Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them

Fundraising flier from Wellesley.

Which pretty much rules out contributions from Wellesley grads who are: a) married to men and/or b) the mothers of boys.

Read the whole thing....

I am violating my brand-new All-Premack-all-the-time Principle to put up this post first thing in the morning instead of second thing:

One Classroom, Two Genders
By JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN

There are two surprises: one in the middle, one at the end.

The middle one was especially fun for me because I'd read the whole first column thinking, "Really?"

The twist in the middle explained my astonishment.

Read the whole thing because.....the last line is fabulous. Especially for readers of ktm, I think.

postscript: I remember writing lots of posts on the subject of "the girl show."

I wonder if any of you remember the time our middle school principal -- Chris was in the 6th grade -- told us: "Everyone knows boys do worse in middle school."

Direct quote.

single-sex schools

Ed was talking this morning with a neighbor who also sent her son to Hogwarts. He's been accepted by a very selective (and terrific) college, and she said he would never have gotten in if he'd stayed in the public schools here. (Per pupil spending: $28,517) 

I'm sure she's right.

Abstract
Despite the voluminous literature on the potentials of single-sex schools, there is no consensus on the effects of single-sex schools because of student selection of school types. We exploit a unique feature of schooling in Seoul—the random assignment of students into single-sex versus coeducational high schools—to assess causal effects of single-sex schools on college entrance exam scores and college attendance. Our validation of the random assignment shows comparable socio- economic backgrounds and prior academic achievement of students attending single-sex schools and coeducational schools, which increases the credibility of our causal estimates of single-sex school effects. The three-level hierarchical model shows that attending all-boys schools or all-girls schools, rather than coeducational schools, is significantly associated with higher average scores on Korean and English test scores. Applying the school district fixed-effects models, we find that single-sex schools produce a higher percentage of graduates who attended four-year colleges and a lower percentage of graduates who attended two-year junior colleges than do coeducational schools. The positive effects of single-sex schools remain substantial, even after we take into account various school-level variables, such as teacher quality, the student-teacher ratio, the proportion of students receiving lunch support, and whether the schools are public or private.

men and women and spatial rotation

Abstract: The largest consistent sex difference in human cognition is found on mental rotation tests, which require participants to compare pictures of three-dimensional objects and decide whether they depict the same object or different objects. Across cultures, males score up to one standard deviation higher than females. We administered two standard rotation tests to 123 participants and found that these higher scores likely do not reflect superiority in the process of mental rotation per se, but rather in other aspects of task performance. Our results show that males decide more accurately when two objects are different, a situation in which women are more likely to claim incorrectly that they are the same, and that individual differences in confidence are responsible for part of the male advantage found on this test, whereas differences in spatial encoding ability are not. These results have implications for evolutionary theories of sex differences in spatial cognition.
Christopher F. Chabris: Selected Publications
Hooven, C.K., Chabris, C.F., Ellison, P.T., Kievit, R.A., & Kosslyn, S.M. (2008). The sex difference on mental rotation tests is not necessarily a difference in mental rotation ability. Submitted for publication. PDF file of manuscript

Years ago, I read an article that said Mozart had written 72 drafts of one composition.^*

That struck me as the difference between a genius and a near-genius: the genius can still hear the wrong note after 71 drafts.

I don't understand the difference between spatial encoding ability and deciding that two objects are different. I assume the article will clear that up.

^* 72 or thereabouts

tipping point, part 2

The Worthwhile Canadian Initiative post about a gender tipping point in occupations reminded me of this passage from a TIME story on college admissions:

Roughly 58% of undergraduates nationally are female, and the girl-boy ratio will probably tip past 60-40 in a few years. The divide is even worse for black males, who are outnumbered on campus by black females 2 to 1.

...[C]colleges are quietly stripping the pastels from brochures and launching Xbox tournaments to try to close the gap in the quality and quantity of boys applying. "It's a gross generalization that slacker boys get in over high-performing girls," says Jennifer Delahunty, dean of admissions at Kenyon College, "but developmentally, girls bring more to the table than boys, and the disparity has gotten greater in recent years."

Of course, admitting this is taboo, as Delahunty learned two years ago. She was in marathon committee meetings, stacking glorious girls on the waiting list while less accomplished boys wiggled through, when she got an e-mail informing her that her own daughter had been wait-listed. The experience inspired her to write a confessional Op-Ed, "To All the Girls I've Rejected," for the New York Times, responses to which lit up her inbox.

