It was wonderful to have Fred Gluck as our NCWIT blog author last week. Fred is a long-time advocate for technology and diverse thought, working tirelessly in K-12 education in Boulder schools. In an odd twist of fate, just as Fred was writing to us at NCWIT about the issues he raised in his blog piece, I found the old photo above in one of my desk drawers.

What do technical innovation and diversity have to do with one another? Very little, apparently, if you follow the press coverage of our nation's current competitiveness debate. Innovation legislation drafted in the U.S. Congress seems to consider the issue of diversity and innovation a relative non-issue.

But if you listen to the country's leading information technologists, you'll hear something remarkably different, pragmatic, and refreshing.

I spent the last two days at the National Academies in Washington, DC, attending the National Center for Women in IT bi-annual meeting. It was a really interesting meeting, as always.

The Secretary of Education recently announced an initiative on Girls in Math and Science. My first reaction: "Hooray!" My second reaction: "Too bad there's still a need for this."

As we all know, there is.

Though, while women are still significantly under-represented in the technical workforce, the story is quite different in elementary school. In 4th grade fully two-thirds of girls (the same fraction as boys) say they "like" science. What happens to all those girls? The answer, of course, is complicated, but we start to lose them in about 5th grade.