As stated by this news article published by this press release at University of California, Berkley. Researchers have found that the performance between girls and boys in math are now equal! The reason they believe this is the case is that girls take more math classes earlier in today’s society. This leads to no difference in the comprehension of math problems between girls and boys.
I found this research very misleading. The first 3/4 of the article talks about the changes in our school system or how "women took fewer advanced courses in mathematics than men" in previous decades. However, in a few paragraphs of this article, they did mention one thing that I find very important for the analysis of this research.
The article noted that the research team found "disturbing lack of questions that tested" complex problem solving skills. Skills that would be required to solve problems in real world situations. As the article states, this suggests that "teachers are gearing instruction toward states’ NCLB assessments". In other words, the teachers are preparing the students on how to take these tests, not teaching them math. In addition, the lack of complex problems presents a problem with the results of these tests. For example, if 20 out of 25 students in the class got a 95% or better on the test, did the test really tested their understanding of the material? Does this test differentiate the top five or top ten students from one another? I do not think so, and thus, the result of this study should not be taken seriously as the underlying data is flawed.
This article, on the other hand, suggests two problems that can be very real. First is that teachers are simply teaching test material and not teaching the subject. The second, which I think is a bigger problem, is that these standardized tests (created for the No Child Left Behind act) creates a false image that our kids are doing better in math and science than they really are. The lack of hard problems suggests that these tests are not testing their real abilities. It is designed so that the majority of the students get good marks, thus giving more credibility to the public educational institutions we have in this country.
That to me is a very disturbing image. The education of our children and the future of our nation does not and should not rely on public education, but private institutions or homeschooling with the support of the government. I am a big fan of homeschooling, but those who are inclined to do so must at least prove that they meet certain criterias before they are allowed to homeschool. We cannot have Bubba Jay getting money support from the government for homeschooling his kids when his own schooling ended at the ripe old age of eight when he dropped out of kindergarten.
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