[snip]

But when it comes to private-college admissions, the law is murky, the process opaque, the needs of the institution primary. This includes ensuring that the freshman class is not 70-30 female, because that makes the school less attractive to male and female applicants alike. U.S. News & World Report found that the admissions rate of men at the College of William and Mary, for example, was an average of 12 percentage points higher than that of women--because, as the admissions director memorably told the magazine, "even women who enroll ... expect to see men on campus. It's not the College of Mary and Mary; it's the College of William and Mary."

If there is a gender tipping point phenomenon in occupations, should we expect to see the same (or similar) phenomenon in college applications and enrollment?

a good school is good for everyone

The report also included a finding that in every country surveyed, girls read better than boys — a gap that has widened since 2000. Also included was a finding that the best school systems are the most equitable — where students do well regardless of social background.
Western Nations React to Poor Education Results
By D.D. GUTTENPLAN
Published: December 8, 2010

I believe it.

Educated parents with the money to hire tutors can go a ways towards mitigating the effects of bad curricula and teaching.

I've seen that for years in my district.

I'm curious about the reading gap in countries with highly phonetic languages.

factoids

The National Honor Society, for top high school students, says that 64 percent of its members are girls. The Center on Education Policy cites data showing that boys lag girls in reading in every American state.

[snip]

At the very top, boys more than hold their own: 62 percent of kids who earn perfect 2,400 scores on the S.A.T. are boys.


Don’t Write Off Men Just Yet
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: July 21, 2010

'Math Strategies for Women'

from Gruber's Complete SAT Math Workbook:

These are questions that women found significantly more difficult than men did. However, after learning the strategies in this book, women scored just as high as men on these sections.

1. Carol has twice as many books a Beverly has. After Carol gives Beverly 5 books, she still has 10 more books than Beverly has. How many books did Carol originally have?

2. 5_2 x 9 = 5,2_8 (missing digits are different)

3. If s equals 1/2 percent of t, what percent of s is t?

I find this passage kind of charming: a remnant from a more innocent time. And I'm sure he's right. I'm sure these are problems Betty Draper would have struggled with.

Meanwhile, Gruber doesn't seem to have noticed the presence of algebra 2 on the new exam. If Betty's having trouble managing a simple story problem, she's really going to blow a gasket when somebody asks her to solve an inequality involving absolute value.

boys & girls & SAT math

here

I've only skimmed the post, but I don't see a passage where he controls for the higher number of boys dropping out of high school.

I got a book today that has a page dedicated to the specific problems girls have trouble with - pretty funny. (He could be right for all I know. However, I'm having lots of trouble with SAT math but none whatsoever with the problems the author cites.)

I'll post tomorrow.

boys need phonics

There has also been concern about the growing gender divide in achievement, starting in primary schools.

Under the synthetic phonics system, children are taught the sounds that make up words rather than guess at entire words from pictures and story context.

Rhona Johnston, a professor of psychology at Hull University, and Dr Joyce Watson of St Andrews University, studied the results from 300 children originally given training using synthetic phonics when they were five.

The progress of the group at primary schools in Clackmannanshire was compared with 237 children using the more usual analytic phonics approach.

Boys taught using synthetic phonics were able to read words significantly better than girls at the age of seven, with all pupils ahead of the standard for their age.

Boys were 20 months ahead while girls were 14 months more advanced than expected.

At the end of the study, boys' reading comprehension was as good as that of the girls, but their word reading and spelling was better.

[snip]

"Teachers told us they had fewer disciplinary problems and less trouble in the playground because boys were succeeding and had higher self esteem."

Professor Johnston's work has been influential in persuading the Government to re-write its national literacy hour - returning to a system that dates back to Victorian times.

Synthetic phonics fell out of favour in the 1960s and 1970s in favour of progressive 'child-centred' learning that was championed for decades by educationalists in the Labour movement.

Boys do better than girls when taught under traditional reading methods
London Evening Standard
21.03.07

and see: Bonnie Macmillan explains why boys need synthetic phonics more than girls do.

The girl show

factoids:

The National Honor Society says that 64 percent of its members — outstanding high school students — are girls.

[I]n elementary schools, about 79 percent of girls could read at a level deemed “proficient,” compared with 72 percent of boys. Similar gaps were found in middle school and high school.

