<p>I’m glad you all don’t think I’m crazy. I was just thinking with my fingers when I posted this morning. I’m going to call and chat with the parent coordinator tomorrow. SHe’s just super and I’m sure to get a good reception I really like the idea of outside judges for the awards. The teachers did well on the classroom level, but at the fair level in choosing which perfect-score projects to give awards to didn’t go so well. I support girls in math and science, for sure, but I’m not sure glitter is the way to do it.</p>
<p>In our school corporation, all sixth graders participate in a science fair. Judges are volunteers from the community- many science enthusiasts, engineers, and high school students who have participated in state science fair and/or ISEF. The teachers deliberately do not judge the fair (though all projects are graded by the teacher according to their rubric and judges have no idea what grade a student received). The teacher who organizes the fair is careful to point out that many students have no parental support of their efforts (buying supplies or keeping them on schedule) while some have too much (taking over the project). Judges are specifically instructed to expect a neat presentation but not be fooled by glitz. Scoring is based solely on whether the student had a hypothesis, a control, a method of experimentation, and a conclusion supported by data. Each student is judged at least 3 times, more if there are enough judges (some years students had 5 judges), and results are averaged. A very fair system and similar to what is found at regional, state, and international fairs. Sometimes a very messy project wins because the judges can discern through questioning the student that indeed the student had done the work and analyzed the significance of the results.</p>
<p>I’m glad you’re going to bring up the issue with someone. The key point should be that the use of the scientific method should dominate over a ‘pretty’ presentation. They should judge everything on the merits and maybe have a special award or two for the best presentations. </p>
<p>If that doesn’t happen, those who are making good use of the scientific method now (presumably some of the boys who weren’t recognized at all) will stop doing so. They won’t work on a better/more challenging project next year because in their minds – an easy pretty project has a better shot at winning. Or more likely, they’ll just give up on the science fair because it’s not an activity that they can relate to in any way. This is the way that lots of boys, often from diverse households, give up or diminish the value of education – if a minority male was to comply and put together a pretty project in hopes of winning and did win something, you’d better believe that he’d face some peer pressure/harassment from his peers for “acting white” or acting like a girl. He’d face much less pressure if he won for putting together the best robot or volcano or whatever.</p>
<p>Hate to say it but this is how a lot of the lower grades are. I don’t know why but teachers – young and old – are blown away by presentation sometimes. It’s as if they don’t get or want to get the substance so they’re impressed by the fact that something is typed or graphs are computerized rather than done by color pencil. This is a problem esp. in an NYC public school. Even if we’re getting to the point where every household has a computer, I’m betting that not every kid is going to tell their parents that they need to go through a few cartridges of color ink to be able to print out pretty reports/projects because they know that lots of parents may soon say – just do it in pencil, it doesn’t matter if it’s pretty. In a wealthier household, this kind of minor expense is no issue and parents who aren’t working 2+ jobs may even be home to supervise homework and may be encouraging their kids to make things prettier for the teacher.</p>
<p>aj725, you hit on something I hadn’t even considered. This IS a NYC public school with a music magnet program inside. The music kids tend to be from out of the zone (and probably wealthier, although I have no way of knowing for sure), while the school as a whole draws very heavily from the projects and surrounding areas. The issue of computers/ink/supplies may factor into the equation, as well. That breaks my heart.</p>
<p>zmom-The whole thing sounds suspicious to me. Not only should the judging panel have been more diverse, I don’t like the idea of the school’s teachers being the judges at all. In our schools the HS science fair judges are recruited from the community.</p>
<p>I was a judge a couple of years in the middle school science fair. </p>
<p>Its been a few years but I know that the criteria were clear on what we were to be looking for. Neatness was an attribute as was presentation - but the big winners were all projects which involved a significant amount of effort and following the scientific method. We were to ask the students questions about their project to evaluate their knowledge of what they had done - reducing parental interference. </p>
<p>Glitter would have scored no points under the criteria I recall.</p>
<p>“So he told us he plans to use glitter glue and sparkles on the social studies project”</p>
<p>Aaaargh! Was this a science contest or a decoration contest? Zoo, your gut feelings and thoughts are spot on and need to be brought up with the[ apparently] clueless as well as blind administrators who ran this faux science contest, because it certainly wasn’t judged in an objective or fair manner! scualum has a really good point. you might want to suggest that glitter and any other extraneous decorative “gilding” be eliminated as acceptable materials for future contests.</p>
<p>So? Mine had Neon green boarders… and i still got an A… :P</p>