Teacher anxieties may subtract from girls’ math scores
sciencenews.org
sciencenews.org
Regular assistance from math coaches might diminish math anxiety among elementary school teachers, she suggests.
Spiffy, we can spend more money on professional development (and pay union members to offer it, and pay union members to attend it) so that people with graduate degrees can bone up on their second grade math.
Why can't our girls learn math? Because they are modeled that girls aren't good at math.
Why are they modeled that girls aren't good at math? Because their teachers have "math anxiety". Here endeth all politically correct investigation of this topic, continue at thy own peril.
Why do their teachers have math anxiety? Because their teachers are incompetent at elementary mathematical skills. See the article referenced by tokenadult, replete with examples of things like a K-6 faculty without a single person who could calculate the area of a rectangle.
Why are their teachers incompetent at math? Because the schools hire and retain people who are incompetent at math.
Why do the schools hire people who are incompetent at math? Because the schools have no hiring process which would weed out people are incompetent at math from the hiring pool, such as a simple test of second grade math.
Whj do the schools have no simple tests of second grade math? TRICK QUESTION! Schools do have simple tests of second grade math. They are just prevented from actually administering them or using them to make hiring decisions, by union pressure.
http://www.nea.org/home/18018.htm
Quote: Five Reasons to Oppose the 'Highly Qualified Effective Teacher' Mandate: ... It measures teacher performance mainly through use the use of standardized test scores... It contains harsh penalties that limit employment options for teachers... This proposal will likely exacerbate the teacher shortage problems we already face in [subjects like math].
Why can't our girls learn math? Because they are surrounded by a society where math is frightening black magic, a society which largely looks down upon anyone who is good at math, and particularly so those who specialize in it. This is emphasized for girls; the linked article provided evidence that their math abilities declined in proportion to the amount in which their teacher reflected those societal pressures.
Why do their teachers have math anxiety? See above.
Why are their teachers incompetent at math? See above. Also, their teachers were incompetent at math. (See the exact same referenced article.)
Why do schools hire teachers incompetent at math? Most of all, because math is not valued. But also: Because there aren't enough teachers available to only hire perfect ones. Because the ways of measuring "good at math" are quite brittle, let alone measurements for "good at teaching math."
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In other words, you have your axe to grind (unions) and I have mine (a thoroughly anti-intellectual culture); personally I find mine rather more convincing. Neither was really directly brought up by the article.
[Also, my axe doesn't conveniently align with over-repeated, loudly shouted political talking points, which is nice. ;) ]
It's also hard to believe that the modern age, an age where being a "geek" carries an enormously reduced stigma than at any time in the past 4 decades (if not longer) is somehow paradoxically significantly more anti-intellectual than any other time in that range.
In short, I find your arguments unconvincing as the explanation for the primary reasons why modern education in America is exceptionally poor compared to recent history. However, the idea that teacher quality has degraded significantly due to decreasing teaching standards and accountability seems to fit all of the observed evidence better.
> modern education in America is exceptionally poor compared to recent history
This is an assumption that you and the grandparent both hold very dearly. But is it even true? Nobody ever provides anything but anecdotal evidence for this claim.
A 'debunk' site: http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=6&n=1
Historical literacy rates in the US: http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp
If our education is so poor compared to recent history, why hasn't literacy fallen?
Indeed, I think moving the discussion one or two levels deeper is worthwhile. As in software development, there is almost always a tendency to discuss defects at a superficial level, often resulting in superficial fixes which mask symptoms instead of fix the underlying root causes. In this case the urge to paper over cracks in an increasingly fundamentally broken system is a mistake, better to find out what's at the root and fix the problems there.
By the way the study did not correlate for teachers math ability but for their math anxiety. I.e. they were presumably able to master the material they just felt anxious dealing with numbers and the students were able to subconsciously pick up on that.
And in general you are not likely to get any math wizzes as elementary school teachers. These are usually people that do their jobs because they like kids. Analytical people whether male or female are not usually the kind of people that consider being in a roomful of 30 children all day their dream career.
Right now I focus on blogging / writing / giving tools to teachers, but I think moving away from unions is a step in the right direction. Seniority should not be the sole way you advance in that profession.
It's not. Pursuing a masters or a doctorate at some point in your career is probably the best way to advance. Here, for example, is the salary schedule for a school district in silicon valley: http://www.mvla.net/Personnel/salaryschedules/Pages/Certific...
I'm not sure what the researchers were really hoping to accomplish here, honestly. Without looking at male teachers as well, both good and bad, there's absolutely no way to tell whether any of this "effect" (if you can even call it that, given the miniscule sample size and admittedly "small but statistically significant" (i.e. quite possibly bullshit) effect) is at all related to the gender of the teacher.
This is exactly the type of study that makes me weep at the mere existence of some of these soft sciences - even if it was right, all it tells us is that we need better teachers, as if we didn't already know that. What an utter waste of time and money...