eb71205Korea gets Rational and Real with 17 Miles of Feeway

The 2006 Pisa international scores for 15 year olds are in for math and reading. http://tinyurl.com/2aucvw. South Korea with a third the per capital income of the US jumped an entire grade level of academic performancei to first in reading and fourth in math. The US is below average in math and bungled the administration of the reading test so it was thrown out. Ouch!

The Korean Chief Information Technology Officer (President’s brother) visited ASU early 1990’s and was thoroughly briefed on the innovative use of broad band connectivity (pre-Internet) and our K-12 eLearningi designs and plans. They implement by wiring very cheap broadbandi to very citizen. We are still trying to get the information highway to rural Arizona.

Speaking of highways.

I heard that Michael Crow, president of ASU recently gave a forceful talk to Arizona leaders on what it would take to complete the transformationi of Arizona’s universities to fully serve Arizona’s rapidly growing population and economic needs. The cost was “17 miles of freeways” or 3 billion dollars.

It is easy to raise the academic requirements for math. Is that enough to assure all our students will graduate with an understanding the difference between irrational and imaginary numbers? Not in my rational and real world. When political leadership gets very rational and very real, like Korea, imperatives and policies are followed by investment in transformation. Like higher education, we need to invest a second 17 miles of freeway or $3 billion in ten year implementation of the eSATSi design. Like Korea, Arizona children will be performing one letter grade higher.

A recently issued Arizona Policy Choices, 6^th Edition “Sustainability for Arizona – The Issue for Our Age” www.morrisoninstitute.org (for MUST READ report) and http://sustainability.asu.edu (for follow-up) pointed the way.

“One encouraging aspect of the state is itsi streak of optimism that that great things can be accomplished when appropriate attention and forces are brought to bear.”