Contents
Cover
Series
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
CIOs Speak
Preface
Notes
Acknowledgments
Note
Part One: How Did We Get Here?
Chapter 1: 1941: The Subject We Love to Hate
Math? Not for Me!
“Minimize the Effect of Schooling”
Young Adults with IQs of Eight-Year-Olds
The Fall Continues
President Roosevelt Understands Science
An Opportunity Lost
Americans Still Hate Math and Science
Notes
Chapter 2: 1945: Operation Paperclip
Nazis Hailed as “Outstanding” Scientists
Germany's Rocket Man
The Nazis Get to von Braun
Time Magazine Paints a Dim Picture of von Braun
America's Best Rocket: The Bazooka
Shipped to America
America Had Space Technology before the Soviets
Germany Developed the Atomic Bomb First
Notes
Chapter 3: 1950: Deming Says
Deming Has an Idea
The Lecture Series That Changed the Balance of the World Economy
Japan Embraces, America Ignores
Datsuns Arrive in Los Angeles
American Business Leaders Finally Listen
Lessons from Deming
Can Total Quality Management Fix the American Education System?
Notes
Chapter 4: 1952: Boomerang
What It Means to Teach
A Teacher Shortage Exacerbates the Educational Challenges
Another Problem: Crumbling Infrastructure
Media Critiques Begin
Back in the USSR
Boomers Perform Poorly on SATs
Connecting the Dots
The Boomerang Theory
Notes
Chapter 5: 1962: Too Hard to Follow
The Rationale for the Lunar Landing
Kennedy in His Own Words
“It's Just So Darn Hard”
Students: Math and Science Are Irrelevant
Culture Counts
Industry Leaders Offer Advice
Do Something about It
American Students Not Measuring Up
The Results, Please
How to Do Something
High School Seniors: No, Thank You
Perception Is Reality: The Importance of the Guidance Counselor
The STEM Pipeline Shrinks More in Higher Education
Putting Words in the President's Mouth
Notes
Chapter 6: 1962: Empires of the Mind
Did You Know?
The Shift Is On
The Components of Yuasa's Phenomenon
Fast-Forward
Yuasa's Phenomenon Arrives in America in 1920
Youth Rules
Look to the East?
Three Patents to the Win
America's Innovation Ecosystem at Risk
Does It Work for You?
The World in 2050
Slip Sliding Away?
Survival Is Not Compulsory
Notes
Chapter 7: 1963: SAT Down
The History of the SAT
Asleep at the Wheel for 14 Years
The College Entrance Examination Board Responds
More Competition for the SAT
Why the SAT Scores Dropped
How to Get 100 More SAT Points
Too Much Mediocrity
Notes
Chapter 8: 1976: Too Many Chiefs
A Tale of Two Documents
Keep It Local
The Great Society Era Ushers in Federal Involvement
ESEA: Not All Things Considered
Teacher Unions Create the U.S. Department of Education
Did I Really Promise That?
President Carter's Top 10 List
Eight Years Is Too Short
Reagan Shifts from Compliance to Competency
Bush Sets Voluntary Education Goals
Other Issues Get in the Way
Clinton Unsuccessfully Shifts Education Goals from Voluntary to Compulsory
No Child Left Behind Ushers in Compulsory Education Compliance
Obama Is Stymied by Gridlocked Washington
Close Down the U.S. Department of Education
Notes
Part Two: And the Hits Just Keep on Coming
Can You Hear Me Now?
Road Trip
The Eighth-Grade Focus
Connect the Dots
It Takes a Village That Cares
The Warning System Works
Notes
Chapter 9: The Skills Gap Warnings Begin
1964: The First International Mathematics Study
1971: The First International Science Study
1971: The National Education Trust Fund
1978: The Nation's Report Card
1982: The Second International Mathematics Study
1983: A Nation at Risk
1985: Global Competition: The New Reality
1985: Corporate Classrooms: The Learning Business
1986: A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century
1987: Workforce 2000: Work and Workers for the Twenty-first Century
1987: The National Science Foundation Annual Report Introduces STEM
1987: The Fourth R: Workforce Readiness, a Guide to Business Education Partnerships
1989: Winning the Brain Race: A Bold Plan to Make Our Schools Competitive
Notes
Chapter 10: The Skills Gap Emerges
1990: America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages!
