Dear Ms. Merriweather:
I appreciate that you took the time to get involved in the public recognition and discussion of the success of the physics program at Orange County’s Jones High School, which was featured in an Orlando Sentinel article recently.
But you may not realize why what Jones High School has accomplished is important.
Every school – whether it is a traditional public school, a charter school or a private school – should give each one of its students the opportunity to fulfill their potential.
For example, high schools should provide their students opportunities to properly prepare for college majors in math-intensive STEM fields like engineering, computer science and the physical sciences. To prepare for these majors, high school students should take chemistry, physics, precalculus and (if possible) calculus. Some high schools do not provide such an opportunity. One such high school, Polk County’s Tenoroc High School, was featured in the Lakeland Ledger this morning. In the article, Tenoroc’s valedictorian expressed his frustration with the school’s course offerings, which do not include calculus or physics.
I am a physics professor at Florida State University, and I teach the introductory physics course that students majoring in these math-intensive fields take. About one-third of my students did not take a high school physics class, which means they have not prepared properly in high school for their college majors. These underprepared students earn, on the average, one full letter grade lower than students who have taken a high school physics class. Each year, there are a few students who have not taken high school physics who nevertheless perform well in my class. But there are many more who do poorly. Some of those students fall out of their engineering, computer science and physical science majors altogether after performing poorly in their introductory physics or calculus classes.
That’s why it is so important for every high school – and perhaps especially high schools that have demographic challenges like Jones – to offer classes in physics and calculus.
Unfortunately, there are many schools in Florida that, like Tenoroc, don’t teach those subjects. A national organization just released a report showing that Florida is in a small group of eight states in which access to high school physics is significantly lower than the national rate. Furthermore, Florida’s public high school students take physics at less than half the national rate. Nationally, the percentage of high school graduates having a physics course in high school is rising; in Florida, it is declining.
That is why I celebrate what Jones High School is doing. You should celebrate it, too.
Of course, I can only speak to the situation in Florida’s public schools. Tracking course enrollments in the state’s public schools is a hobby of mine, and I’m able to do so because the Florida Department of Education is the nation’s leader in making that information publicly available.
However, I do not have access to that sort of information for private schools – those served by the state’s private school scholarship programs or otherwise. It would be useful for parents who are considering enrollment in those schools to have access to that information, just as they do for the public schools.
I am not your average public education advocate. In fact, I’m really not a public education advocate at all. I want each of Florida’s students to have the opportunity to excel in engineering, computer science and the physical sciences, if they choose to do so. I don’t care about the sector of their high school. In fact, I once volunteered to help Step Up for Students promote preparation for math-intensive STEM careers. I made a trip to St. Petersburg for a meeting about that. I am sure that nobody at Step Up or in any other school choice advocacy organization remembers that, if they ever knew.
I am also aware of your personal story, and I am glad that you have been successful in the field you chose. But I want the students in the schools for which you advocate to have the opportunity to excel in the fields I am discussing here. Your Sentinel op-ed didn’t give me any reason to believe you care about that.
I hope that sometime we will get a chance to talk about this in person.
Sincerely,
Paul
Bridge to Tomorrow 