President Biden, You Did Your Part With the Chips and Science Act

The Chips and Science act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden in August 2022.

A driving point of the Act is to catalyze the building of semiconductor fabrication plants (fabs) in the U.S.! This will surely drive more Jobs! And yes, international awareness! 

Wow! It’s great to see the U.S. stepping up! Thank you, Congress.  Thank you, Mr. President.

So, hello fabs, come to America!

But, oops!, what about a prepared workforce? 

Our K-12 education system is voted by the world as the best in the world (see the www.HSe4Metrics.com explainer site). 

But being the best is not preventing just over half of all high school graduates in the U.S. from performing below proficiency on the Nation’s Report Card (the federally backed National Assessment of Educational Progress).

The thing is, for our nation’s wonderful high school graduates, proudly walking across the stage to receive their high school diploma, the shocker for more than half of them will be that the beautiful, promising fabrication plants, for instance, offering terrific jobs will want new hires, yes, but generally not those who populate the bottom half of NAEP. No, the hiring staff will never see an applicant’s NAEP assessment, no one will, but if a young person managed to go through K-12 without managing to place higher than the bottom half, below proficiency, that’s a deal killer.

The victims include the nation, the young person sadly assessed by NAEP as not being able to read and write with proficiency, the young person’s future family—and the fab needing a proficient workforce. 

Thus the tragic question asked since NAEP was launched decades ago: What can be done during the pre-K-12-years (and during every year before kindergarten) to ensure that all young people in the U.S. are prepared to live up to their potential to become a viable social economic success—evident to the world from the moment they so proudly accept that high school diploma?