1990: The Second International Science Study
1990: The National Assessment of Educational Progress
1993: John Sculley: “America Is Resource Poor”
1995: The Third International Mathematics and Science Study
Different Measurement, Improved Ranking
1996: The National Assessment of Educational Progress
1999: New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century
Notes
Chapter 11: The Skills Gap Widens
2000: Ensuring a Strong U.S. Scientific, Technical, and Engineering Workforce in the 21st Century
2000: Before It's Too Late
2000: The Programme for International Student Assessment
2000: The National Assessment of Educational Progress Test
2002: Unraveling the Teacher Shortage Problem: Teacher Retention Is the Key
2003: Building a Nation of Learners
2004: Sustaining the Nation's Innovation Ecosystem
2005: Losing the Competitive Advantage: The Challenge for Science and Technology in America
2005: The Knowledge Economy: Is the United States Losing Its Competitive Edge?
2005: The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
2005: Rising above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future
2005: The National Assessment of Educational Progress
2006: Teachers and the Uncertain American Future
2006: The Quiet Crisis: Falling Short in Producing American Scientific and Technical Talent
2007: We Are Still Losing Our Competitive Advantage: Now Is the Time to Act
2007: How the World's Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top
2007: Into the Eye of the Storm: Assessing the Evidence on Science and Engineering Education, Quality, and Workforce Demand
2007: Tough Choices or Tough Times
2007: The Role of Education Quality in Economic Growth
2008: Foundations for Success: The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel
2008: “Lessons from 40 Years of Education Reform”
2009: Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant: Asian Nations Set to Dominate the Clean Energy Race by Out-Investing the United States
2009: The CIO Executive Council's Youth and Technology Careers Survey
2009: The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America's Schools
2009: The Widget Effect: Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness
2009: Steady As She Goes? Three Generations of Students through the Science and Engineering Pipeline
Notes
Chapter 12: The Consequences of the Skills Gap Become Apparent
2010: Rising above the Gathering Storm Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5
2010: Why So Few Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics?
2010: Waiting for Superman
2010: Education Next’s Public Perception of Education Survey
2010: Interview with Craig Barrett
2010: Closing the Talent Gap: Attracting and Retaining Top-Third Graduates to Careers in Teaching
2011: The National Assessment of Educational Progress
2011: The Intel Corporation’s Survey of Teens’ Perceptions of Engineering
2011: Globally Challenged: Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete?
2012: How Well Are American Students Learning?
2012: U.S. Education Reform and National Security
2012: Prosperity at Risk: Findings of Harvard Business School’s Survey on U.S. Competitiveness
2012: The World Economic Forum’s Annual Global Competitiveness Report
2012: Where Will All the STEM Talent Come From?
2012: SAT and ACT Scores Reveal Disappointing News
2012: Five Misconceptions about Teaching Math and Science: American Education Has Not Declined, and Other Surprising Truths
The Long and Winding Road
Notes
Part Three: Let’s Build Some Arks
Notes
Chapter 13: Patchworking the Tech Skills Gap Begins
1965: Skills USA
1968: The Xerox Science Consultant Program
1989: Women in Technology International
1990: Teach for America
1994: Tech Corps
1995: NetDay
1996: SAS Curriculum Pathways
1997: The Cisco Networking Academy
1998: I.C.Stars
1998: Intel Teach
Notes
Chapter 14: The Pace of Remediation Work on the National Skills Gap Accelerates
2000: Year Up
2000: The Juniper Networks Foundation Fund
2002: Technology Goddesses
2002: nPower
2003: The Microsoft Imagine Cup
2004: Engineering Is Elementary
2004: The Junior FIRST Lego League
2005: Raytheon’s MathMovesU
2005: IBM’s Transition to Teaching
2006: The Khan Academy
2006: Cognizant’s Maker Faire
2007: The National Math and Science Initiative
2008: AT&T Aspire
2008: AMD’s Changing the Game
2009: Microsoft’s TEALS
2009: The Salesforce.com Foundation
2009: DIGITS
2009: Change the Equation
Notes
Chapter 15: The Pace of Ark Building Quickens
2010: The Broadcom MASTERS
2011: CA Technologies and the Sesame Workshop
2011: IBM’s P-TECH
2012: Udacity
2012: CA Technologies: Tech Girls Rock
2012: Microsoft’s Teach.org
2012: The Dell Education Challenge
2012: The Girl Scouts of America’s Generation STEM: What Girls Say about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math
News Alert: More Arks Needed!