The average high school grade point average is 3.09 for girls and 2.86 for boys. Boys are almost twice as likely as girls to repeat a grade.

Boys are twice as likely to get suspended as girls, and three times as likely to be expelled. Estimates of dropouts vary, but it seems that about one-quarter more boys drop out than girls.

Among whites, women earn 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees and 62 percent of master’s degrees. Among blacks, the figures are 66 percent and 72 percent.

In federal writing tests, 32 percent of girls are considered “proficient” or better. For boys, the figure is 16 percent.

and:

There is one important exception: Boys still beat out girls at the very top of the curve, especially in math.

In the high school class of 2009, a total of 297 students scored a perfect triple-800 on the S.A.T., 62 percent of them boys, according to Kathleen Steinberg of the College Board. And of the 10,052 who scored an 800 in the math section, 69 percent were boys.

The Boys Have Fallen Behind
by Nicholas Kristof

The public schools have been completely and totally feminized. Period. There are virtually no guys left inside them and there is virtually no guyness in the air. Suffocating.

I speak as the parent of a high school boy who is happy as a clam attending a BOYS school.

see, e.g.:

Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons from an Educational System That's Leaving Them Behind
by Richard Whitmire

The Why Chromosome by Thomas S. Dee (boys need men teachers)

boys need phonics more than girls

Progressive Ed's War on Boys by Janet Daley

Lynn G on children in groups

I can say from anecdotal experience that putting kids in groups tends to reinforce the group issues they already had, even cement their anti-social tendencies rather than correct them.

For example, I was in my 4th grader's classroom awhile back when the kids were assigned to groups of four kids to work on a writing project. It was a pretty good idea and the kids came up with some very interesting ideas. BUT, the groups didn't seem to enhance the work product -- nothing came out of it that they wouldn't have been able to do individually. And, the kids with the most trouble academically sat on the edges, didn't contribute or were rebuffed by their more able peers. For them, it was a complete waste of time. For the "good" girls, they had a great time sitting with their friends, putting down the boys in their group, and doing their best to come up with something the teacher would like.

But with the kids divided into 5 or 6 groups, the teacher could not be everywhere. She was needed full-time in at least 3 of the groups, and her dropping in for a few minutes on each group was too little too late. One kid in my daughter's group is in dire need of social skills. He spent the entire time spinning circles on his butt, standing up and asking to go to the bathroom or wandering off to the windows, or telling the other groups members that this was "stupid" or complaining that no one listened to him. When the teacher hovered, he acted out less, but at no point did he contribute.

I think about that and wonder, how is the 21st CS movement helping him? When the theory hits the road, how do they really expect kids to learn anything useful? How are they going to get the kids that need the social and collaborative skill to gain them just by assigning them to a groups of social adept kids?

Speaking as a parent whose son is attending a boys' school, I read accounts like this one and shudder.

Public school officials need to ask themselves whether group work is hurting some (or many) kids more than helping.


report

In reading, girls outperformed boys in 2008 at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Higher percentages of girls than boys scored at or above the proficient level on state reading tests at grade 4, grade 8, and high school; in some states, these gaps exceeded 10 percentage points.

Are There Differences in Achievement Between Boys and Girls?
Center on Education Policy
March 2010

speaking of boys

Nine-year-old girls score 7 points higher than boys of the same age in reading, according to long-term trend data for NAEP. For 13-year-olds, the gender gap is 8 points. For 17-year-olds, the gender gap is even wider, 11 points, and has remained about the same since 1971, when the test was first given. In 1971, 17-year-old girls scored 12 points higher than boys that age in reading on NAEP.

University officials attest to those deficiencies sticking to many young men as they age. “Overall, our female students coming in [to the university] are better readers [than male students]," Tracy Fitzsimmons, the president of the university, told conference attendees. “They are better writers.”

Authors Share Tips on Getting Boys to Read
By Mary Ann Zehr
Education Week | July 2, 2009

Judith Kleinfeld says there isn't a literacy gap in home-schooled children.

stop the madness, part 2

I often have the feeling that public schools are no place for boys.

today's factoid

from Richard Whitmire, who has a new blog on boys & education:

Among white male high school seniors with at least one parent who graduated from college, one in four score below basic in reading. That stat borders on breathtaking.

why boys fail

Richard Whitmire has a blog!

