Dads have a major impact on daughters & math

It figures: Dads have a major impact on the degree of interest their daughters develop in math. That's one of the findings of a long-term University of Michigan study that has traced the sources of the continuing gender gap in math and science performance.

"We've known for a while now that females do as well as males on tests that measure ability in math and science," said Pamela Davis-Kean, a psychologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). "But women are still underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math graduate programs and in careers based on those disciplines."

It's as if women are saying, "I can, but I don't want to," according to Davis-Kean.

In a study she presented recently at a campus meeting, Davis-Kean and colleagues analyzed how parents' values and attitudes affect children's math performance and later interest, and how these attitudes vary by the child's gender. They used data from a longitudinal study of more than 800 children and a large group of their parents that began in 1987 and continued through 2000.

They found that parents provided more math-supportive environments for their sons than for their daughters, including buying more math and science toys for the boys. They also spent more time on math and science activities with their sons than with their daughters.

Davis-Kean and colleagues, including the late Janis Jacobs of Pennsylvania State University, Martha Bleeker of Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., and U-M psychologists Jacquelynne Eccles and Oksana Malanchuk, also found that parents' attitudes, particularly stereotypes they hold about whether math and science are more important for boys than for girls, have a significant effect on their children's later math achievement, and even on their eventual career choices.

Their research was funded by a National Science Foundation grant on Women, Minorities and Information Technology.

They found that girls' interest in math decreases as their fathers' gender stereotypes increase, whereas boys' interest in math increases as their fathers' gender stereotypes increase.

"Fathers' gender stereotypes are very important in supporting—or in undermining—daughters' choices to pursue training in math and science," Davis-Kean said.

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CEA Review

The Connecticut Education Association has published a new review by an eminent testing expert that casts doubt on the conclusions reached in a recent report by ConnCAN.

The lead author of the CEA-sponsored review is Dr. Peter Behuniak, an education researcher and former director of the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) program. The ConnCAN report uses CMT data in reaching conclusions.

"There is insufficient evidence presented to support the observations in the report (The State of Connecticut Public Education: A 2006 Report Card for Elementary and Middle Schools by ConnCAN released last fall) that state or imply superiority of one school type (i.e. magnet, charter or traditional) over the others (neighborhood and other traditional public schools)," writes Dr. Behuniak in the report that we are sharing today. His review of the ConnCAN report includes a reanalysis of student achievement and related data cited in the ConnCAN report.

The results of the new review indicate that the achievement levels, improvement and performance gains displayed by magnet and charter schools are “approximately as varied” as those displayed by traditional schools. The review also identifies a number of other issues that readers of the ConnCAN report would be well advised to consider. Some of the more important include:
The presentation of and conclusions regarding top 10 lists of achievement gaps dealing with low income, African American, and Hispanic students are not justified due to the unavailability of data for between 60% and 77% of the schools.
The meaningful interpretation of the top 10 lists associated with performance gains and year to year improvement is significantly impaired due to the issues of student mobility, small differences in achievement among schools and districts, initial achievement status, and variation in school size.
The usefulness of the grading scales employed in the report are limited due to unevenness of the grade bands, arbitrariness in their development, and the absence of any explanation or discussion of these attributes.
"As this review demonstrates, summaries of student performance can be grouped, presented and characterized in many ways. If one only looks at a part of the picture or looks only from one perspective, it is quite possible to form conclusions that are not actually supported by the available evidence. Conducting sound educational research often requires the examination of evidence from multiple perspectives in order to support meaningful interpretations," writes Dr. Behuniak.

Read the Review of the ConnCAN research report/charter schools
http://www.cea.org/upload/Review_of_ConnCAN_Research_Report.pdf

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