<p>I’m not going to deny the legitimacy of anyone else’s honest experience, but I don’t recognize anything about my kids’ education in most of the stories above.</p>
<p>I have a daughter and a son. The girl has wanted to be a writer since she was 10, and is a good enough visual artist to get paid for it. The boy could not draw a straight line (with a ruler) to save his life, and his only reaction to colored markers is panic. He has gotten much better as a writer over the years, but his writing and hers are not in the same solar system. Notwithstanding the projects, notwithstanding everything, his English grades have been consistently maybe 2 or 3 points (out of 100) below hers. That does not reflect any objective assessment of the quality difference between their work. He gets all sorts of points for showing up and caring, even when he hates the stuff he’s made to read. (He once wrote a speech about how they ought to assign more genre fiction in high school, because one could accomplish the same pedagogical goals and it was less depressing than the “high” literature to which he was accustomed.) He has always done a great job of managing teachers’ expectations, so that they felt great about how much he was learning from them. With my daughter, if her paper didn’t make them cry, her teacher knew she had blown off the assignment, and she was marked down accordingly.</p>
<p>He has analyzed a lot of sonnets, and built not a single Globe Theatre model. There are lots of group projects, but they are overwhelmingly intellectual in content, and very appropriate exercises in working cooperatively with others – a useful skill much valued here in the world.</p>
<p>I didn’t think it was completely off topic. The question was whether MJ’s claim to look beyond grades and scores was justified. It was a detour, but we can get back on track. :)</p>
<p>Whoa on those Maths stats, marite. That’s amazing.</p>
<p>Even the totals on the numbers getting over 700, over 750. Tiny. I feel I must know half of them.</p>
<p>JHS, the charm offensive doesn’t work in a boys’ school but it worked a treat in coed primary school. This has been my number one complaint about the so-called advances that girls are making. They are making advances on the back of long hours of perfectionism–hours which cannot be sustained in business life and REALLY cannot be sustained when a couple of rugrats are thrown into the mix.</p>
<p>Meantime, the charm offensive works well in business life too. Clever boys.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, one needs to control the distribution of the population to reach
statistically meaningful comparisons. In this case, female students do not earn higher SAT scores. </p>
<p>The first column represents the absolute number, the second column represents the EXPECTED distribution according to the population, and the third column represents the difference between the absolute numbers and the expected number. This shows that, in the higher scoring ranges, males STILL outscore females on the two “classic parts of the SAT” and only trail in the new Writing section. In average scores of 2006, although females trailed in both Math and English, the differences in Math remained substantial while the differences in English became statistically insignificant </p>
<p>English 750-800
M 12419 12049 +370
F 13525 13895 -370</p>
<p>Math 750-800
M 22687 15233 +7454
F 10113 17567 -7454</p>
<p>Writing 750-800<br>
M 7231 8132 -901
F 10279 9378 +901</p>
<p>English 700-750
M 20757 19993 +764
F 22292 23056 -764</p>
<p>Math 700-750
M 39381 29240 +10141
F 23578 33719 -10141</p>
<p>Writing 700-750<br>
M 16347 17577 -1230
F 21501 20271 +1230</p>
<p>PS I believe that the older SAT Annual Reports were showing the percentages and made it easier to see the differences.</p>
<p>I think we’re saying the same thing. My remark about more women taking the SAT applies in particular to the scores 500-599, which is the range of the majority of college applicants; in this range there are more women than men.</p>
<p>While men outnumber women 2:1 in math in the 750-800 range, it would still theoretically be possible for the tech schools to strive toward gender parity without compromising quality; this would assume that most, if not all, 10,000+ female top scorers applied to tech schools.</p>
<p>That is so true about the Writing section. Give me a keyboard and a computer with only notepad installed and I would be able to finish the essay in half the required time, since most of it is taken up massaging my dying thumb muscles.</p>
<p>As a student currently in public school, I will make two observations. Firstly, “projects” are not useful tools for education; they distract from the subjects they are supposedly meant to teach.</p>