Notes
Epilogue: For What It’s Worth
The Top 10 Recommendations for Action
Closing Time
About The Author
About the Website
Index
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Beach, Gary J., 1950–
The U.S. technology skills gap : what every technology executive must know to save America’s future / Gary J. Beach.
pages cm. — (CIO series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-118-47799-1 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-66044-7 (ebk.); ISBN 978-1-118-66047-8 (ebk.); ISBN 978-1-118-68070-4 (o-book); ISBN 978-1-118-79232-2 (custom)
1. High technology industries—United States. 2. Labor supply—United States. 3. Skilled labor—United States. 4. Vocational qualifications—United States. 5. Information technology—United States. 6. Science—Study and teaching—United States. I. Title.
HC110.H53.B43 2013
338’.0640973—dc23
2013007117
To the 49,266,000 schoolchildren in
America’s public schools and their futures.
CIOs SPEAK
Most books have forewords authored by one individual who often explains his, or her, passion for the topic covered by the book. For this book I decided to go a different route and invited 16 chief information officers to share their opinions about the importance of the skills gap challenge facing our nation. Their statements follow.
• • •
“Unless we build a stronger curriculum in science, technology, and math and raise our expectations for K–12 education, we will foster a generation of tech-savvy users with few skills to build or innovate technology. The results will be detrimental to our country and our potential ability to compete in the global digital economy.”
Adriana Karaboutis, Vice President and Global CIO, Dell Inc.
“Success in IT requires a mastery of the fundamentals underpinned by strong ‘C’ skills: critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. Our best people apply critical thinking to determine how emerging technologies can be harnessed to deliver value for clients, ever mindful of changing marketplace and business requirements.”
Frank B. Modruson, CIO, Accenture
“America has a rich tradition of making things. The increasing technical sophistication of the world, combined with historically low numbers of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) graduates, at best fails to honor that history. And at worst it threatens to severely limit America’s future.”
Ralph Loura, CIO, Clorox Company
“In the past few years I have hired many deeply technical people. The vast majority of résumés for my most technical jobs come from graduates of colleges in India and China. It is clear to me that we are not preparing American students with the skills that high-tech employers deem necessary.”
John Halamka, CIO, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Professor, Harvard Medical School
“When I talk to high school and college students, I find that the connection of the skills learned in math and science to the skills used in work and life is missing. Educators need to make this connection. How does a lab in science relate to work and life? How does calculus relate? The lack of these connections is a serious gap in our education system.”
Nancy Newkirk, CIO, International Data Group
“Information technology plays a pervasive and critical role in driving business capabilities and enabling corporate strategies. In order for American industry to sustain its renowned capacity to innovate, it must have a workforce equipped to develop and apply future generations of advanced information technologies.”
James Nanton, Senior VP and CIO, Hanesbrands Inc.
“The American educational system has lost touch with the reality of providing people with the practical skills and competencies required for young professionals to add meaningful value to our corporations. America needs to rethink how we prepare young people to have meaningful careers that are both financially and intellectually rewarding.”
Larry Bonfante, CIO, U.S. Tennis Association
“One of the most difficult roles I have as a chief information officer is finding and recruiting talent. In a growing business, with average turnover rates, I run at a constant talent deficit because I cannot find people with the skills I need to fill the job openings I have. If the American education system cannot produce a workforce with the appropriate skills, then these jobs will be filled by global providers. The need to focus on creating career-ready individuals is not an educational imperative. It is an economic imperative.”
Gary King, Executive VP and CIO, Chico’s Inc.
