

Teacher anxieties may subtract from girls’ math scores  - araneae
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/55590/title/Teacher_anxieties_may_subtract__from_girls%E2%80%99_math_scores

======
patio11
This is not a girl story, or a math story, or even a teacher story. This is a
union story, because unions make it impossible to reliably guarantee that
American public school teachers demonstrate confident mastery of _second grade
math_.

 _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_.

~~~
crux_
Have an axe to grind, don't you? It's too late to get into a debate, but
suffice to say that everything you're bringing up are concepts you carried
into the article and were not mentioned, even tangentially, there.

~~~
patio11
You know the basic theory behind Five Whys, how a failure isn't a one-off
event but it is the symptom of a process failure? And how that process failure
is a symptom of another process failure, etc etc?

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].

~~~
crux_
Sure. But this is all supposition dressed up to sound convincing. Here's some
of my own, hopefully somewhat convincing as well:

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."

\----

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. ;) ]

~~~
InclinedPlane
That may explain why public school teachers do poorly at teaching math. Maybe
also science. But it doesn't explain why they are also bad at teaching every
other subject, including English, music, and physical education.

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.

~~~
crux_
At this point, we're about 10,000 miles away from the actual article -- which
did not contain a single mention of overall education quality, not one fact
about how education has changed over time, precious little evidence for or
against widespread poor teacher quality, etc. The sample size was seventeen,
for hecks' sake, and it was about how if you put "math is hard" Barbie up in
front of girl students, they do worse at math!

> 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](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?

------
beloch
If a teacher of either gender feels "math anxiety" when reading a receipt or
teaching elementary school math, they probably shouldn't be a teacher. I
honestly don't care about what gender stereotypes girls are picking up. The
fact that teachers this bad at math exist in large enough numbers to produce
decent statistics is far more shocking.

------
ewjordan
I don't see any evidence that the gender of the teacher matters at all - based
on the details the article provides, the study seems equally consistent with
the hypothesis that girls learn math worse than boys in the face of bad
teachers, for whatever reason. Or (less PC, of course) that girls are
naturally less capable at (or interested in) math, but respond better to good
teachers than boys do. Or any of dozens of variations on that theme.

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...

