American Institute of Physics report says that high school physics is trending upward nationally. But in Florida the trend is downward.

According to a report released this week by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) Statistical Research Center, the percentage of high school graduates who have taken at least one physics class in high school grew significantly between 2013 and 2019. The first results from the 2018-19 Nationwide Survey of High School Physics Teachers show that 42% of high school graduating class of 2019 had taken at least one physics course in high school, larger than the rate for the class of 2013 (39%) measured during the last such survey.

The number of students enrolled in high school physics courses during the 2018-19 school year was 1,543,000, 12% higher than in 2012-13 (when the enrollment was 1,376,000). The number of high school seniors had grown by 6% during the same time period.

College faculty and professional associations in a variety of disciplines including engineering, computer science, architecture and biology recommend that students considering college majors in those subjects take physics in high school. So the AIP results say that more students nationally are becoming better prepared to succeed in those college majors.

Meanwhile, the situation in Florida is quite different. Enrollment in physics classes in the state’s public high schools has declined 20% since Fall 2014. During the Fall of 2020, only 4.5% of public high school students in the state were enrolled in a physics course. At the national level, the 1,543,000 high school students taking physics in 2018-19 reported by the AIP was 9.2% of the nation’s 16,745,000 high school students.

From Florida Department of Education – compiled here.

The AIP also reported that while 84% of the nation’s high school seniors attended schools where physics is taught every year in 2018-19, Florida is one of eight states in which the rate was significantly lower than 84%. The other seven states in that (sad) category were Alabama, Arizona, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina and Oklahoma.

In fact, during the Fall of 2020 one out of every six large (>1,000 students) high schools in Florida did not teach physics.

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