In his State of the Union address, President Obama declared that we’re going to solve our energy problems by “out-innovating” the rest of the world. But there’s a key question we’ve got to figure out:  who’s going to be doing all this innovating?

The President made it clear what he thought the answer should be, namely a new generation of American scientists and engineers. But the day after his speech, new test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the so-called “nation’s report card”, showed how far we’ve got to go. Only 21 percent of American high school seniors are rated “proficient” at science.

That’s bad for the country’s ability to find energy solutions, and