Why are so few Ph.D.’s awarded to African-Americans in math intensive fields? Holly Brown’s undergraduate honors thesis traces the issue all the way back to elementary school. Holly graduated from FSU in spring 2010 with a double major in physics and political science. She is now working toward a Ph.D. in science policy at Georgia Tech.
The thesis can be downloaded here:
The dramatic underrepresentation of African-Americans among Ph.D. recipients in physics and engineering has its origins in elementary school or before, according to a study completed as an Honors Thesis by FSU student Holly Brown.
In 2004, only 13, or 2.3%, of the 559 Ph.D.’s awarded to American citizens or permanent residents in physics were earned by African-Americans. The degree of underrepresentation was similar in other mathematical sciences: in math, 10 of the 510 new Ph.D.’s (2.0%) were African-American; in engineering, it was 94 of 2182 (4.3%); and in geosciences 7 of 426 (1.6%). African-Americans account for 12% of the US population.
However, results from the 2009 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) in mathematics reveal that African-American children are severely underrepresented at the highest achievement level as early as fourth grade. While 8% of Caucasian 4th graders earn the highest NAEP designation – “advanced” – in math, only 1% of African-American children do. The gap is only slightly less severe at the next highest achievement level, “proficient”, which is earned by 43% of Caucasian 4th graders but only 15% of African-American 4th graders. The gap widens further by 8th grade, leaving few African-American students to complete the advanced high school math courses that several studies have demonstrated are so important to postsecondary achievement in the sciences and engineering.
The conclusion for policy makers? To close the achievement gap in science and engineering at the postsecondary level, it is critical to attract more highly effective teachers to elementary schools where they will work with students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The power point presentation from Holly’s thesis defense can be seen here:
Holly Brown’s Honors Thesis defense power point
Holly Brown is a graduate of Gulf Breeze High School in Florida’s Santa Rosa County. She will graduate from FSU with a double major in physics and political science this month, and will then join the Ph.D. program in science policy at Georgia Tech in the fall.
I had the privilege of presenting a talk to the Florida Citizens for Science Board and some additional members and visitors on Saturday. The power point for the talk, titled “A Legislative Program for Science Education in Florida,” is available here.
The proposals begin with several that are practical even for the difficult budget year ahead, but include some that require real money and therefore should be addressed in the future. The talk leans toward an emphasis on the steps necessary to improve our education of scientists and engineers in the state.
11.5%: The unemployment rate in Florida at the close of 2009, signaling the structural collapse of the go-go growth-and-tourism economy in the state.
45%: The fraction of mortgages in Florida that are “underwater,” with the owners owing more than their properties are worth.
$418: Decrease in per-pupil spending on public K-12 schools in Florida from the 2007-2008 school year to the 2009-2010 school year, even with the federal stimulus money.
$2.6 billion: Anticipated state budget shortfall in the next fiscal year.
49: Florida’s national rank on the science section of the ACT college entrance exam in 2008. This statistic was used by FDOE Bureau Chief Todd Clark to support his argument that “Florida students are pretty much last in the nation in science.”
47: Florida’s national rank on pass rate for Advanced Placement science tests in 2008. Another statistic quoted by Todd Clark to support the above conclusion.
0: Number of African-American students who scored the highest level (5) on the FCAT Science tests statewide in 2008. That’s not 0%. That’s zero students. Not a single African-American student, at any of the three grade levels during which the Science FCAT is administered (5, 8, 11) and anywhere in the state, scored a 5.
16%: The fraction of graduating high school students in Florida who have taken a physics course. This fraction is about half the national rate.
29%: The fraction of American high school graduates in the top quintile (20%) on the SAT and ACT math sections who earned bachelors’ degrees in STEM fields in the 1990’s, according to a Rutgers-Georgetown report.
14%: The fraction of American high school graduates in the top quintile on the SAT and ACT math sections who earned bachelors’ degrees in STEM fields in the 2000’s, according to the same report. This plunge from the 1990’s may signal a cultural change nationally from a technological economy toward a mercantilist economy in which technological innovation is valued less than the devising of complex financial instruments that are designed to conceal looming disaster from unwitting customers. We have now done the experiment. Will we learn the lesson? And what are all those freshly minted Ivy League grads who were planning to be rich investment bankers going to do? Go to law school?
39%: Fraction of Americans that accepted the theory of evolution on the occasion of Darwin’s 150th birthday, according to a Gallup Poll.
24%: Fraction of Americans that attend church weekly who accept the theory of evolution, according to the same Gallup Poll. (Note: I’m in this small group, bucking the crowd as usual.)
$36,000: National average starting salary for a teacher at the secondary level.
$52,000: Average starting salary for a new bachelor’s degree recipient in physics. The $16,000 difference between this number and the previous one provides a clue about why it is so difficult to recruit physics teachers.
1: The number of science subjects that will be tested at the high school level starting in 2012 if Florida Education Commissioner Smith gets his way in the Florida Legislature this spring. That subject will be biology. With chemistry, physics and Earth/space science left out of the high school accountability package, there will not be any legal incentive to maintain or improve the access to and quality of instruction in these areas.
