Thinking and Linking by Joanne Jacobs
Texas students who completed even a single college class in high school were significantly more likely to attend college and eventually graduate, compared to similar students not in dual enrollment programs, reports a Jobs for the Future study.
New York City’s P-Tech is drawing students willing to spend six years in high school to earn a diploma and an associate degree in computer information systems or engineering technology. IBM worked with city colleges to develop the program.
Microsoft engineers are teaching high school computer classes (with the help of regular teachers) to encourage young people to pursue technical careers, reports the New York Times. The company, founded by education philanthropist Bill Gates, has issued a report on educating young people for science, math and technology jobs, A National Talent Strategy.
There are likely to be 150,000 computing jobs opening up each year through 2020, according to an analysis of federal forecasts by the Association for Computing Machinery, a professional society for computing researchers. But despite the hoopla around start-up celebrities like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, fewer than 14,000 American students received undergraduate degrees in computer science last year, the Computing Research Association estimates. And the wider job market remains weak.
“People can’t get jobs, and we have jobs that can’t be filled,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel who oversees its philanthropic efforts, said in a recent interview.
Microsoft pays engineers a small stipend to teach at least two high school classes a week for a full school year.
Google funds a programming summer camp for incoming ninth graders as well as computer science workshops for high school teachers, the Times reports.
Fewer high school students are taking computer science, according to the U.S. Education Department. However, the number of computer science bachelor’s degrees has been rising for four years, after years of decline.
In 2012, a new graduate with a computer science degree started at $58,300, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
“While jobs requiring STEM knowledge and skills are growing at nearly twice the rate of other occupations in the United States, just 13 percent of college students choose a STEM major, according to Investigating the Skills Mismatch on the Top of the Class blog. More than 40 percent of Chinese college graduates and nearly 50 percent in Singapore have STEM degrees, according to an Accenture report. Brazil will pass the U.S. in new engineering PhDs by 2016.
Source: Accenture. (2011).
Only 10 percent of Chinese engineers and 25 percent of Indian engineers are educated to a global standard, compared to 80 percent of U.S. engineers, a 2005 McKinsey report found. However, there are a lot of people in China and India. “Accenture calculates that even if just 20 percent of Chinese STEM graduates are qualified to a world standard, this would represent more than 700,000 graduates by 2015, as compared to just 460,000 in the United States.”
Is Algebra Necessary? asks political scientist Andrew Hacker in the New York Times.
A typical American school day finds some six million high school students and two million college freshmen struggling with algebra. In both high school and college, all too many students are expected to fail. Why do we subject American students to this ordeal? I’ve found myself moving toward the strong view that we shouldn’t.
My question extends beyond algebra and applies more broadly to the usual mathematics sequence, from geometry through calculus.
Inability to do math — specifically algebra — is the major academic reason so many students fail to complete high school, Hacker writes. He proposes “citizen statistics” as an alternative.
. . . it would familiarize students with the kinds of numbers that describe and delineate our personal and public lives.
It could, for example, teach students how the Consumer Price Index is computed, what is included and how each item in the index is weighted — and include discussion about which items should be included and what weights they should be given.
This need not involve dumbing down. Researching the reliability of numbers can be as demanding as geometry. More and more colleges are requiring courses in “quantitative reasoning.” In fact, we should be starting that in kindergarten.
I think it is dumbing down math — so far down that it will close the door on many careers. But it’s better to teach some math than stick unprepared, unmotivated students in dumbed-down classes labeled “algebra” and “geometry.”
Frustrated by huge failure rates in remedial math, some community colleges are teaching “quantitative reasoning” rather than algebra to students who don’t have STEM ambitions. That makes sense. But it’s an admission of failure.
Hacker also wants to see classes in the history and philosophy of math, which he thinks would draw more math majors.
Why not mathematics in art and music — even poetry — along with its role in assorted sciences? The aim would be to treat mathematics as a liberal art, making it as accessible and welcoming as sculpture or ballet.
Maybe more people would major in math if it didn’t require learning math, but what would be the point?
A commenter recommends The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure, which sounds like a cool book.
Here’s how Times readers responded to Hacker’s essay.
Yes, algebra is necessary, responds cognitive scientist Dan Willingham.
First, it’s not true that otherwise talented students are dropping out because of algebra. Motivation, self-regulation, social control and a feeling of connectedness and engagement at school are as important as grades, and a low grade in English is as accurate a predictor of failure as a low grade in math.
Second, “the difficulty students have in applying math to everyday problems they encounter is not particular to math. Transfer is hard.”
The problem is that if you try to meet this challenge by teaching the specific skills that people need, you had better be confident that you’re going to cover all those skills. Because if you teach students the significance of the Consumer Price Index they are not going to know how to teach themselves the significance of projected inflation rates on their investment in CDs. Their practical knowledge will be specific to what you teach them, and won’t transfer.
Well-educated people can learn on the job, Willingham writes. “Hacker overlooks the possibility that the mathematics learned in school, even if seldom applied directly, makes students better able to learn new quantitative skills.”
Kids who can’t understand math usually can’t read well either, writes RiShawn Biddle on Dropout Nation. “The very skills involved in reading (including understanding abstract concepts) are also involved in algebra and other complex mathematics.”
