesday, January 27, 2010

STEM & Cong Military Family Caucus

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article that caught my attention. It was focused on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics.

Takeaways from the article:

The US remains the world’s science and technology leader, but other countries are gaining ground.

Over the last 10 years, US R&D spending rose 5-6% per year, but ... China's rose over 20% per year

The US awarded 22,500 doctorates in natural sciences and engineering in 2007 -- with half of them going to foreign nationals.

Additionally, I checked out the National Science Board report ... upon which this article was based. There is a lot of information in this document -- I found a couple of interesting facts in the highlight section, starting on page 4:

On-time graduation rate from high school remains steady ... at 73%. [Gasp!!]

In 2005, 94% of classrooms in U.S. public schools had computers with Internet access, and the ratio of students to instructional computers was 4:1.

Secondly, I met last week with a staffer in the office of Congresswoman McMorris Rodgers. It seems the Congresswoman has -- with support of others -- started a Military Family Caucus -- which has 95 members. If your Representative is not on the list, please contact your MLA to get them interested. You can find the list here. [Note: there are at least 3 or more members not listed.]

For your consideration,

Mike

1 comment:

Wisconsin AFA said...

Since more and more foreign nationals are getting PHD's in this country, and our students seem to be doing poorer, I wonder when students will start going to China for their higher education