September 2, 2003

Ms. Maud Dahme
President
State Board of Education
P.O. Box 500
Trenton, NJ 08625-0500

Dear Ms. Dahme:

On behalf of the New Jersey members of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), we are writing to express our concern with the paucity of technological content in our school curricula for grades K through 12 and its impact on this state's and our nation's ability to maintain its current lead in technology. Please note that of the 176,000 students at 4-year universities and colleges in the state, only 3.2 percent are engineering students and only 0.8 percent of women students.

For this reason we strongly support the implementation of Assembly Bill 2169 which requires the Board to adopt core curriculum standards in technology. According to the recent National Academy of Engineering (NAE) report, Technically Speaking, technology is defined as not only computers and word processing, but "the products, process, and knowledge needed to create and use artifacts" and all the other tools of the modern world. We are pleased that the Governor's press release regarding the signing of the bill noted that technology education was now mandatory for New Jersey's students.

We note that a technology core curriculum, known as Standard 8, has been prepared and is due to be presented to the Board for adoption shortly. We are concerned, however, that the Department of Education's proposed graduation requirements contain no mandatory requirement for technology education. We urge the Board to adopt Standard 8, and then revise the graduation requirements to reflect the new technology education curriculum.

We recognize the effort that will have to be made by school districts and teachers in introducing and developing programs in technology. For this reason, our Coordinator for New Jersey, Andrew Blelloch met with the NJDOE Coordinator for Technological Literacy on August 22. ASME supports the Department of Education in its efforts to introduce technology education into the New Jersey school curriculum.

For this to be productive, we believe that it is essential that districts be given an incentive in the form of a mandatory technology education requirement for graduation of their students and urge you to reconsider the requirements currently proposed. Please do not hesitate to contact our New Jersey Coordinator, Andrew Blelloch, at (609) 799 1475 if you have comments or questions.

Sincerely,

Norris Allman
Vice President, Region II

Willard Nott
Vice President, Pre-college Education

ASME International is a non-profit technical and educational organization with 120,000 members worldwide. The Society's members work in all sectors of the economy, including industry, academia and government. This letter represents the views of the 3,369 members in New Jersey and is not necessarily a position of ASME as a whole.

CC: Governor James E. McGreevey
      Commissioner William L. Librera, Department of Education
      Senator Shirley K. Turner
      Senator Robert J. Martin
      Assemblyman Jack Conners
      Assemblyman Herb Conoway