<p>Secondly, the problem with public high schools stems only partly from the pedagogic, “behavioral” training many teachers receive today; the main problem is actually middle school. My father assures me that, in his day, actual learning took place in middle school (or junior high, as he calls it), but this is no longer the case.</p>
<p>I learned two things in middle school, algebra and how to write a 5-paragraph essay, and I was the exception rather than the norm even in those cases. When students spend three years of their lives being beaten down by a broken system, it’s no wonder that many of them have trouble adjusting to high school (my middle school’s attempts to “get students ready for high school” included making sure we knew how to write in cursive and that we knew how to write our assignments down every day). My history teacher played movies at least three times a week while she browsed yahoo personals. Middle school is where the greatest revisions need to happen; high school will follow.</p>
<p>A lot of the “projects” issue depends on the project. I don’t think anyone would say that FIRST Robotics is a bad thing–and yet, it’s a project. It’s a meaningful project, however, with measurable results and no grades. I see many meaningless projects that are all about cutting/pasting/making it look pretty and not about real thinking.</p>
<p>As for SAT results, I have a D with relatively high verbal scores and a son with relatively high math scores–and both of them had 1500-range SAT totals. Huge differences in their attitudes towards learning, approaches to problem solving, interest in different topics, etc. The differences between the 700-750 and the 750-800 ranges are HUGE.</p>
<p>And I have the same set, same score range – 30 points aggregate difference between them across 3 tests, but 100 points difference in math. There are relatively minor differences in their attitudes toward learning – the boy does it because he’s told to sometimes, the girl doesn’t, but they’re both intellectually engaged and curious. There are no real differences in the approaches to problem solving, and their interests are pretty consonant. The lower-math-scoring girl was one of the top math students in her 7th grade class, got put in an accelerated math curriculum, hated the (female) teacher, and just turned herself off on it. The higher-math-scoring boy was NOT selected for the accelerated math program because his teachers felt he was not conceptual enough. He saw that as an insult, and worked hard to catch up. He’s just about maxed out his math potential with Calculus B-C, though.</p>
<p>Neither of my kids would be a good candidate for MIT, of course. But the 100-point difference in their math SAT scores is completely misleading as to their math abilities (not as to whether they give a hoot about math).</p>
<h2>Mollie: The frustrating thing is that MIT can’t win – either they accept all the kids with sky-high GPAs and test scores (and get called unholistic) or they accept all the kids with spark and creativity (and get called unmeritocratic). They compromise, like anyone would in that situation.</h2>
<p>The problem I have with subjective criteria is that it makes it easier to reject the kids that are both very creative AND have sky-high GPAs and test scores. As I hope you know, they are not mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>As far as the different learning strengths/styles go, it’s amazing that many of you still subscribe to outdated stereotypes and think that most girls love glitter pens and project embellishments. You reinforce these stereotypes and then wonder why girls aren’t doing as well on the math SAT or why a larger percentage of girls isn’t obtaining majors in math and applied sciences…perhaps it’s partially because you have always told them that they aren’t as good as at those subjects and that they belong in liberal arts fields or they need to make “pretty” projects. Stop telling girls “you aren’t” or “you can’t” and start encouraging boys AND girls to develop both their language arts skills AND their math/science skills. Stop assuming that science/math strength discrepancies are simply a gender issue.
…
On a separate note, has anyone else read the Time editorial about Marilee Jones? It presented a very different viewpoint from those presented in this thread.</p>
<p>They are not outdated stereotypes. This is empirical evidence posted by parents who have observed hundreds of children: Girls are more likely to enjoy & embellish their projects. Nothing wrong with that at all. It’s only a problem in the case where non-artsy kids are penalized. And who in the world is telling girls they “can’t?” Please…Decades after “Free To Be You & Me,” and many years into the “Girl Power” curriculum movement, girls are absolutely free to be & do whatever they want. The hard data shows that most aren’t flocking to math/science, because most have much, much higher aptitudes in other areas. Why force a square peg into a round hole? Any girl with math aptitude is embraced, encouraged, and supported very strongly.</p>