I have no knowledge of the situation, why did they choose Arizona?
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Many felt WA was in the running because of the talent already there.
This caused concerns that the future of the WaferTech fab facility is dimmer than before, since it probably makes less sense to pump billions more into it in the future.
'"TSMC chairman and founder Morris Chang warned last month of higher operating costs and a thin talent pool for the U.S. plans in a rare public speech attended by Wei and chairman Mark Liu.
"In the United States, the level of professional dedication is no match to that in Taiwan, at least for engineers," Chang said. He warned that "short-term subsidy can't make up for long-term operational disadvantage."'
The body of the article also casts doubt on the total amount of U.S. investment, unlike the headline.
Some elements make sense or I think would do little harm. I was high achieving in math - but the push to calc in high school does feel overdone I think - it's often a shallow understanding.
They are very focused particularly on issues like 30%+ of Asian students and only 3-4% of other minorities being in advanced tracks of math education so they are trying to reduce those.
Some neat ideas around doing more open ended tasks (cool!) in make that integration work better.
That said, will likely be some tough corners because there are can be some pretty significant skill differences across a student body in a given grade. They are going to try and do more group work, and also one of the 5 new principles is to teach towards social justice in math as well as other areas which may provide more opportunity for engagement by all students.
The problem is that the racial distribution of those students who are good at math upsets the blank slate world-view of the teachers, and the very notion that some students are smarter than others and that these discrepencies have consistent ethnic patterns fills them with a lot of rage due to their politics/religion. Trying to infuse the same dysfunctional beliefs into the math curriculum will serve to spread what crippled the teachers' analytical abilities to the students. That type of denial isn't going to help train engineers either. Bridges can't fall down, processors need to work, theorems require proofs. These are objective things that students need to master, not comfortable delusions about everyone having the same abilities in every subject.
So you can only deny reality for so long before you start losing your competitive edge and this affects your ability to be a leader in chip production. By suppressing opportunities for groups they don't like, the teachers are preventing students from achieving their potential. Wealthy parents will withdraw their students and either home school if they have the education to do it, or place them in private schools that try to maximize the potential of every student, regardless of whether those outcomes are racially balanced. But that's a minority, the middle class and poor will be denied a good education.
Taiwan and China are under no such illusions. They are happy to identify smart students and give them challenging topics in order to help them achieve their potential, rather than trying to slow down the best students in order to pretend that everyone has the same talent for math.
Do you have any evidence that teachers are more likely to hold blank slate world-views? I've met very few people who believe this, and teachers don't seem any more likely to me to hold these views.
"notion that some students are smarter than others and that these discrepencies have consistent ethnic patterns fills them with a lot of rage due to their politics/religion."
Well, I do feel somewhat enraged reading these types of statements because it is wrong and harmful. I also say this as someone without a "blank slate world-view" (I've a background in genetics) and as a teacher.
You're statement is wrong because: 1) Race is a nebulous political construct not consistent over time and space 2) Observed racial differences are context dependent and also not consistent over time and space
You cite "Asians" as outperforming other groups (presumably in school in the West?) as one of your "consistent" ethnic patterns. But on closer inspection it is nothing but artifact of cherry-picking results that fit your hypothesis. Another time and place and you may get totally different results - and only one example is sufficient to prove your "consistent" hypothesis wrong. In fact, you pointed out yourself that performance has changed in the US and various European countries, undercutting your whole point on consistent racial differences! Probably if we go back to the period of European colonialism the difference is even more stark, but that is also cherry picking history... If we go back 3000 years, Europe is a poorly educated backwater relative to Egypt or the Middle East.
Group math educational attainment has far more to do with social context and history than "racial distribution of those students who are good at math". It's why relatively recent Asian immigration from say China for scientific and technical jobs is likely to produce kids who are good at math, but the same out-performance in not seen in say, Hmong refugees from Vietnam.
Also, AFAIK Asian kids don't currently outperform all other ethnic groups in the United States in educational attainment - I believe that honor now goes to Nigerian kids. Does that fit your world-view?
"Taiwan and China are under no such illusions. They are happy to identify smart students and give them challenging topics in order to help them achieve their potential, rather than trying to slow down the best students in order to pretend that everyone has the same talent for math. " Right, because teachers don't try to help students reach their potential and try to slow down great students?! Students can't skip grades, take AP classes or graduate college early?! A teacher giving everyone in the course the same math homework or test is pretending everyone has the same talent for math?!