The Boys Project

comments on "Knowledge School"

original post: what do parents want?

from Paul B.:

All of these isolated success stories seem to have a common thread. Kids go at different (appropriate) speeds. Kids have clear goals. Kids are measured against those goals. The teaching is directed. The focus is restricted to academic excellence not extracurricular social reengineering.

Makes me go hmmmmmm?

Note the technology creeping into this Swedish example. I'd bet that Kunskapsporten is a DI engine. I'd bet that kids are being taught in their 'zone'. Betcha' can make money at this on the $153K per teacher being spent in the U.S. of A.

from Allison:

It does definitely sound like Paul's model for technology that adjusts to rates, and it definitely sounds like they have some actual instruction behind it. I wish we could see the courses, to know what the instruction consists of, and what the assessment looks like. Anyone know anyone in Sweden?

le radical galoisien:

This looks promising -- but of course I want to know how these students compare with other students who aren't in the voucher programme.

former KS student:

Kunskapsskolan has a demo on its Swedish website, where you can at least get a feel for what the portal looks like:

As for results, statistics from 2007 show that Kunskapsskolan performs significantly better than the national average in English and Swedish. 2008 figures are expected to show a similar advantage in Maths as well.

Thank you, former KS student! (tell us more, if you have time)


Ben Calvin:

I assume something's been lost in translation with the "better to do things the same way than to do them well" line ?

I don't think so. It's a pretty common statement when talking about standardizing anything. If you do something the same way, you know how it's being done. There may be a better way, but it needs to be implemented across the board, and not just one person (or teacher) doing something different than what the system assumes.

I went to the Sports Orientation Night at C's new school last week.

wow

We are entering a different world. It's as if we're shipping C. off to Hogwarts. The new school feels magical, and I call myself blessed that my Muggle child will be allowed to attend.

I bring this up here because of Paul's comment about social re-engineering.

At the moment, I suspect that great schools often do have an element of "social engineering," or something akin to it, but I don't know how to describe what they do.

The Sports Orientation Night was all about character & culture. You ktm-ers will love this: "We play to win." That is a Major School Value. "We play to win, but academics come first." I must have heard that about 10 times over the course of 45 minutes.

I suspect that really good schools have a mission.

A new friend of mine, here in town, sent an email a while back saying that the more closely involved with religion a school is, the better that school will be. What he meant wasn't that good schools are churches. He meant that schools run by churches are better than schools not run by churches.

I had never heard that before. Never heard it; never thought it, although I did know something about the research on urban Catholic schools.

Nevertheless, his observation made immediate sense.

Why?

Because a school run by a church is likely to have a mission.

John (Ratey) used to talk about that all the time. Kids need a mission, he said. Parents, too. Everybody needs a mission.

Well, parochial schools have a mission. By definition. So do KIPP schools. So do many of the new urban charter schools. With public schools, it's harder. There are so many constraints on a public school, so many competing interests. I think a public school can have a mission - from afar, I would say that the schools Karen H's kids have attended have a mission. (The Race Between Technology and Education explains why, btw.)

And, of course, within any public school you always find teachers who have a mission.

But a teacher with a personal mission is different from an institution with a mission.

The school mission seems always to involve character and culture, but that's about as far as I've gotten with this line of thought.


Steve Levitt summarizes The Race in 2 sentences
Jimmy graduates

The anemic response of skill investment to skill premium growth
The declining American high school graduation rate: Evidence, sources, and consequences
Pushy parents raise more successful kids

The Race Between Education and Technology book review
The Race Between Ed & Tech: excerpt & TOC & SAT scores & public loss of confidence in the schools
The Race Between Ed & Tech: the Great Compression
the Great Compression, part 2
ED in '08: America's schools
comments on Knowledge Schools
the future
the stick kids from mud island
educated workers and technology diffusion
declining value of college degree
Goldin, Katz and fans
best article thus far: Chronicle of Higher Education on The Race
Tyler Cowan on The Race (NY Times)
happiness inequality down...
an example of lagging technology diffusion in the U.S.
the Times reviews The Race, finally
IQ, college, and 2008 election
Bloomington High School & "path dependency"
the election debate that should have been

"The Puzzzle of Gender Differences"