“The K–12 years are critical foundational years that ‘plant the seed’ for a desire to learn, to teach vital study and research habits, to develop skill sets, and to discover areas of interest and proclivity. These are pivotal years that work to shape the whole person. The K–12 educational phase is also the ideal period to generate interest in and a desire and passion for technology. Sadly, more and more of our underserved demographic groups are participating as consumers of technology rather than as developers or innovators of such.”
Gina C. Tomlinson, CTO, City and County of San Francisco
“I became astutely aware that America had a problem communicating and getting children interested in technology based on an experience I had with my middle school–age daughter, who told me one day, ‘Dad, I am terrible in technology.’ The first thing I told her, partly kidding, was not to say that in public too loudly, because that would not look good for Dad, since his job is heading a technology group! But it illustrated a problem our country has: most children are not being exposed to the possibilities of technology; to how the field could be interesting, challenging, and a great job opportunity for them; and to the fact that they should not have any fears about being able to utilize technology in many ways, since they already use it far more than they comprehend.”
Michael Gabriel, Executive VP and CIO, Home Box Office
“The historical position of the United States as a global technology innovator has brought us prosperity and growth. These effects will dry up quickly, however, if our country does not produce a steady supply of thinking leaders who are able to compete in the global technology marketplace. As our world shifts more and more from atoms to bits as the currency of economic growth, America will be left behind if we are not able to compete as global innovators. As a result, we will soon find ourselves handing our global economic leadership over to a new set of leaders and, along with it, our ability to determine our own future and control our own destiny. The United States must make profound, wholesale changes to our education system in a way that emphasizes science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and encourages and motivates students to excel in these critical areas. If we fail to do so, we will lose our global competitiveness.”
Steve Mills, CIO, Rackspace Hosting Inc.
“‘Survival of the fittest’ has shaped the evolution of our species for hundreds, thousands, even millions of years. In the twenty-first-century business context, the fittest are those with the ability to think critically, solve problems, innovate, and collaborate effectively with one another. If we fail to equip our children with these skills through significant enhancements to our education systems, how will they ever survive?”
Bill Schlough, Senior VP and CIO, San Francisco Giants
“I highly encourage and support the preservation of a technologically strong America through education. An influx of human talent into the science, technology, engineering, and math fields is necessary to accelerate the innovation that will ultimately change companies, people, and society for the better.”
Thaddeus Arroyo, CIO, AT&T
“The shortage of qualified resources in the technology and engineering sector has weakened the job market and the talent pool of the American workforce. As a CIO, I have a much tougher time finding qualified candidates today compared to 20 years ago. This shortage of qualified staff is forcing businesses to outsource more work to developing markets.”
Atti Riazi, CIO, New York City Housing Authority
“The United States has a storied history of invention and innovation that fueled its twentieth-century journey to become a global economic and military power. Working at a federal government research and development center for 35 years, I have become more sensitive to the importance of technical innovation, particularly information technology, to the security of our country. But today we find ourselves losing ground to competing countries in science, technology, engineering, and math education, and with it our technology leadership. These are trends we must reverse. It is truly a matter of national security.”
Gerald R. Johnson, former CIO, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
“Not that long ago, America’s system of education was considered the world’s incubator of innovation, but sadly we have lost our dominance in this area. Fortunately for America, we can correct our course, but it will require cooperation from parents, faculty, industry, government, and students. If we fail to do so, the American Dream will regrettably remain a Dream Deferred.”
Tony Coba, Senior VP and CIO, Miami Heat
PREFACE
These educational gaps impose on the United States the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession.
—MCKINSEY & COMPANY1
In a country that spends $583 billion each year on public education, the taxpayer deserves a better return on investment.2 For nearly two decades, America’s fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-grade students have performed poorly in math and science compared to their peers in other countries. Over a slightly longer time frame, as our country’s education policy shifted to accountability under President George H. W. Bush, the results in domestic math and science assessment tests have been worse: SAT scores for math have stagnated since the 1980s, and verbal scores are now the worst on record for the SAT.
I have no “street cred” as an educator, although I did teach theology to high school freshmen in my first job out of college in 1972. But 30 years of conversations with information technology (IT) executives does afford me a small soapbox to step up on and broadcast loud and clear an escalating point of pain they shared with me: America’s schools are not producing individuals with the strong quantitative and communicative skills necessary to compete in the twenty-first-century global economy.
