Se estan complicando las cosas. Miren como este politico estadounidense ataca al presidente y a su administración.
Por otro lado: ingenieros civiles estadounidenses advierten que la infraestructura de su país esta al borde de un colapso. Vean la nota el el Seattle Times.
Y el New York Times reporta que los resultados del examen nacional para ingresar a la universidad --el SAT-- fueron los más bajós en 30 años.
29.8.06
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Experts warn U.S. is coming apart at the seams
By Chuck McCutcheon
Newhouse News Service
WASHINGTON — A pipeline shuts down in Alaska. Equipment failures disrupt air travel in Los Angeles. Electricity runs short at a spy agency in Maryland.
None of these recent events resulted from a natural disaster or terrorist attack, but they may as well have, some homeland security experts say. They worry that too little attention is paid to how fast the country's basic operating systems are deteriorating.
"When I see events like these, I become concerned that we've lost focus on the core operational functionality of the nation's infrastructure and are becoming a fragile nation, which is just as bad — if not worse — as being an insecure nation," said Christian Beckner, a Washington analyst who runs the respected Web site Homeland Security Watch (www.christianbeckner.com).
The American Society of Civil Engineers last year graded the nation "D" for its overall infrastructure conditions, estimating that it would take $1.6 trillion over five years to fix the problem.
"I thought [Hurricane] Katrina was a hell of a wake-up call, but people are missing the alarm," said Casey Dinges, the society's managing director of external affairs.
British oil company BP announced this month that severe corrosion would close its Alaska pipelines for extensive repairs. Analysts say this may sideline some 200,000 barrels a day of production for several months.
Then an instrument landing system that guides arriving planes onto a runway at Los Angeles International Airport failed for the second time in a week, delaying flights.
Those incidents followed reports that the National Security Agency (NSA), the intelligence world's electronic eavesdropping arm, is consuming so much electricity at its headquarters outside Washington that it is in danger of exceeding its power supply.
"If a terrorist group were able to knock the NSA offline, or disrupt one of the nation's busiest airports, or shut down the most important oil pipeline in the nation, the impact would be perceived as devastating," Beckner said. "And yet we've essentially let these things happen — or almost happen — to ourselves."
The Commission on Public Infrastructure at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said in a recent report that facilities are deteriorating "at an alarming rate."
It noted that half the 257 locks operated by the Army Corps of Engineers on inland waterways are functionally obsolete, more than one-quarter of the nation's bridges are structurally deficient or obsolete, and $11 billion is needed annually to replace aging drinking-water facilities.
President Bush, asked about the problem during a public question-and-answer session in an April visit to Irvine, Calif., cited last year's enactment of a comprehensive law reauthorizing highway, transit and road-safety programs.
"Infrastructure is always a difficult issue," Bush acknowledged. "It's a federal responsibility and a state and local responsibility. And I, frankly, feel like we've upheld our responsibility at the federal level with the highway bill."
But experts say the law is riddled with some 5,000 "earmarks" for projects sought by members of Congress that do nothing to systematically address the problem.
"There's a growing understanding that these programs are at best inefficient and at worst corrupt," said Everett Ehrlich, executive director of the CSIS public infrastructure commission.
Ehrlich and others cite several reasons for the lack of action:
• The political system is geared to reacting to crises instead of averting them.
• Some politicians don't see infrastructure as a federal responsibility.
• And many problems are out of sight and — for the public — out of mind.
"You see bridges and roads and potholes, but so much else is hidden and taken for granted," said Dinges of the Society of Civil Engineers. "As a result, people just don't get stirred up and alarmed."
But a few politicians are starting to notice. In March, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., joined Sens. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, and Tom Carper, D-Del., in sponsoring a bill to set up a national commission to assess infrastructure needs.
That same month, the CSIS infrastructure commission issued a set of principles calling for increased spending, investments in new technologies and partnerships with business. Among those signing the report were Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn.