Abstract

This paper explores differences between men and women in educational outcomes and responsiveness to educational interventions. Male education levels have stagnated for decades, while female education levels have risen steadily. Women now outnumber men in college, with especially large sex differentials among Blacks and Hispanics. Existing evidence shows that females respond more strongly to intensive preschool interventions and incentives to perform in college; I provide new evidence that females are also more sensitive to college costs. To shed light on this pattern of results, I trace the development of gender differences in educational attainment from primary school through college. I show that boys now start school at a later age than girls and are more likely to be retained in grade. In a historical reversal, boys are less likely than girls to be enrolled in school at age 16. Fewer men than women men now graduate high school; among those who do graduate, men are more likely than women to hold a General Equivalency Diploma (GED). About a fifth of today's gender gap in college attainment is explained by sex differences in the probability of graduating with a high school diploma or a GED. Controlling for these factors halves the gender gap in college attainment for cohorts entering high school in the 1980s. Among those born in the early Eighties, racial and ethnic differences in the gender gap in college entry are completely explained by differential rates of high school graduation and GED receipt.

excerpts:

I provide new evidence on sex differences in the impact of tuition prices on college choice, entry and completion. The new evidence presented in this paper suggests that lowering college costs will not close the gender gap in college attainment. A drastic reduction in the cost of college substantially increases the college enrollment and completion rates of women, but has no impact upon men. The divergence in impacts by sex is especially stark among nonwhites, among whom gender gap in educational attainment is largest. I conclude that policies that make college less expensive will increase education levels, but widen the gender gap, since more women are on the margin of entering and completing college.

[snip]

My findings complement existing evidence that girls are increasingly better prepared than boys to enter college (Goldin, Katz and Kuziemko, 2006). I show that boys now enter elementary school at a later age than girls and are more likely to be retained in grade; both of these differences have increased over time. Over the lifecycle, sex differences in academic performance cumulate; boys fall further behind girls as they age. Among cohorts entering high school in the Seventies, 25 percent of boys were below their expected grade by age 12, compared to 17 percent for girls. Among those in high school during the Nineties the rates were a stunning 36 percent for boys and 24 percent for girls.

[snip]

Several facts are clear ... First, age at school entry is rising. The share of six-year-olds enrolled in first grade or above drops sharply between the 1962 and 1998 birth cohorts. The drop is sharper for boys, from 95 percent for the 1962 cohort to 80 percent for the 1998 cohort. Among girls, the drop is from 96 percent to 84 percent. Boys are getting a later start in elementary school, relative to girls, than they once did. The gap is especially large for cohorts born in the early Eighties, when kindergarten retention was a popular policy.

Second, boys fall further behind girls as they age. In the 1962 birth cohort, 25 percent of boys born were enrolled below their expected grade at age 12, compared to 17 percent for girls. The gender gap in retention peaked among the cohorts born in the mid-Eighties: 36 percent of 12-year-old boys and 24 percent of girls were behind grade. For the most recent cohorts, 32 percent of 12-year-old boys and 25 percent of girls are below grade. These statistics imply that, starting early in school, boys are older than their female classmates, and that this difference is growing. These substantial shifts in the relative age composition of boys and girls in elementary and middle school grades are as yet unexamined by economists. A growing age gap between girls and boys could alter classroom dynamics in unexpected ways, as well as alter social relationships between boys and girls.

A further implication is that boys now reach the minimum age of school-leaving at a lower level of educational attainment than girls. To the extent that compulsory-schooling laws bind, boys will drop out of school at a lower level of educational attainment than girls. Even if boys were to drop out of school at the same age as girls, they would do so with lower levels of completed schooling. However, boys now leave school at a younger age than girls, a reversal of the historical pattern.

[snip]

[T]he enrollment rate is identical and equal to one for girls and boys in primary school and middle school. After age 15, in all three cohorts, the two sexes begin to diverge in their enrollment rates. But where girls once fell behind boys in their school enrollment starting at age 16 (Figure 6, gray line for 1962-63 birth cohorts), girls now they pull ahead of boys at the same age (dashed line for 1982-83 birth cohorts). The differences intensify with age. At age 21, boys from the cohort born in the Sixties were 4.2 percentage points more likely than girls to be enrolled in school. Boys from the cohort born in the Eighties are 4.7 percentage points less likely than girls to be enrolled in school.

Cradle to College: The Puzzle of Gender Differences in Educational Outcome (pdf file)
Susan Dynarski
Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government & National Bureau of Economic Research
May 2007

My findings complement existing evidence that girls are increasingly better prepared than boys to enter college (Goldin, Katz and Kuziemko, 2006).


teachers and schools...

