It’s high school course signup season. Make sure your child or student signs up for chemistry and physics. Too few of her or his high school peers are doing so.

It’s the time of year when high school students and their parents are choosing courses for the 2020-2021 school year.

If there is any chance that your student or child presently in high school might want to pursue a career in architecture, biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, meteorology, or the health professions (including medicine, dentistry and physical therapy), you should keep in mind that she or he is going to have to take physics and chemistry in college. And professors and professional societies in those fields recommend that your student or child take chemistry and physics in high school to prepare.

You might be saying, Oh c’mon. You’re just a physics professor and a physics booster. Alright, then I’ll quote from the web site of the Iowa State University Department of Biology:

Courses in Biology, such as Anatomy and Physiology, Genetics, and Advanced Sciences, are helpful for students entering the Biology program. However, these courses should not take the place of the Chemistry and Physics courses. One year of high school Biology is recommended. If students have the opportunity to enroll in additional Biology courses without sacrificing their supporting sciences, these courses may prove to be beneficial. [Emphasis mine]

You can get exhortations like that one in architecture, chemistry, computer science, engineering, meteorology and the health professions here.

Or perhaps you’d prefer this open letter recently posted and signed by leaders in physical and biomedical sciences at the University of Central Florida. Here’s an excerpt:

While Florida requires Biology for high school graduation, it is critical for every student capable of trade school or a college degree to take a full year each of chemistry and physics. That prepares them to be four times more likely to finish college on time than their peers. Those students typically earn a letter grade higher in their introductory college STEM courses, impacting scholarships and graduate program admissions. High school chemistry and physics is also the recommended preparation for the most in-demand trade programs in fields from manufacturing to healthcare.

How are Florida’s high schools doing at making sure that their students are ready for college majors in architecture, biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, meteorology, or the health professions? Some – notably those in Brevard and Seminole Counties – are doing well.

But one-third of the students who show up in my calculus-based introductory physics class each fall – students majoring in all of the above fields – didn’t take a physics class in high school. Those students earn, on the average, a full letter grade lower than those who did take a high school physics class. If you are saying to your computer screen right now that you know a student who didn’t take physics in high school and did fine in college physics, I can assure you that I know such students, too. I have a few every year. But most such students are clustered in the bottom part of my grade distribution.

Statewide, high school students enroll in chemistry courses at a rate 15% below the national rate, which isn’t good. But Florida students enroll in physics courses at less than half the national rate. That’s a disaster.

An article published in Science magazine in 2007 made it clear that my experience with underprepared students isn’t unique to me. That paper showed that students without a high school physics class earned on the average a letter grade lower than students who had one. It also showed something that should be obvious to everyone: High school biology classes prepare students for college biology; high school chemistry courses prepare students for college chemistry; and high school physics courses prepare students prepare students for college physics. Whoever came up with the idea that AP Biology and AP Chemistry courses (or – heaven help us – Engineering Design courses) are suitable substitutes for high school physics was fooling themselves and harming their students.

You might now be saying to your computer screen, “I’m sure all of the students who show up in Dr. Cottle’s FSU physics classroom from my school district are just fine because they’ve had a high school physics course.” If you said that and you are not in Brevard or Seminole Counties, you are almost certainly wrong. Here is a list of the districts that have sent students to my FSU physics classroom without a high school physics course in just the last three years – and remember all of these students are majoring in a STEM field:

Broward, Charlotte, Clay, Collier, Dade, Duval, Escambia, Highlands, Hillsborough, Lake Worth Charter, Lee, Leon, Manatee, Okaloosa, Orange, Palm Beach, Polk, Pasco, Pinellas, Sarasota, St. Johns, St. Lucie, and Volusia.

And that’s just in my classroom, which generally has only 70 students per year.

Did you find your district in that list?

My frequent co-conspirator (and UCF Physics Teacher-in-Residence and principal author of the UCF letter referenced above) Adam LaMee has concluded that the best way to solve this problem is to have high schools adopt “opt-out” systems in which students are automatically enrolled in the standard biology-chemistry-physics science sequence, with parents given the opportunity to opt their children out of those courses if they object. But convincing high school principals to adopt such a policy in a state with such a weak science education culture has proven to be difficult.

I’ve had too many conversations with K-12 folks that have gone like this – “Yes, it would be nice if we could convince more students to take chemistry and physics. We’ll try to do better.”

Perhaps I should start adopting Yoda’s standard response: “Do or do not. There is no try.” Because “try” doesn’t ever seem to cut it in Florida.

A Studio Physics class like the ones I teach at FSU.