President Obama wants to create a “master teacher corps,” starting with 50 math and science teachers who’d earn an additional $20,000 a year to act as mentors, plan curriculum and lead school turnarounds. The administration proposes spending $100 million this year and $1 billion next year to increase the corps to 10,000 teachers, reports National Journal.
The idea embodies some of the Obama administration’s most cherished concepts — pay for performance, competitions among local jurisdictions, and asking Congress for money.
And complaining when Congress says “no.”
.Republicans are more interested in creating flexible block grant programs that consolidate the current federal teacher programs and allow states and school districts to use the money for their own teacher improvement programs.
Checker Finn likes “paying excellent teachers more” and “distinguishing between those who are really good and those who are aren’t.” And he admires the politics.
In its zeal for gender balance in science, technology engineering and math courses, the Education Department could impose quotas on male STEM students by 2013, warns Hans Bader, who once worked for the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. The White House has promised new Title IX guidelines in STEM fields.
To comply with Title IX, colleges have eliminated men’s sports teams to create a gender balance. “Title IX isn’t just about sports,” President Obama wrote in Newsweek. It’s also about “inequality in math and science education” and “a much broader range of fields, including engineering and technology. I’ve said that women will shape the destiny of this country, and I mean it.”
By the Title IX model in sports, that means if 60 percent of undergrads are women — common in many colleges and universities — then 60 percent of engineering and physics students must be female.
Gender disparities in college majors reflect the “differing preferences of men and women,” writes Bader.
The fact that engineering departments are filled mostly with men does not mean they discriminate against women anymore than the fact that English departments are filled mostly with women proves that English departments discriminate against men. The arts and humanities have well over 60 percent female students, yet no one seems to view that gender disparity as a sign of sexism against men.
Women gravitate to scientific fields that involve interaction with people, writes Bader.
As The New York Times’ John Tierney noted, “Despite supposed obstacles like “unconscious bias” and a shortage of role models and mentors, women now constitute about half of medical students, 60 percent of biology majors, and 70 percent of psychology Ph.D.’s. They earn the majority of doctorates in both the life sciences and the social sciences.” By contrast, “They remain a minority in the physical sciences and engineering,” which deal more with inanimate objects rather than people.
My younger stepdaughter majored in bio-engineering at Cornell, but decided she wanted a career with more human interaction. She’s now a nutritionist, a nearly all-female profession.
It’s hard to believe colleges will be forced to turn away aspiring male engineers because not enough young women could be lured into the field. But perhaps they’ll create new “pink” engineering courses with more talk and less math to create a faux gender balance.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for Title IX enforcers to crack down on college English departments.
Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology was created to provide a demanding curriculum for high-aptitude students bound for “productive lives as scientists, engineers and mathematicians,” writes John Dell, a long-time physics teacher, in the Washington Post. The new Jefferson admits remedial math students.
Above all, what made Jefferson special was the extraordinary learning environment created by assembling a critical mass of truly prepared students.
. . . At the new Jefferson, students are no longer selected primarily on the basis of their promise in science, technology and mathematics. One-third of the students entering Jefferson under the current admissions policy are in remediation in their math and science courses.
Some of the most promising middle school math students are passed over for admission, Dell writes.
. . . Jefferson students are now selected using an admissions process that is highly random, subjective, and devoid of measures that distinguish students with high aptitude in STEM. This process that is more about memory, language skill, motivation to be successful in college admissions, test prep and just plain luck than the best available indicators of promise as a future scientist, engineer or mathematician.
Dell doesn’t name the “other agendas” that have replaced Jefferson’s original mission. However, the school’s demographics — mostly Asian, very few blacks and Latinos and predominantly male — have been criticized for years, reports the Post. “The school system tinkered with the admissions process several years ago in an effort to create a student body that more closely reflected the county’s entire population,” but the school remains heavily Asian and white and the gender gap is widening.
Female college students need encouragement to consider predominantly male STEM careers. However, feminizing science careers is a turn-off for middle school girls, a study finds.
Despite high demand for workers with technical skills, fewer women are earning certificates and associate degrees in science, technology, engineering and math at community colleges, concludes a new report. Less than 2 percent of engineers with four-year degrees are out of work.
Are community colleges doomed to be the Wal-Marts of higher education?
Among the winning badge ideas at the Digital Media and Learning Competition is My Girl Scout Sash is an App:
My Girl Scout Sash on MentorMob brings the Girl Scout Leadership Experience and career development badge program to a digital media learning platform for girls, ages 5-17, with a focus on middle school and high school. Through collaboration with Motorola Mobility Foundation and MentorMob, teams of girls will create apps, demonstrating and sharing the knowledge gained and badge proficiencies.
Digital badges”can be used to help people learn; demonstrate their skills and knowledge; unlock job, educational and civic opportunities; and open new pipelines to talent,” says the MacArthur Foundation, which is working with Mozilla and HASTAC on the idea.
Other winners include BuzzMath which will award badges for mastery of Common Core math concepts, BadgesWork for Vets, which will help veterans show the skills they’ve learned in the military, and Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Science Student Network, “an online learning environment where students, teachers, and hobbyists can earn badges and certifications as they play with, compete in, and learn about computer science and STEM-related topics.”
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