Skimming the surface of this article, I was wondering whether sex differences in educational attainment might be the one phenomenon schools & pundits decide not to blame on parents, seeing as how we're talking about two populations of students -- boys and girls -- but just one population of parents.

Then I came to this passage:

Where in the lifecycle does the gender gap in schooling emerge?

Tracing the arc of educational production through the lifecycle provides suggestive evidence on the degree to which gender gaps in education among young adults are a function of biological differences, the choices of parents, the actions of schools and their own choices.

The answer will help us to rule out some existing hypotheses about its sources, and perhaps generate some new ones. If the gender gap first appears during high school, then we would focus on boys and girls as the decision-makers weighing the costs and benefits of educational investments. By contrast, if the gender gap first appears in first grade, we would tend to discount theoretical explanations that treat boys and girls as the decision-makers. We would instead focus on the actions of parents, teachers and schools.3 Changes in teaching methods, the composition of the teaching force, and the organization of schools would all be plausible culprits.

Existing research suggests that teachers and schools do play a role in generating sex differences in educational outcomes. Dee shows that girls and boys both learn more when being taught by a teacher of the same sex. Anderson (2006), in a reanalysis of data from the Perry Preschool, Abcederian and Early Training Projects, shows that the effects of these programs were large for girls and nonexistent for boys. Malamud and Schanzenbach (2007) show that female teachers rate the performance of boys more harshly than that of girls.

I must say, the puzzle of gender differences in educational attainment is not much of a puzzle to me. Getting a boy through public school in one piece -- especially a middle school --- isn't easy.

Public schools are utterly feminized. It's not just that women make up the majority of the teaching staff and, in my district, nearly all of the administration. The ideology of public schools is "feminine" regardless of the sex of whichever educator happens to be taking your son to task for poor character or inadequate school spirit at any given moment.

The language is feminine.

I recall a time when the only people using the word "enhance" were the folks writing up the bride's wedding gown for the women's pages.

Seed pearls. Weren't seed pearls always a big enhancement?

Not any more.


grade deflation for boys?

Harris School Assistant Professors Ofer Malamud and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, for example, wondered whether their (very preliminary) finding that teachers rate boys more harshly in reading and science than suggested by standardized tests may perhaps explain boys’ detachment from school early on.

Mind the Gap: Gender and Schools

I hadn't intended to get into this yet, but..... bingo.

This is exactly what's been happening around here: grades in school much lower than standardized test scores, a gap not explained by emotional or behavioral problems.

That is to say, C. does all of his homework (the bulk of it on time), is reasonably engaged in school, likes his teachers, likes his friends, wants to do well, has a record of 2 detentions in 3 years (one for an unauthorized lunchtime trip to the library where he attempted to print out his Earth Science homework before the librarian had him arrested and clapped in irons) ... and yet his grades are so-so while his standardized test scores are high. Extremely high in the case of reading.

I've mentioned the fact that, come fall, C. will attend a different school.

The new school is selective; they take no one scoring below the 75th percentile on the entrance exam. Thus, a few weeks ago, we were stunned to receive a letter from the new school informing us that C. had placed into "Advanced Honors Algebra 2."

When I say "stunned," I mean really, really stunned. Stunned as in speechless.

Here in Irvington, C. has had the computer-generated comment "Finds subject matter difficult" printed on his math report card, and that's pretty much been the message we've been given about C's capabilities any time we've raised any issue in any class.^*

During our course placement meeting at the high school, the guidance counselor told C. repeatedly that, "Math is a challenge for you." She said Math is a challenge for you so many times that I finally said, "Math isn't a challenge for C. when I teach it," which should give you some idea of how many times the words Math is a challenge for you were uttered: enough times that I actually said "Not when I teach it" out loud, instead of just wanting to say it and wishing later on that I had.

C. was not placed in Honors math for high school here. Next year he would have taken regular geometry along with the rest of the sophomore class. He would have been accelerated by a year because he's completed Math A, but he'd be back in the regular math track with all the kids who have been finding regular math to be -- wait for it! -- a challenge (as well as with the regular-track kids who haven't found regular math to be a challenge, of course).

The funny thing about the "Advanced Honors Algebra 2" placement was that math was the only Honors course C. got into at his new school. No Honors bio, no Honors English, no Honors social studies, even.