The skills landscape has changed significantly in America over the past 173 years. In 1840, 79 percent of the American labor force worked in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors.3 Only 21 percent were employed in service jobs. By 2010, the composition did a near-complete reversal, with 88 percent of American jobs in services and 12 percent in agriculture and manufacturing.4 Critics of the American school system claim that what, and how, we teach schoolchildren is largely based on the 1840 percentages. And a 2012 McKinsey and Company report flatly states that “a skills shortage is a leading reason for entry level vacancies that cause significant problems [for American firms] in terms of cost, quality, time, . . . or worse.”5 The Computing Technology Industry Association reported in 2012 that a whopping 93 percent of employers indicated that there is an overall skills gap.6
Reading and literacy was the key subject for American education in the 1950s. Rudolph Flesch, in his 1955 best-selling book, Why Johnny Can’t Read: And What You Can Do about It, touched a raw nerve with the American public. Fifty-eight years later, the key skills for American schoolchildren are math and science proficiency. But no one has yet authored Why Johnny and Mary Can’t Do Math and Science. Although many reports have addressed this subject, American students, parents, teachers, politicians, and teacher union leaders have not worked effectively together to build a collaborative solution.
I do. And as I reviewed decades of results of key math and science assessment tests, I kept asking myself this question: How did America get to the point where we invest more money than any other country on the planet in public education only to get mediocre returns? Surely it could not be a purposeful national strategy. Are American kids in the twenty-first century genetically less gifted than students in Finland, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea? Surely not. So something else must be the reason. I set out to find out what it was.
The twenty-first-century American education system is a vast enterprise, built on factory-floor management techniques of the late nineteenth century with the goal of mass-producing as efficiently as possible the 49,266,000 students who come through the doors of nearly 100,000 public schools each year.7 As an article in Public Interest magazine noted, the American education system is focused on “mediocracy rather than meritocracy.”8
Here’s a vivid example of what that means. In 1993, as publisher of the newspaper Computerworld, I was master of ceremonies at its annual Search for New Heroes program with our partner, the Smithsonian Institution. One of our award winners that year was Seymour Papert, the founder of the well-known Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. Papert was being honored for his work in education, and as he joined me at the podium to accept the award, he looked out into the audience of 1,500 black-tie and evening-gown technology executives and asked the producer to raise the lights so he could see the crowd. He then asked, “By a show of hands, how many of you in this audience at your business promote workers based on age?”
Standing next to Papert, I looked out into the crowd and saw a sea of puzzled faces. Not one person had raised his or her hand. But Papert wasn’t finished. He commented, “In two weeks [the Computerworld-Smithsonian event was always held on the first Monday in June], three million third graders will be asked to stand up and march out the door, with their teachers bidding them a fond farewell and ‘good luck in fourth grade.’” Papert’s point: Business doesn’t promote by age, and neither should educators.
There are three important reasons that America must improve the math and science skills of its students. The first is economic. In 2009, McKinsey and Company researched the results of the international math and science assessment tests, created a proprietary measurement tool, and reported that if America’s students matched the proficiency of Finland’s students in math and science, the U.S. gross domestic product would be 16 percent larger each year.9
The second reason is employment. With the world connected by millions of miles of fiber cable that allow work to be done anywhere on the planet, Americans are no longer competing with the person in the next cubicle for their next promotion or job. Their competition for work in the twenty-first century will be tens of thousands of miles away. The U.S. unemployment rate will remain historically high as businesses look to hire the best skills for the best price.
Right now, America is losing that battle, according to a January 2012 report published by the Harvard Business School. It found that 58 percent of senior business leaders in America believe that the nation’s K–12 education system is currently worse than that of other countries, and nearly 80 percent of these leaders said that the American education system is continuing to fall behind that of other countries.10
The third reason to improve math and science skills is just starting to surface: the national security of our country. Throughout the history of humanity, the arenas of war have been ground, sea, air, and space. Now, in the twenty-first century, add cyberspace to the list. To protect our country’s financial, utility, and defense infrastructures, we must produce more, rather than fewer, students with strong skills in math and science.
