Girls Like Biology, Boys Like Physics?

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Complete report

We all have our stereotypes about which subjects appeal more to girls or boys. Well, in perusing a new report on the Advanced Placement program, Erik Robelen was intrigued to discover some hard data to help shed light on the matter. In addition to reporting participation on AP exams by racial and ethnic groups, the College Board includes the gender breakdown for all subjects tested...

What girls like:
• Art history: 66 percent female
• Biology: 59 percent female
• English literature and composition: 63 percent female
• French language and culture: 69 percent female
• Psychology: 63 percent female
• Spanish Language: 63 percent female
• Studio Art: Drawing Portfolio: 74 percent female

What boys like:
• Calculus BC, 59 percent male
• Computer Science A: 80 percent male
• Computer Science AB: 86 percent male
• Music Theory: 58 percent male
• Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism: 77 percent male
• Physics C: Mechanics: 74 percent male

Among the AP subjects in which gender differences seemed marginal were 'Calculus AB,' Chemistry, European History, 'Latin:Vergil,' Statistics, and U.S. Government and Politics.

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The Battle Over Common Core Math Standards: Will A Larger Federal Role Help or Hinder Curriculum Improvement?

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Standards raise the bar in many, but not all, states, and still do not reach the highest international level

More than 40 states have now agreed to adopt the Common Core standards in English Language Arts and math. In a forum released today by Education Next, former U.S. Department of Education official Ze’ev Wurman and Johns Hopkins University professor of mathematics W. Stephen Wilson offer differing opinions about the standards. Wurman and Wilson address key issues raised – including 1) how much the standards will improve on those currently in place in various states, 2) whether they will resolve deep disagreements over what skills constitute sound math education, and 3) whether they might have the unintended consequence of removing incentives for further improvement.

Both Wurman and Wilson acknowledge the urgent need for improvement in math curricula if the U.S. is to become more competitive internationally. Wilson notes the dramatic withdrawal from arithmetic in the elementary grades that has occurred over the past two to three decades, reflecting the mistaken but increasingly popular view that learning whole number operations (such as the multiplication tables) to the point of instant recall is bad for a student, not necessary to higher math, and impedes students’ ability to understand mathematical principles.

While arithmetic is “the foundation,” Wilson states, and “has to be done right,” at present “fewer than 15 states are explicit about the need for students to know the single-digit number facts…to the point of instant recall.” Only seven states expect students to know explicitly the standard algorithm for whole number multiplication, and “often states expect students to develop their own strategies or a variety of strategies for dealing with fractions.”

Both experts recognize that there are clearer and more rigorous sets of standards than Common Core in place in several states, among them California, Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, and Washington. Nonetheless, Wilson views Common Core math as a vast improvement over existing standards in more than 30 states, doing “a pretty good job with arithmetic,” and ranking in terms of quality in the top 20 percent of current state standards.

Wurman finds many gaps in the Common Core standards and sequencing problems that will impede college readiness. The standards do not expect Algebra I to be taught in grade 8, “reversing the most significant change in mathematics education in America in the last decade,” and contrary to the practice of the highest-achieving nations.

The authors address whether the new system of federal involvement that Common Core establishes is the most effective route to world-class math education. Wurman notes that Common Core might have the unintended effect of removing incentives for states to continually improve. Within the existing American system where each state sets its own standards, states that aspire to raise the bar are likely to do so, accounting for the level of excellence that some have reached. Common Core will, he fears, make math standards an apparently settled matter, leading to a drift toward easier standards over time.

The Common Core math standards might also lose strength in their implementation through the sheer force of popular pedagogical trends. In other countries, notes Wilson, the statement, “learn to multiply whole numbers,” has an agreed-upon meaning and it is understood that students should learn the standard algorithm. In the U.S., “some people will declare wriggle room and try to avoid the standard algorithm.” He states, “Without a unified, concerted effort to teach real mathematics, there isn’t much chance of catching up” to the highest-achieving countries, even if states say they’ll adopt Common Core.

Wurman observes that the Common Core math standards are grade-by-grade specific and hence more detailed than the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) 2000 standards, which replaced the organization’s “unfocused and mostly math-less” 1989 standards, but without significantly strengthening them. However, he notes that the Common Core standards do resemble those of NCTM “in setting their sights lower than our international competitors.”

