The study suggests that while many girls have exceptional talent in math — the talent to become top math researchers, scientists and engineers — they are rarely identified in the United States. A major reason, according to the study, is that American culture does not highly value talent in math, and so discourages girls — and boys, for that matter — from excelling in the field.
NY Times Story
Although this study focuses on Math skill and gender differences I think it reflects on a slice of the bigger picture. I have long felt that the largest problem with education isn't in our schools at all, but our culture.
The PBS "Education Matters" podcast has been asking prominent educators what they would want to say to the next president. "Two Million Minutes" filmmaker Robert Compton says:
The president needs to use symbols, rhetoric recognition and rewards as a way to start changing that culture and elevating academic achievement.
Listen Here
http://www.ams.org/notices/200810/fea-gallian.pdf
10 comments:
UW news release on this topic.
http://www.news.wisc.edu/15766
Yes, this is an important issue. More posts like this please. Perhaps you can elevate the discussion beyond the small minds of "gotcha" politics and buildings.
How do our math test scores breakout by gender?
If your major concern about our schools is the buildings themselves, and not what happens in the buldings, can you please start your own blog? I am not trying to be snotty. This is a sincere suggestion. I think it's pathetic that we get 23 responses to building issues, and almost none to this issue of girls and math. This is serious stuff.
Now, back to the topic. Peter, can we break our math achievement out by gender? I think this is something we should be looking at.
Girls and Math.
It is a problem and has been a problem for our society for a long time. It is NOT new news. The response by society has been luke warm. I believe there is something deeper than lack of encouragement going on.
Our women's ACT math scores are equivalent to our men's (22.3 vs. 22.6 last year). But overall there is a big difference in the ACT summary scores with the women outscoring the men 23.1 vs. 21.9. What makes this more significant is that it opposite the trend seen in the state averages where men slightly outscore women.
However I don't think that this is will reflect directly on the topic discussed above which isn't about averages. The smaller number of students who should be excelling but aren't will have some impact on test scores but I don't think scores will tell the story.
I guess I wasn't talking about ACT scores. You can mine the MAP testing in a many ways, correct? Couldn't we look, by gender, at the high performing students over time and see if there is a any drop in growth and performance as those students get to high school? Also, what about WKCE scores. Are those broken out by gender? What about enrollment in our AP calc and other high level math at the high school vs. the gender distribution in kids who are in the one and two year advance math when they enter the sixth grade?
Those are good questions for looking at our problems. Its one of the reasons we need to improve our district's data systems which don't make it easy to correlate our assessments with our other data sets.
You know, I have to agree with the last annoymous: Are the systems built at the early years 6 7 8 tapping down the scores for young women AND what built-in bias do we have at MG?
I am thankful we are not Memorial today and tomorrow.
Peace and Love
Why does my daughter, age 10, believe she is not good at math?
Somebody is telling her this and it certainly is not me. And frankly, it begins at this age.
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