In 2007 I began the journey that resulted in this book. As I started my project, I created a folder on my computer called “A Country Left Behind” (a purposeful reference to the high-profile No Child Left Behind Act) and filled it with thousands of documents on tests, industry warnings, and general observations of what needed to be done. It was one of those files that when you open it, it gives you a headache because you often can’t find what you are looking for, there is so much in it.
As I struggled to develop the outline of my story, I had an idea. What if I tell the story of why American kids are performing poorly in math and science through a time line that roughly parallels my life? I was convinced that American students were not genetically less gifted than their international peers, so maybe if I went back to around 1950, the year I was born, I could tell the story—and, more important, connect the dots that explain our nation’s poor performance—through events that have occurred over roughly the past 70 years.
I reviewed my “A Country Left Behind” file and organized the most relevant documents in decade folders starting in 1940, and that’s when my story unfolded in my head and on my keyboard!
I learned that as far back as 1909, Americans had an aversion to studying math and science. I learned that the math skills of the men who wanted to enlist in the army in 1941 were so abysmal that the army had to construct a test to minimize the effects of the American education system. I learned that President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to get the nation broadly focused on the importance of science in American life, but he failed. I learned that America looked the other way after World War II and embraced Nazi scientists and engineers and put them in charge of our country’s missile program, which culminated in Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing on the moon in July 1969. I learned why at the height of the Cold War in 1958, the U.S. Department of Education, desperate for any guidance in improving math and science education in our country, sent two delegations to Moscow to study how the Soviets taught those subjects!
The story continued as I discovered how an American engineer single-handedly altered the global economy and why possibly the current ills of American math and science education just might be blamed on teachers who taught the baby boomers. I learned why the work rules embedded in teacher union collective bargaining contracts that are more than 100 pages long have a stranglehold on the American education system. I learned about the theory of an obscure Japanese physicist called “Yuasa’s Phenomenon,” which predicts that America’s best days may be behind it. I learned that from 1963, the first year that American baby boomers took the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), through 1976, both math and verbal SAT scores declined each year. Yet nothing was done. And I learned that the creation of the U.S. Department of Education had nothing to do with education but everything to do with a political quid pro quo offered to the National Education Association, the big teachers’ union.
My research connected me to scores of reports from government, industry, and academia with ominous sounding titles like A Nation at Risk, Gathering Storms, and Quiet Crisis. Reports began to be released in 1983, and they delivered the same dire message: something is systemically wrong with America’s education system. These reports were incredibly well written. They convinced me that the American education system had missed the sea change from a manufacturing-based global economy to a service-based economy and that improving public education in the future has nothing to do with dollars spent.
Before I started the project, I knew about the SAT. But I was not aware of two other international math and science tests: Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and the Programme for International Student Assessment. I knew about “teaching to the test,” but I had no idea that the “test” was called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, self-proclaimed by the U.S. Department of Education as the “nation’s report card.” I gathered pertinent information on all of these tests, and I have presented them in chronological order so the reader can see how American students have been developing since 1964. It is not a pretty picture.
Finally, I learned about an incredible array of great work that IT workers, their companies, and nonprofits are doing to complement and supplement the teaching of math and science in American schools. I am proud to share with you examples of the best programs I found, and I hope to inspire you to create one at your company or to join an existing program.
During the early phase of my research, I read a famous speech that Sir Winston Churchill delivered to the House of Commons in November 1936. Later known as the “Locust Years” speech, it warned the members of the House of Commons about the dangers of a rearmed Germany. One line from the speech is a good description of America’s twenty-first-century education challenge:
The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.
Actions speak louder than words. My goal in writing this book is to offer IT executives and business leaders a primer on the last seven decades of missteps in American education. The book is divided into three parts, with an Epilogue.
Part One, “How Did We Get Here?,” starts in 1909 and progresses to the early 1980s. Here I argue that the science and math inadequacies of twenty-first-century American schoolchildren are rooted in events of 104 years ago.
Part Two, “And the Hits Just Keep on Coming,” covers scores of warnings from 1964 through 2012 from prominent business, government, and nonprofit entities. These warnings had foreboding titles, and they were—and, in my opinion, continue to be—ignored.
