Tapping America's Potential

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News Coverage June 2007

June 21, 2007 -New York Times, James Flanigan,“Small Companies That Try to Bring Innovative Technology to Teaching”
There is a growing cluster of companies in the Northwest looking to capitalize on educational needs. Learning.com makes computer software programs that help elementary school students learn science, math, languages and social studies. “We help teachers by integrating our program with the school’s curricula,” said William J. Kelly, founder and chief executive of the company, based here. Vernier Software and Technology, based in Beaverton, makes a device that allows instant data analysis and graph-making. “So students can concentrate on the experiment and not spend all period making a graph,” said David Vernier, a one-time physics teacher who founded the company with his wife, Christine, also a teacher, in 1981.

June 14, 2007 - Department of Education “Statement by Secretary Spellings on NCLB Recommendations by the Forum on Educational Accountability”
Secretary Spellings today issued the following statement on recommendations by the Forum on Educational Accountability: "As we work with Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, we must keep our eye on the ball: ensuring that all students achieve grade level proficiency in reading and math by 2014. Unfortunately, the report released today by the Forum on Educational Accountability (FEA) shifts the focus from results to excuses. The report would turn back the clock to a time when accountability was not a way of life in our schools. Specifically, Principle I lets schools off the hook for improving student performance until unspecified "inequities in access" were eliminated. A school dissatisfied with its current level of state funding, for example, could hold student achievement hostage to its demands.

June 13, 2007 -Education Week-“Job Skills of Future in Scholars’ Crystal Ball”
Economists, researchers, and educators from all over the country recently took turns here looking into a crystal ball with two urgent questions: No. 1, what job skills will employers need in the decades ahead? And, No. 2, are students getting the education they’ll need to be employable? As with most prognostications, the answers at a research workshop hosted by the prestigious National Academies depended on whom you consulted.

June 6, 2007 – Financial Times, Rebecca Knight, "Science graduate studies see revival in numbers"
The number of US students going to graduate school for science and engineering hit an all-time high in 2005, offering a glimmer of hope to policymakers and business chiefs who have lamented that Americans are not interested in science. Susan Traiman, the director of education and workforce policy at the Business Roundtable, was quoted in the article, she was concerned that US graduate schools were losing their edge in attracting the most talented foreign students, as other countries, such as the UK and Australia, boosted their investment in graduate education and embarked on campaigns to recruit top domestic and international students. "What these numbers seem to be saying is that top talent has many more options now…if we don't have enough Americans going into these fields, and if we don't have the foreign talent to fill the gaps, it jeopardizes US innovation - and that is the underpinning of American competitiveness."

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