About the Authors

Ze’ev Wurman was a U.S. Department of Education official under George W. Bush, is currently an executive with MonolithIC 3D Inc., and is coauthor with Sandra Stotsky of “Common Core’s Standards Still Don’t Make the Grade” (Pioneer Institute, 2010).

W. Stephen Wilson is professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, served on the National Governors Association-Council of Chief State School Officers “feedback group” for the Common Core standards, and was mathematics author of Stars by which to Navigate? Scanning National and International Education Standards in 2009: An Interim Report on Common Core, NAEP, TIMSS, and PISA.

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13 Questions About Education Reform By Diane Ravitch

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Do politicians know anything at all about schools and education? Anything?


as first posted here: Nieman Watchdog

(Some links added)

By Diane Ravitch

gardendr@gmail.com

1.     Both Republican candidates and President Obama are enamored of charter schools—that is, schools that are privately managed and deregulated. Are you aware that studies consistently show that charter schools don’t get better results than regular public schools? Are you aware that studies show that, like any deregulated sector, some charter schools get high test scores, many more get low scores, but most are no different from regular public schools? Do you recognize the danger in handing public schools and public monies over to private entities with weak oversight? Didn’t we learn some lessons from the stock collapse of 2008 about the risk of deregulation?

 

2.    Both Republican candidates and President Obama are enamored of merit pay for teachers based on test scores. Are you aware that merit pay has been tried in the schools again and again since the 1920s and it has never worked? Are you aware of the exhaustive study of merit pay in the Nashville schools, conducted by the National Center for Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt, which found that a bonus of $15,000 per teacher for higher test scores made no difference? 

 

3.     Are you aware that Milwaukee has had vouchers for low-income students since 1990, and now state scores in Wisconsin show that low-income students in voucher schools get no better test scores than low-income students in the Milwaukee public schools? Are you aware that the federal test (the National Assessment of Educational Progress) shows that—after 21 years of vouchers in Milwaukee—black students in the Milwaukee public schools score on par with black students in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana?

 

4.     Does it concern you that cyber charters and virtual academies make millions for their sponsors yet get terrible results for their students?

 

5.     Are you concerned that charters will skim off the best-performing students and weaken our nation’s public education system?

 

6.     Are you aware that there is a large body of research by testing experts warning that it is wrong to judge teacher quality by student test scores? Are you aware that these measures are considered inaccurate and unstable, that a teacher may be labeled effective one year, then ineffective the next one? Are you aware that these measures may be strongly influenced by the composition of a teacher’s classroom, over which she or he has no control? Do you think there is a long line of excellent teachers waiting to replace those who are (in many cases, wrongly) fired?

 

7.     Although elected officials like to complain about our standing on international tests, did you know that students in the United States have never done well on those tests? Did you know that when the first international test was given in the mid-1960s, the United States came in 12th out of 12? Did you know that over the past half-century, our students have typically scored no better than average and often in the bottom quartile on international tests? Have you ever wondered how our nation developed the world’s most successful economy when we scored so poorly over the decades on those tests? 

 

8.     Did you know that American schools where less than 10% of the students were poor scored above those of Finland, Japan and Korea in the last international assessment? Did you know that American schools where 25% of the students were poor scored the same as the international leaders Finland, Japan and Korea? Did you know that the U.S. is #1 among advanced nations in child poverty? Did you know that more than 20% of our children live in poverty and that this is far greater than in the nations to which we compare ourselves?

 

9.     Did you know that family income is the single most reliable predictor of student test scores? Did you know that every testing program—the SAT, the ACT, the NAEP, state tests and international tests—shows the same tight correlation between family income and test scores? Affluence helps—children in affluent homes have educated parents, more books in the home, more vocabulary spoken around them, better medical care, more access to travel and libraries, more economic security—as compared to students who live in poverty, who are more likely to have poor medical care, poor nutrition, uneducated parents, more instability in their lives. Do you think these things matter?

10. Are you concerned that closing schools in low-income neighborhoods will further weaken fragile communities? 

 

11. Are you worried that annual firings of teachers will cause demoralization and loss of prestige for teachers? Any ideas about who will replace those fired because they taught too many low-scoring students?

 

12.  Why is it that politicians don’t pay attention to research and studies?

13.  Do you know of any high-performing nation in the world that got that way by privatizing public schools, closing those with low test scores, and firing teachers? The answer: none.

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