A recent paper by Dr. Will Tyson of the University of South Florida and others makes a bold statement about the problem of the achievement gap between Caucasian and Minority students. There are two main revelations I took from his study “Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Pathways: High School Science and Math Coursework and Postsecondary Degree Attainment.” The first is that students need high level science and math courses in high school in order to succeed in the STEM fields at a collegiate level; the most important of these is Physics. The second point, which was much more surprising than the first, is that “African American and Hispanic students who did take high-level courses were as likely as White students to pursue STEM degrees.”
His study utilizes one of the enormous Florida Department of Education databases which track students after high school and into college in order to garner information about the number and diversity of students entering the STEM fields. Tyson makes the argument that Florida is a unique case, not only because of this database which allows for individual level information, but also because Florida is sufficiently demographically diverse as to be representative of the nation as a whole.
Citing numerous other studies, Tyson points out that it is the rigor of mathematics and science courses, and not the raw number of courses, students take that increases their chances of success in the STEM fields. Only 0.5% of all students in the study had completed Science coursework including Physics II or Chemistry II, while 7.7% of the students had completed the Advanced III level of Mathematics which includes Calculus or higher level mathematics. Students who had taken Calculus were 34.6% more likely to obtain a degree in a STEM field. Of all students receiving Bachelor’s degrees, 72.8% of them had taken at least Physics I. Of those that completed Physics II or Chemistry II, 39.8% went on to complete STEM degrees, but the sample size is very small for this category.
A study of access to physics courses in the New York City public schools published in this month’s issue of American Journal of Physics has reached some disturbing conclusions. To begin with,
A significant number of students attend schools where there is no opportunity to take a physics course. The data show that poor and underrepresented minority students are much less likely to have access than other students.
This result is particularly disturbing because of the possibility that physics and calculus are the key courses for students deciding to pursue scientific and engineering careers.
While only 45% of the 298 New York City high schools surveyed offered a physics course, only 7% offered an AP physics course.
Here are some pieces of the puzzle of elite-level academic achievement among Florida’s African-Americans, who account for 15% of the state’s population:
African-American students are falling behind in the state’s K-12 system (although perhaps not as badly as in the rest of the nation). Intensive efforts to compensate for the shortcomings of the outcomes of the K-12 system (such as the SSTRIDE program at the FSU College of Medicine) can help. But in the end, equity will only be achieved if the achievement gap in the K-12 schools is remedied.
The grievous results for African-American students in the 2009 NAEP math report for 4th and 8th graders highlights once again the tremendous difficulties of teaching and learning in a socioeconomically challenged school.
If you have some patience and want to get some idea of how daunting and intellectually challenging urban education is, take a look at the volume Improving Urban Science Education: New Roles for Teachers, Students and Researchers, edited by Kenneth Tobin, who is Presidential Professor of Urban Education at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Rowhea Elmesky, Assistant Professor of Education at Washington University at St. Louis, and Gale Seiler, Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Maryland – Baltimore County. Improving Urban Science Education was chosen one of Choice Magazine’s Outstanding Academic Titles for 2006. You can take at least a glimpse of this book at Google Books.
The much anticipated scores for the 2009 Mathematics National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have been released, and the results are mixed. The scores for 8th graders have trended upward, the scores for 4th graders are fairly stable, and the Achievement Gap remains relatively unchanged.
Nationally, the scores for African American students in the 8th grade have increased, albeit only a little. In 2009 12% of these students scored at or above the Proficient Level, while only 1% scored Advanced. The number of students who scored at or above Proficient Level has increased by 1% from 2007, while the number of Advanced scores has remained the same. There has been some mild progress: a 3% drop (from 53% in 2007 to 50% in 2009) in students scoring Below Basic level. Even so, this leaves 50% of African American students nationally who are not demonstrating even a Basic Level understanding of Mathematics.
Nationally, 8th grade whites have scored better than their African American peers. In 2009, 44% of white 8th graders scored at or above the Proficient Level while 11% scored at the Advanced level. This is an increase in both levels of 2% from 2007-2009. The number of students who scored Below Basic is 17% for 2009, which has decreased from 18% in 2007. Once again, the progress has been minimal.
The Center on Educational Policy (CEP) released a report last week arguing in part that the achievement gap between African-American students and the rest of the population is closing in reading and math, even at the highest achievement level dubbed “advanced” on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The report focused on gains recorded by members of minority groups on state reading and math assessments between 2002 and 2008.
While it is easy for the casual reader to see the gains recorded by these groups at the “basic” and “proficient” levels, the gap in math at the “advanced” level – among those students are most likely to pursue careers in engineering, math, physics and the geosciences – is so enormous as to mock the claims of gains made in the CEP report. The CEP report claims that at the fourth grade level “Subgroup results were more positive in math than in reading at all achievement levels and were especially notable in math at the advanced level for African American students.” In 2007, 8 percent of 4th graders nationwide earned the label of “advanced” on the NAEP math assessment. However, only 1% of African-American 4th graders did so. The situation is similar at the 8th grade level, where 7% of all students scored “advanced” on the NAEP but only 1% of African-Americans. It seems ridiculous to argue that any detected “narrowing” of this gap is significant – it is a catastrophic situation that requires immediate attention.