"Infrastructure deficiencies will further erode our global competitiveness, but with the federal budget so committed to mandatory spending, it's unclear how we are going to deal with this challenge as we fall further and further behind in addressing these problems," Hagel said in a speech last year. "We need to think creatively."
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2003226851&zsection_id=2002107549&slug=fragile26&date=20060826
August 29, 2006
Average Scores on SAT Show Significant Decline
By KAREN W. ARENSON
The average score on the reading and math portions of the newly expanded SAT showed the most significant decline in 31 years, according to a report released today by the College Board on the performance of the high school class of 2006.
The drop confirmed earlier reports from puzzled college officials that they were seeing lower scores from many applicants. The average score on the critical reading portion of the SAT, formerly known as the verbal test, fell 5 points, to 503, out of a maximum possible score of 800. The average math score fell 2 points, to 518. Together they amounted to the lowest combined score since 2002.
Officials of the College Board, the non-profit organization that administers the SAT, dismissed the suggestion by numerous high school guidance counselors that students were getting tired out by the new three-part test, which now runs 3 hours 45 minutes, rather than 3 hours.
“Fatigue is not a factor,” Wayne Camara, vice president, research and analysis, at the College Board said at a news conference. “We are not trying to say that students are not tired. But it is not affecting, on the whole, student performance.”
Instead, the officials said the drop could be explained by the decline in the number of students who took the exam multiple times. The board said 47 percent of this year’s students took the test only once, up from 44 percent last year. The number taking the test a third time fell 2 percentage points, from nearly 15 percent to less than 13 percent.
Students typically gain about 15 points a section when they take the test a second time, and another 10 or 11 points a section on the third try.
The new SAT writing test includes a 25-minute essay, which counts for a quarter of the writing grade, and 49 multiple-choice questions on grammar and style, which count for the rest. The average score on the new writing section of the exam, was 497 out of a possible 800, the board said.
Women performed better than men on this section of the exam, averaging 502 versus 493 for men. That partly offset women’s lower scores on math and reading, but did not close the long-standing score gap.
The essay test was added largely in response to the dissatisfaction of the University of California, the largest user of the test, which was seeking a test more closely tied to high school curriculum.
Gaston Caperton, the president of the College Board, pointed out that the decline in test scores represented less than one half of a test question in reading and one-fifth of one test question in math. Still officials had concerns about the overall performance of American students. “The data does suggest that as a nation, critical reading and writing are lagging behind the progress we are making in math,” Mr. Camara said.
The SAT score declines contrasted with the increase in scores on the ACT exam, the other primary college admissions test, reported earlier this month. ACT scores registered their biggest increase in 20 years and reached their highest level since 1991. ACT also has a writing section of the test but it is optional.
Seppy Basili, senior vice president at Kaplan Inc., the education and test preparation company, said the new SAT test undoubtedly affected scores, because students were less familiar with it and because fewer students repeated it. But he said he thought the length played a greater role than the College Board acknowledged.
“It is not just that the test is three hours and forty-five minutes,” he said. “It is that the whole experience is five hours or more.”
He added, “Next year will help us understand more about what this year’s test data meant.”
The number of students taking the exam also fell slightly, to nearly 1.5 million, or about 48 percent of more than 3 million students who graduated from high school this year.
Counselors in high schools where the SAT has long dominated, said more of their students were taking the ACT, along with the SAT or instead of it. Some have said that in the wake of the College Board’s disclosure this spring that it had improperly scored more than 5,000 exams, they have urged their students to consider the ACT.
ACT officials said they saw an unexpectedly large jump — 13 percent — in the number of students who took the exam in June, to 457,000 students. But the numbers probably had little impact on the College Board’s annual report, which was for seniors who graduated this year.
Also, with a growing number of liberal arts colleges making admissions tests optional, some students now take neither exam.
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Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/29/education/29cnd-sat.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
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