The United States already lacks enough skilled workers to build the high-tech military equipment the nation’s security demands. Engineers, technicians, programmers and advanced-manufacturing workers, jobs that are grounded in math skills, are in short supply across the defense industrial base. Yet the nation is compounding that vulnerability by awarding high school diplomas that too often overstate students’ readiness in math.
That math gap is a national security problem.
Modern deterrence depends on a workforce capable of producing and sustaining complex systems. If graduates arrive at college, training programs or jobs without the quantitative skills their diplomas imply, the pipeline into math-centric fields like engineering and advanced manufacturing narrows significantly.
New Jersey offers a stark example. State leaders celebrate a high school graduation rate above 90 percent, but the state’s own assessment shows that only about six in 10 juniors are “graduation ready” in math. As a new report concluded, “By lowering the bar for what it takes to graduate high school,” the high graduation rate “is obscuring the fact that New Jersey, like some other states, has diminished what it means to earn a diploma.”
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