Part Three, “Let’s Build Some Arks,” uses the same chronological layout as Parts One and Two. It puts the spotlight on great efforts by companies and nonprofit organizations to improve public education in America.
The Epilogue, “For What It’s Worth,” takes its title from a Buffalo Springfield hit in the 1960s and offers recommendations that I believe our country needs to embrace.
Chinese culture is famous for prescient sayings. The following one encapsulates well the content and recommendations of this book:
It is time for America to grow people—people with strong math and science skills.
Our nation’s era of consequence is upon us.
Notes
1. McKinsey & Company, The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools (New York: McKinsey & Company, 2009).
2. U.S. Census Bureau (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008).
3. Robert E. Gallman and Thomas J. Weiss, The Service Industries in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1969), 299.
4. Victor R. Fuchs, Production and Productivity in the Service Industries (Washington, DC: Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, 2012).
5. McKinsey & Company, Education to Employment: Designing a System That Works (New York: McKinsey & Company, December 2012), 11.
6. Computing Technology Industry Association, State of the IT Technology Skills Gap (Downers Grove, IL: CompTIA, 2012), 7.
7. U.S. Census Bureau, 2008.
8. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, “What’s Really behind the SAT-Score Decline?” Public Interest, Winter 1992.
9. McKinsey & Company, The Economic Impact, 81.
10. Michael Porter and Jan Rivkin, Prosperity at Risk: Findings of Harvard Business School’s Survey on U.S. Competitiveness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School, 2012).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing a book is not an easy task, nor is it done in isolation. During the six years it took me to research and write The U.S. Technology Skills Gap, there were thousands of people I spoke with individually about the topic or exchanged ideas with through my columns in CIO magazine and on CIO.com. Although I cannot possibly mention them all by name, their ideas and recommendations have made their way into the pages of the book.
Some people, however, do deserve individual acknowledgment for their contributions.
For her guidance, recommendations, and patience during the editing phase of the project, I want to thank Stacey Rivera, my development editor at John Wiley & Sons. Thanks also to Tim Burgard, my acquisitions editor at John Wiley & Sons for his support and encouragement, which made this book a reality. And thanks to Kimberly Monroe-Hill, senior production editor at Wiley, and Judith Antonelli, my copyeditor, who molded my words into the book you are about to read.
I must thank my friend Geoff Smith, the former deputy chief information officer at Procter & Gamble, for inviting me to a workforce development conference in the middle of the winter in 2007; that’s where I had the seminal idea to write this book. And even though I have never met them, Titus Galama and James Hosek, two economists from the Rand Corporation, deserve my thanks for introducing me to the fascinating story of Mitsutomo Yuasa, which is a central theme throughout the book.1
A book takes on a life of its own. Especially during the research phase, when manila file folders are scattered about one’s home, the dining room table becomes a large rectangular filing cabinet, and family members, including pets, become a focus group of sorts, forced to listen to ideas about the book.
My wife, Catherine, was an incredible partner during all phases of the book. Her patience was remarkable, and only once did she ask me to clear the dining room table: on the day before Thanksgiving! I must thank my son, Scott, who has an engineering degree and works as a manager for Accenture, for serving as a personal role model of what a successful career in business and technology is all about. And special acknowledgment must go to Noelle, my daughter, who was my North Star as I wrote the book. Her daily input was extremely valuable.
Finally, I must offer a very special thanks to those who teach. Lee Iacocca, the former automobile executive, once said, “In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else.”
Here’s to hoping that this “completely rational society” arrives soon in America.
Note
1. Titus Galama and James Hosek, U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2008).
PART ONE
How Did We Get Here?
In 2000, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a best seller entitled The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. The subtitle serves well to introduce Part One of The U.S. Technology Skills Gap.
As I mentioned in the preface, I was curious why American schoolchildren in the twenty-first century were performing so poorly compared to schoolchildren from other countries. It certainly wasn't genetics, so some other factor, or combination of factors, must be the reason. But what were those factors? Were they related, or were they random? And once they were identified, would it be possible to identify a solution? Or had America's education system long ago passed the point of no return?
I will let you make that decision once you have read my analysis in this section of the book.