The Science Education Myth

Vivek Wadhwa writes in Business Week:

Political leaders, tech executives, and academics often claim that the U.S. is falling behind in math and science education. They cite poor test results, declining international rankings, and decreasing enrollment in the hard sciences. They urge us to improve our education system and to graduate more engineers and scientists to keep pace with countries such as India and China.

Yet a new report by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, tells a different story. ... the report finds that our education system actually produces more science and engineering graduates than the market demands.

Here is an example of the myth, from the Si Valley paper's Sunday editorial:

High-tech chief executives have been warning for years that America is not turning out enough scientists and engineers to compete in a knowledge-based economy. ...

The state starts testing students in science in fifth grade, but the results count for less than 10 percent of a school's API score - a disincentive for teaching it.

The editorial doesn't say how it thinks that science scores ought to be weighted.