Snap Observations: Goodbye Technology Administration, Int’l Science Testing, and Burmese Internet

Having scrapped the Commerce Department’s Technology Administration, the Bush administration has instead formed a Technology Council within Commerce. Meetings will not be public; the council will have none of its own resources; and the outlook isn’t good.

The National Center for Education statistics says it doesn’t have the money to test U.S. students in the 2008 Treads in International Mathematics and Science Study. The National Board for Education Sciences wants to review the opt out, as there are allegations that decision was a dodge to avoid another poor showing on the test, which could undermine support for the No Child Left Behind Act. (Marc Pearl points out that science scores for U.S. 13-year-olds are dead last among OECD nations.) Science (subscription) on what it could mean for studying the progress of the next generation of U.S. scientists and engineers.

“I’ve never seen anything like this cutoff to the Internet at such a broad scale so crudely and completely. They’ve taken the nuclear-bomb approach.” An interview with John Palfrey on the Burmese junta pulling the plug.

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