President-elect Barack Obama has named Harvard and Woods Hole physicist John P. Holdren to serve as assistant to the president for science and technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Three other renowned scientists - Jane Lubchenco, Eric Lander, and Harold Varmus - also were tapped by Obama to fill key roles.

A study by Trends in International Mathematics and Science finds that the US is behind many industrialized countries in preparing students in math and science. The US is not even represented in the top ten nations for education in math and science. (Photo: Anthony S. Bush / The Capital-Journal)

    Holdren's appointment, announced weeks before the inauguration, took place earlier than that of any other science adviser in modern times. Even so, the reinvigoration of US science advice cannot happen soon enough.

    The latest alarm bell just rang and it's official. The United States is once again missing from the list of top-10 science and math education countries. A new Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study confirmed that America lags behind many other industrialized countries at the task of preparing tomorrow's labor force. Long-term economic growth depends on a fully competent talent pool, including workers who can excel in a technology-based economy. But young people in many less-developed countries now outperform their American counterparts in both science and math.

    Interestingly, eighth-graders in Massachusetts actually tied for first place worldwide in science, while the state's fourth-graders ranked second among nearly 60 other nations. Clearly, the United States is capable of sustaining high-quality K-12 science and math programs. We simply are not providing equal educational opportunities for all of America's children. Now is the time to tackle the science education problem if we want long-term, stable improvements in our national economy and quality of life.

    We learned about US students' stagnant science scores while also, not coincidentally, confronting the largest number of job losses since 1945.

    Science and technology have been powerful engines of prosperity since World War II, but, sadly, science education and the versatility of the American workforce are both in decline. In 2006, the respected Programme for International Student Assessment reported that 15-year-olds in the United States ranked 17th on science tests and 24th on math tests, compared with teens from 29 other wealthy nations. The United States is failing to address the problems of science education for tomorrow's workforce.

    The problem demands a multifaceted response. Competitive pay for teachers should be our top priority. If we want to recruit and retain the best teachers, we need to reward them. Obama has proposed providing scholarships for those who teach in schools with the greatest needs, while training thousands of science and math teachers and boosting early-childhood education. He also has said he wants to help "ensure that state assessments measure higher-order thinking skills."

    Such plans demonstrate a commendable vision. We hope that US policy-makers, guided by Holdren and colleagues, also can find a way to send a clear signal that science generally and science education specifically are highly valued, respected, and essential for all children, not just those in magnet schools or in Massachusetts. That means increasing funding for science education at all levels, as well as federal research and development more broadly. Federal research and development has declined, in real terms, for the past four years.

    Uniform national science-learning standards will be critical, too. Currently, students' science-learning goals vary from state to state, and thus a child who excels in one region may fail elsewhere. This disparity across the country can create unacceptable inequalities in the opportunities provided to the next generation of Americans.

    Sputnik, the world's first satellite, ignited America's will to win the innovation race with the Soviet Union. Congress and President Dwight Eisenhower responded in 1957 by quadrupling funds for the National Science Foundation and launching the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. That decision triggered decades of breathtaking achievements, from the first man on the moon to the information superhighway and the decoding of life's genetic blueprint - the human genome.

    Today's economic crisis should similarly ignite America's will to ensure that our children's future is at least as good as our own. New jobs and prosperity require investment in science, technology, and science education now.

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    Alan I. Leshner is chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the journal Science.

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