Stagnant scientific education imperils U.S. economic leadership, says a report by leading business and science figures. Released Thursday at a congressional briefing attended by senators and congressmen of both parties, the report updates a 2005 science education report that led to moves to double federal research funding. Nevertheless, the “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” review finds little improvement in U.S. elementary and secondary technical education since then. “Our nation’s outlook has worsened,” concludes the report panel headed by former Lockheed Martin chief Norman Augustine . The report “paints a daunting outlook for America if it were to continue on the perilous path it has been following”: •U.S. mathematics and science K-12 education ranks 48th worldwide. •49% of U.S. adults don’t know how long it takes for the Earth to circle the sun. •China has replaced the United States as the world’s top high-technology exporter. Although U.S. school achievement scores have stagnated, harming the economy as employers look elsewhere for competent workers, the report says that other nations have made gains. If U.S. students matched Finland ‘s, for example, analysis suggests the U.S. economy would grow 9%-16%. “The real point is that we have to have a well-educated workforce to create opportunities for young people,” says Charles Vest, head of the National Academy of Engineering , a report sponsor. “Otherwise, we don’t have a chance.” “The current economic crisis makes the link between education and employment very clear,” says Steven Newton of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland. In 2007, however, an analysis led by B. Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University found U.S. science education worries overstated. It saw three times more science and engineering college graduates than job openings each year. Other reports have found top science and engineering students migrating to better-paying jobs in finance, law and medicine, since the 1990s.

NEW YORK — For their first fire drill, students at the Refugee Youth Summer Academy trooped out of the building behind their teachers. All that was missing were the sirens. The blaring alarms had been muted, for fear they could trigger terror in children who recently arrived from war zones and other conflict areas. The silent fire drill was part of the balancing act for staff at the six-week program that helps youngsters who have survived wars and refugee camps prepare for a new experience — American public school. For some of the kids, formal education has been haphazard or nonexistent, said Elizabeth Demchak, principal of the school, run by the International Rescue Committee , which works with refugees and asylum-seekers. For others, school consisted of sitting and taking notes surrounded by dozens of others with a teacher reciting a lecture. Preparing them means helping them learn how to go to school along with what they learn there. “When they enter the classroom in September, things won’t be so new for them, and having taken away that freshness, that newness, you’re also taking away that fear,” Demchak said. That’s where something like the fire drill comes in. Running a drill, explaining what it is, can help keep students from reacting negatively when they experience it in school. “If a child has lived in an environment, especially in a conflict area, where they’re accustomed to hearing sirens and sirens are a signal for an emergency … when they hear an alarm going off in their school it may trigger a certain memory, it may make them act in a certain way,” Demchak said. “We’re teaching them how to disassociate certain triggers that had a negative connotation with things that are here to help and protect them,” she said. The Youth Academy program has about 120 kids this summer who will be in kindergarten to 12th grade this school year. The students’ homelands are a litany of the world’s hot spots, combat zones and conflict areas: Iraq. Afghanistan. Sierra Leone. Burma. Most have been here for less than 18 months. Some will be starting school in America for the first time. In the program, the children work on their English, writing and math. They take art, dance and music. They go on field trips. From the length of the day to changing rooms between classes to raising their hands and interacting with teachers, the program tries to mimic what students will experience. That was a blessing for Helen Samuels, 17, who attended two years ago and works there this summer. Half Burmese and half Thai, she hadn’t been in school for two years when she arrived here in June 2008 from the refugee camps along the Burma-Thailand border. She was a frightened girl and the program helped reassure her. “We had to learn all the basics of how to be a student, starting from you had to come to class on time,” Samuels said. “It helped me, to prepare me to see school is not something scary.” Among those starting this fall is Basserou Kaba, a 16-year-old from Ivory Coast, an African nation divided between government and rebel forces. The teen, who was in 12th grade before coming here in April, will start in 10th grade to improve his English. He is happy that U.S. teachers expect students to ask questions, unlike those in his homeland. “In my country, the teacher teach what he wants,” Kaba said. “You don’t understand, it’s your problem.” Kaba admits he’s a little nervous about his language skills but says he’s now comfortable with the idea of going to school. “In this program, I came to know what is the school in U.S.,” he said. The IRC program and others like it can play a vital role in helping them build their lives in a new country, said Michele Pistone, a law professor at Villanova University School of Law who specializes in refugee issues. New arrivals can benefit from being taught such common practices for Americans, she said, as parental involvement in a child’s education. “In the United States, our system, there’s much more interaction between parents and teachers than there is elsewhere around the world,” Pistone said. “A lot of the refugees I’ve worked with — because they’re coming from an environment where there isn’t that expectation of involvement — they tend not to be.” The IRC program, which ends Friday, holds parent-teacher conferences and encourages parents to get involved. One who did is Bushra Naji, 53, who was a teacher in Iraq for 25 years before leaving for Syria in 2006 and the United States in 2008. Now she volunteers, helping students in kindergarten through second grade. In Iraq, she said, she taught English by writing on a blackboard and having her students repeat after her. Here, she said, her eyes shining and her smile bright, it’s “very exciting” to see the teachers interact with the children. “I wanted to be younger,” she said, “to be teacher here.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

The Texas State Board of Education was set to vote Friday on changes to social studies standards that have angered and, in some cases, baffled critics, including President George W. Bush ‘s first education secretary, who is protesting the politicization of the process. Among the proposed changes: calling the USA’s slave trade the “Atlantic triangular trade” and minimizing the role of Thomas Jefferson , who espoused a strict separation of church and state. The new standards set curriculum for millions of Texas school children and lay the groundwork for textbooks and standardized tests for a decade. But the changes could also carry outsized influence because Texas is a large state — textbooks sold to other states often carry content tailored to Texas specifications. On Thursday, former U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige , a one-time Houston superintendent, said the proposed standards are too detailed and “take away a lot of the latitude of the teachers” in designing curricula. He also worries that teachers, focused increasingly on getting their students to pass state skills tests, will be “very, very concerned about the standards” and ensure that students learn the content. Paige testified before the board on Wednesday about the growing politicization of education. In an interview Thursday, he said he understands the point of view of several state board members, who this week said they are simply bringing balance to a set of standards that skew leftward. But Paige said, “This political swaying between left and right is retarding our ability to have an effective educational delivery system in the United States of America.” Paige, who is African-American, said the proposed Texas standards “drastically understate the influence of slavery and the Civil Rights movement in our national story – it almost suggests that students will be learning that our liberties – and especially African-Americans’ freedoms – were kind of gently acquired. The liberty and freedoms that African-Americans enjoy were born out of struggle – deep struggle. {hellip} nobody just woke up in the morning and said, ‘O.K., you’re free.” NAACP President Ben Jealous said he was “stunned” to learn of the change in reference to slavery. “You can’t take slavery out of the slave trade,” he said. “Our children need to be taught the whole truth – not half of it.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.