In a Foundation for Florida’s Future blog post celebrating the 20th anniversary of our state’s “A+ Plan”, Fordham Institute and Stanford University researcher Chester Finn identified Florida and Massachusetts as the two “poster states” for successful education reform.
Finn noted that:
The Bay State got going in 1993 with a “grand compromise” Education Reform Act that raised standards for kids, teachers and schools alike, launched some of the country’s best charter schools (though not enough of them!) and lubricated the process with a considerable investment of dollars. Most importantly, Massachusetts kept at it in a bipartisan way through one election after another and resisted all manner of efforts to slow down, rein in or simply weaken the course of reform. In consequence, it has achieved America’s strongest academic track record and is basically the only state with achievement results that now rival the “Asian tigers.”
While Massachusetts and Florida were implementing accountability and choice reforms, Texas instituted the “4×4 Plan”, which raised course-taking requirements for high school students – requiring Algebra 2 and Physics for graduation, for example. The 4×4 Plan was repealed in 2013, but the improvements in high school course taking brought on by the Plan seem to have persisted, according to UTeach founder Michael Marder.
In this post, I will compare the middle and high school STEM pipelines in Florida, Massachusetts and Texas using NAEP 8th grade math and Advanced Placement data. My primary conclusion is what the reader expects – Massachusetts is far ahead of Florida in math and science achievement according to these two data sets, although both states continue to struggle with achievement among students from disadvantaged backgrounds and who are members of underrepresented minorities. Florida and Texas – which have demographic similarities – are not so far apart according to NAEP and AP data.
First of all, it’s important to acknowledge the demographic differences among the three states under discussion here. Florida and Texas have significantly larger percentages of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunches (each about 60%) than Massachusetts does (about 40%).
Massachusetts also has smaller populations of the minority groups historically underrepresented in STEM fields – black and Hispanic students.
Florida and Texas differ as well. The student population in Texas is majority Hispanic, while Florida has a larger percentage of black students than Texas does.
Nevertheless, a comparison of the STEM pipelines in the three states reveals a surprise or two. Our first stop in the pipeline is at the 8th grade NAEP math exam, for which the most recent results available are from 2017. The first set of results in the plot below show what most K-12 STEM aficionadoes already know – that Massachusetts 8th graders are far ahead of those in Florida and Texas. The statistic I’ve chosen to display is the percentage of students whose NAEP achievement level is proficient or above – that is, those who are on track for bachelor’s degree-level STEM degrees.
What some readers might find surprising in that plot is that Massachusetts is getting better results with its black and Hispanic students than Florida and Texas are. Florida education reform advocates often brag that the state’s “achievement gaps” between advantaged and disadvantaged populations are laudably small. What the above graph suggests is that these gaps are small not because Florida does so well educating students from historically underserved populations but because the state’s presumably well-served populations are underperforming.
The next plot, which compares the NAEP results for students who are eligible for free and reduced-price lunches with those who are not, reinforces that point.
It’s also worth noting that Texas is either matching or exceeding Florida’s performance among all the population segments we are looking at here on the 8th grade math NAEP assessment.
Our next stop in the K-12 STEM pipeline is at the Advanced Placement level. Florida’s AP numbers have been pumped up by the state’s policy of paying for student exams and providing financial incentives for teachers and schools for passing exam scores. This strategy has been quite successful for improving performance on AP social science exams. However, the state remains at the national average in performance measures on AP math and science exams.
The plot below compares Florida with Massachusetts and Texas in the number of AP math and science exams passed per 1,000 high school students. Both Florida and Texas are at about the national average rate, while Massachusetts is a national leader. (Data are from the College Board’s AP Program Participation and Performance page)
It’s worth noting that Florida is a little ahead of Texas on this metric – no doubt in part because of the financial incentives built into Florida’s AP program.
The two plots below illustrate the issue of underrepresentation of black and Hispanic students among students who pass the seven AP exams most likely to correlate to success in engineering, the physical sciences and computing at the bachelor’s degree level – Calculus AB and BC, Computer Science A, Physics 1 and 2 (which are algebra-based) and the calculus-based physics courses (Physics C Mechanics and Physics C Electricity and Magnetism). The first plot shows that all three states share a tremendous problem when it comes to black students in these courses. The red lines show the percentages of black students among the total K-12 populations in the three states. In all three states, the representation of black students among exam passers is tragically low. None of the three states has even come close to solving this problem yet.
The story is only a little different for Hispanic students in the three states. Florida has come the closest to solving the problem of Hispanic underrepresentation. Massachusetts and Texas still have a very long way to go.
The bottom line is this: The K-12 STEM pipeline in Massachusetts is far superior to those in Florida and Texas for the general population, and in fact the NAEP 8th grade math results reveal that Massachusetts is doing a better job teaching math to black and Hispanic students and low-income students than Florida and Texas are. However, at the most advanced high school level, all three states are struggling with the issue of underrepresentation of black and Hispanic students. Only Florida has made progress with one part of this problem – Hispanic students.
Bridge to Tomorrow 