Americans have grown accustomed to bad news about student performance in math and science. On a 2009 study administered by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 15-year-olds in the U.S. placed 23rd in science and 31st in math out of 65 countries. On last year's Nation's Report Card assessments, only one third of eighth graders qualified as proficient in math or science. Those general statistics tell only a piece of the story, however. There are pockets of excellence across the U.S. where student achievement is world-beating. Massachusetts eighth graders outscored their peers from every global region included, except Singapore and Taiwan, on an international science assessment in 2007. Eighth graders from Minnesota, the only other U.S. state tested, did almost as well.

What do Massachusetts and Minnesota have in common? They each have science standards that set a high bar for what students are expected to learn at each grade level. Such standards form the scaffolding on which educators write curricula and teachers plan lessons, and many experts believe them to be closely linked with student achievement.

Unfortunately, the quality of most state science standards is “mediocre to awful,” in the words of one recent report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank in Washington, D.C. Several states present evolution as unsettled science—“according to many scientists, biological evolution occurs through natural selection,” say New York State's standards. Wishy-washiness is also creeping into the way schools teach climate change, as some parents pressure teachers to “balance” the conclusions of the majority of scientists against the claims of a tiny but vocal clan of skeptics. We can't have a scientifically literate populace if schools are going to tap-dance around such fundamentals.

Now a group of 26 states has collaborated with several organizations on ambitious new standards, known as the Next Generation Science Standards, that all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, will be able to adopt starting early next year. The first draft, released in May, explicitly included evolution and climate change. A second draft will be available for comment this fall.

The standards are based on recommendations from the National Research Council and were funded in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. In addition to tackling shortcomings such as those mentioned above, they put new emphasis on engineering, which is crucial to our country's economic competitiveness, and stress the process of science as much as the content.

Any system of education standards has potential downsides. Mandate too much, and kids will grow bored or overwhelmed and teachers will lose autonomy. But these new standards have already won over important potential critics. Carolyn Wallace, a science education researcher at Indiana State University and a former high school science teacher who believes many standards systems are too “authoritarian,” says the Next Generation standards leave room for teachers to be more creative in how they present material to kids. She does worry that the standards impose more than can reasonably be taught in one school year. Hers is a serious concern that the standards developers should address.

There is little doubt that these standards will require more classroom time to be devoted to science—and that is good. Harold Pratt, a former president of the National Science Teachers Association, says that in elementary school, science has often been squeezed out entirely by the reading and math requirements of the No Child Left Behind law. Many states currently require only two years of science, and California governor Jerry Brown recently proposed cutting that to just one. Accommodating the Next Generation standards would probably require three.
Although these science standards are too new for politicians to have weighed in on them, the general movement toward common standards has bipartisan support. In a contentious election year, the idea that our kids deserve a world-class science education should be one issue we can all agree on.

MAINLAND China can now boast over 1m wealthy citizens (qianwan fuweng) each with over 10m yuan ($1.6m), says the latest edition of the “Hurun Report”, which keeps track of China’s capitalist high-roaders. But the mainland seems to be having trouble keeping them. According to the report, published on July 31st, more than 16% of China’s rich have already emigrated, or handed in immigration papers for another country, while 44% intend to do so soon. Over 85% are planning to send their children abroad for their education, and one-third own assets overseas.

The affluent 1m have profited handsomely from China’s economic boom. But only 28% of those asked expressed great confidence in the prospects over the next two years, down from 54% in last year’s report. That unease may also be visible in a more obscure report released on the same day, by China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE). It showed that China’s balance of payments had recorded a deficit in the second quarter, for the first time since 1998. Put simply, more money was leaving China than arriving.

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The same phenomenon can be described less simply. The balance of payments records two different kinds of transactions: cross-border payments for goods and services (ie, exports and imports), which are recorded in the “current account”, and cross-border payments for assets. China’s current account is still in surplus, largely because its exports exceed its imports. China is also attracting plenty of direct investment from foreigners eager to buy or build companies on the mainland. But both these inflows of foreign exchange were outdone by a record outflow of other kinds of capital, amounting to a net $110 billion. This left China’s overall balance of payments in deficit, diminishing China’s international reserves by $11.8 billion (or just under 0.4%).

The drop in reserves was such an unfamiliar twist in the data that Reuters initially reported it with the wrong sign. A SAFE spokesperson felt the need to say that these outflows did not amount to a mass rush for the exits. The exits are, in any case, partially blocked by China’s capital controls. Still, such regulations can stop neither multinational companies, which may repatriate profits, nor determined wealthy individuals, who travel frequently, hold foreign bank accounts and run their own cross-border businesses. Chinese individuals may take up to $50,000 out of the country each year without special permission. Victor Shih of Northwestern University reckons that the richest 1% of Chinese households own $2 trillion-5 trillion of property and liquid assets. If they took fright, they could overwhelm even China’s vast foreign-exchange reserves.


China’s rich often have inside knowledge of the economy’s condition, Mr Shih has pointed out. If their money is leaving, everybody else should take note. But Zhiwei Zhang, chief China economist at Nomura, a Japanese bank, is more sanguine. He thinks the capital outflow is not an alarming sign in itself, but just reflects economic worries that are already well-known. It is no surprise that firms and investors should reshuffle their portfolios given disappointments in China’s property market and the interruption in the yuan’s rise against the dollar.

Indeed, downward pressure on the currency is both a cause and a consequence of the capital outflows. From June 2010 to February this year, the yuan appreciated by over 8% against the dollar. Since then, it has slipped by 1% or so. The number of wealthy Chinese, according to the “Hurun Report”, may be growing strongly. But 10m yuan is not what it was.