EDUCATION

Compared with adults or even high school students, young children are better able to learn German with near-native pronunciation or mimic the subtle tones of Mandarin.

”Education systems have to multitask,” said Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, who announced that as NGA’s new chair she will focus the organization’s attention on fostering innovation. “Standardized tests should be passable as a natural response,” she said. “Those engaged in math and science don’t have any problem passing the tests.”

American K-12 students are becoming less and less interested in math, science and technology fields.

College recruiting has become a national competition, with private and even public universities aggressively siphoning students from out-of-state in the quest to improve applicant quality, geographic diversity and (in the case of publics) to attract more students to pay higher tuition.

The $5,000 Future Engineers Scholarship, now in its fourth year, recognizes exceptional engineering students throughout the nation and is intended to encourage students to go beyond the junior and sophomore years.

"To usher in a new generation of computing technology and bring creative new products to market, it’s crucial to educate tomorrow’s software developers to architect, develop and debug the next generation of software for modern, multi-core platforms,"

Montana is one of 10 states that offer no state-funded pre-kindergarten programs, according to a review by Pre-K Now, a national nonprofit organization advocating for early childhood education. That status may change soon.

Here’s my back-to-school PC buying philosophy for 2006, in just four words:

Less really is more.

"Math hasn’t changed since Isaac Newton," declares Scott McNealy. So why, he asks, is California paying some $400 million annually to "update" grade-school textbooks?

For more than 25 years, federal law had required that schools nationwide identify children as learning disabled by comparing their scores on intelligence tests with their academic achievement. This meant that many students had to wait until third or fourth grade to get the special education help they needed.