Naturally, we were downcast. It just didn't seem right that C. could suddenly be an Honors math kid and not be an Honors history kid. So we were back to brainstorming the edu-situation, trying to figure out what had happened, speculating about the best approach to take to change their minds, etc. Very discouraging. The one thing in life we do not want to be doing ever again is wrangling with our kid's school about anything.

Ed called the school & spoke to the assistant principal, who said she'd get back to him.

When she called a few days later, I answered the phone and the AP said the computer had made a mistake. C. was in Honors everything. English, bio, math, history.

I'm so trained to the idea that school is a challenge for my kid that I panicked -- Honors everything?? We hadn't remotely been thinking about Honors everything. We'd been going back and forth between asking the school to put C. in Honors history, too, versus asking them to swap Honors math for Honors history so he'd still have one Honors course but it would be in his best subject.

I started stuttering and stammering, and finally said, "Honors Bio? Can he handle Honors Bio?"

"He'll do fine," the AP said. Her tone was short; she was ending the conversation. Clearly, she had no idea what I was talking about. The way things work for incoming freshmen at the new school is: the kids take an admissions test and a placement test, the computer assigns them to Honors or regular track courses, and the school sends a letter to the parents inviting their child to take whichever Honors courses he's tested into.

Then the parents send a letter back saying their child accepts the honors invitation.

And that's it.

A week later Ed spoke to her and asked, "Do you recommend that he take all Honors courses?"

The AP said, "Yes."

That was all. "Yes." The word "yes" sums up the school's entire position on whether a kid who's been placed in an Honors course should take an Honors course.

We're entering a completely different world.

Have I mentioned the fact that the new school is a boys' school?






The Why Chromosome: How a Teacher's Gender Affects Boys and Girls
by Thomas Dee


^* If I get around to it, I'll exercise my FERPA rights to have C's school record corrected. Knowing me, I probably will get around to it.

the good old days

The Public Schools 1957 and 2007

Scenario : Jack goes quail hunting before school, pulls into school parking lot with shotgun in gun rack.
1957 - Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack's shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack.
2007 - School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.

A French sociologist of education spoke at the Institute of French Studies saying the same thing has happened in France. I wish I could remember the details. As I recall, the sociologist said that the kinds of things parents handled back in the day - things like fights, bloody noses, and black eyes - were now, in France, resulting in the police being called to the school.

His point was that the sight of policemen entering a public school is extremely damaging. The very fact of their presence undermines the authority of teacher, principal, and parent; it conveys the message: this behavior is so bad no teacher, principal, or parent can possibly cope.

More fights and more trouble ensue.^*

Of course, all of this is he** on boys.

Although I have a theory it's no good for girls, either.


^* I think that was part of the argument. I can't fact-check this post, so take it with a grain of salt.

meanwhile back on planet earth

I have concluded, belatedly, that pundits and policy wonks Have. No. Idea.

Last year females attained 58% of 4year college degrees and males 42% - the ratios for african american and latino females are more than 2 to 1.The causes are unknown and under researched. We have indicators but scant hard evidence. One symptom was released thursday by the National Assessment - NAEP. 41% of the eigth grade girls compared to 20 % of the boys were proficient in writing! Can this be explained by patterns of instructional interactions between teachers and boys? I doubt it.

The College Puzzle

And that's that. He doubts it. It's a big mystery!

Couldn't this expert maybe have Googled the whole issue before deciding school couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that boys aren't learning in school?

Speaking as a person who has actually had boys in school for lo these many years, I have no problem imagining that patterns of instructional interactions between teachers and boys might be just the tiniest bit non-optimal for boys. Especially seeing as how homeschooled boys seem to be doing just fine.


why we're not going to be getting more guys teaching school any time soon

In this paper, we compare subjective principal assessments of teachers to the traditional determinants of teacher compensation – education and experience – and another potential compensation mechanism -- value-added measures of teacher effectiveness based on student achievement gains. We find that subjective principal assessments of teachers predict future student achievement significantly better than teacher experience, education or actual compensation, though not as well as value-added teacher quality measures. In particular, principals appear quite good at identifying those teachers who produce the largest and smallest standardized achievement gains in their schools, but have far less ability to distinguish between teachers in the middle of this distribution and systematically discriminate against male and untenured faculty.

Principals as Agents: Subjective Performance Measurement in Education

Bummer.


sauce for the goose
Happy Father's Day
questions & answers for Niki Hayes