Can America Win the Education Race?
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This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
President Obama talked a lot about [A]education[/A] in his State of the Union speech last week.
BARACK OBAMA: "We need to [A]out-innovate[/A], out-educate and out-build the rest of the world. [Applause]"
"This is our generation's Sputnik moment," he said.
BARACK OBAMA: "Half a [A]century[/A] ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we would beat them to the [A]moon[/A]. The science wasn't even there yet. NASA didn't exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn't just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of [A]innovation[/A] that created new industries and millions of new jobs."
If Americans want to "win the future," he said, then they also have to win the race to educate their children.
BARACK OBAMA: "Over the next ten years, nearly half of all new jobs will [A]require[/A] education that goes beyond a high school education. And yet as many as a quarter of our students aren't even finishing high school. The [A]quality[/A] of our math and science education lags behind many other nations. America has fallen to ninth in the proportion of young people with a college [A]degree[/A]."
Two years ago, Mr. Obama set a goal to regain the world's highest rate of college [A]graduates[/A] by twenty-twenty. He says the [A]responsibility [/A]to give every child a chance to [A]succeed[/A] begins not in classrooms, but in homes and communities.
BARACK OBAMA: "Only parents can make sure the TV is turned off and [A]homework[/A] gets done. We need to teach our kids that it's not just the winner of the Super Bowl who [A]deserves[/A] to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair. [Applause]"
President Obama talked about his Race to the Top competition. It offered states money to develop plans to improve teacher quality and student [A]performance[/A]. He urged Congress to follow this idea for the next [A]version[/A] of the main federal law on elementary and [A]secondary[/A] education.
Also, he called for [A]preparing [/A]one hundred thousand new teachers in science, technology, engineering and math over the next ten years. He noted that many teachers now are old enough to [A]retire[/A].
In his message, Mr. Obama offered to begin debate with Congress on [A]immigration[/A] reform, and he linked that issue to education.
BARACK OBAMA: "Today, there are hundreds of thousands of students [A]excelling[/A] in our schools who are not American citizens. Some are the children of undocumented workers, who had nothing to do with the actions of their parents. They grew up as Americans and pledge allegiance to our flag, and yet they live every day with the threat of [A]deportation[/A]. Others come here from abroad to study in our colleges and [A]universities[/A]. But as soon as they obtain advanced degrees, we send them back home to [A]compete[/A] against us."
The speech came the same day the Education Department [A]released[/A] the latest results on student progress in science.
The goal is for all students to perform at the proficient or advanced level. But only about one-third of students in grades four and eight and one-fifth of twelfth-graders did that in two thousand nine. Just one to two percent of students performed at the advanced level.
