Educational black hole in Montana and other States

In Oregon, the state science standards lack references to stars and galaxies, according to a recent review by university science professors. In Hawaii, the standards mostly duck chemistry. In Montana, there’s nothing about parts of the body, embryos, the process of disease or chromosomes.

Parents might be surprised by these findings, but business leaders aren’t. Captains of Intel, Microsoft and IBM have joined with university leaders from Yale, MIT and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to deliver a unified message: U.S. students are falling dangerously behind in science and technology. In an era of "flat earth" commerce, where well-educated Third World workers can handle complex tasks via the Internet, that’s troubling.

Despite having a sixth the U.S. population, South Korea graduates just as many engineers. At the top U.S. engineering schools, more than half the students are foreign-born.

Full Story: http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-12-26-our-view_x.htm