Menstuff® has information on education. we are at the bottom
of the list of 19 industrialized countries in reading, writing and
math. Currently, 1 out of 3 high school students drop out before
graduation. Check this out!
In a first, women surpass men in advanced
degrees
The Myth of Testing for
Giftedness
Graduation Rates a 'Catastrophe' in
Cities
What's to blame for differing test scores
between the sexes?
Dumbing Us Down:
The American Tragedy 
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In a first, women surpass men in advanced
degrees
Census figures released Tuesday highlight the latest education milestone for women, who began to exceed men in college enrollment in the early 1980s. The findings come amid record shares of women in the workplace and a steady decline in stay-at-home mothers.
The educational gains for women are giving them greater access to a wider range of jobs, contributing to a shift of traditional gender roles at home and work. Based on one demographer's estimate, the number of stay-at-home dads who are the primary caregivers for their children reached nearly 2 million last year, or one in 15 fathers. The official census tally was 154,000, based on a narrower definition that excludes those working part-time or looking for jobs.
"The gaps we're seeing in bachelor's and advanced degrees mean that women will be better protected against the next recession," said Mark Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan-Flint who is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
"Men now might be the ones more likely to be staying home, doing the more traditional child rearing," he said.
Among adults 25 and older, 10.6 million U.S. women have master's degrees or higher, compared to 10.5 million men. Measured by shares, about 10.2 percent of women have advanced degrees compared to 10.9 percent of men — a gap steadily narrowing in recent years. Women still trail men in professional subcategories such as business, science and engineering.
When it comes to finishing college, roughly 20.1 million women have bachelor's degrees, compared to nearly 18.7 million men — a gap of more than 1.4 million that has remained steady in recent years. Women first passed men in bachelor's degrees in 1996.
Some researchers including Perry have dubbed the current economic slump a "man-cession" because of the huge job losses in the male-dominated construction and manufacturing industries, which require less schooling. Measured by pay, women with full-time jobs now make 78.2 percent of what men earn, up from about 64 percent in 2000.
Unemployment for men currently stands at 9.3 percent compared to 8.3 percent for women, who now make up half of the U.S. work force. The number of stay-at-home moms, meanwhile, dropped last year for a fourth year in a row to 5 million, or roughly one in four married-couple households. That's down from nearly half of such households in 1969.
By the census' admittedly outmoded measure, the number of stay-at-home dads has remained largely flat in recent years, making up less than 1 percent of married-couple households.
Whatever the exact numbers, Census Bureau researchers have detailed a connection between women's educational attainment and declines in traditional stay-at-home parenting. For instance, they found that stay-at-home mothers today are more likely to be young, foreign-born Hispanics who lack college degrees than professional women who set aside careers for fulltime family life after giving birth.
"We're not saying the census definition of a `stay-at-home' parent is what reflects families today. We're simply tracking how many families fit that situation over time," said Rose Kreider, a family demographer at the Census Bureau. She said in an interview that the bureau's definition of a stay-at-home parent is based on a 1950s stereotype of a breadwinner-homemaker family that wasn't necessarily predominant then and isn't now.
Beth Latshaw, an assistant professor of sociology at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., notes the figures are based on a narrow definition in which the wife must be in the labor force for the entire year and the husband be outside the official labor force for the specifically cited reason of "taking care of home and family."
Her own survey found that many fathers who had primary child-care responsibility at home while working part-time or pursuing a degree viewed themselves as stay-at-home fathers. When those factors are included as well as unmarried and single dads, the share of fathers who stay at home to raise children jumps from less than 1 percent to more than 6 percent.
Put another way, roughly one of every five stay-at-home parents is a father.
The remaining share of households without stay-at-home parents — the majority of U.S. families — are cases where both parents work full-time while their children attend school or day care or are watched by nannies or grandparents, or where fathers work full-time while the mothers work part-time and care for children part-time.
"There's still a pervasive belief that men can't care for children as well as women can, reinforcing the father-as-breadwinner ideology," said Latshaw, whose research is being published next month in the peer-reviewed journal "Fathering." She is urging census to expand its definition to highlight the growing numbers, which she believes will encourage wider use of paternity leave and other family-friendly policies.
The new "Mr. Moms" include Todd Krater, 38, of Lakemoor, Ill., a Chicago suburb. Krater has been a self-described stay-at-home dad for the past seven years to his three sons after his wife, who earned a master's business degree, began to flourish in her career as a software specialist.
Krater said he found it difficult adjusting at first and got little support from other mothers who treated him as an outcast at school functions. He eventually started writing a blog, "A Man Among Mommies," to encourage other fathers to take a larger role in child care and says he now revels in seeing more dads at the park, library and school events.
"What was once an uncommon sight of a dad with the kids during the day is becoming more and more prevalent," said Krater, who is now studying part-time to become a registered nurse. "But many still feel the pressure of gender roles and feel if they don't make money they are somehow less of a man."
The census numbers come from the government's Current Population Survey as of March 2010. Among other findings:
_Among adults 25 and older, women are more likely than men to have finished high school, 87.6 percent to 86.6 percent.
_Broken down by race and ethnicity, 52 percent of Asian-Americans had at least a bachelor's degree. That's compared to 33 percent for non-Hispanic whites, 20 percent for blacks and 14 percent for Hispanics.
_Thirty percent of foreign-born residents in the U.S. had less than a high school diploma, compared to 10 percent of U.S.-born residents and 19 percent of naturalized citizens. At the same time, the foreign-born population was just as likely as U.S.-born residents to have at least a bachelor's degree, at roughly 30 percent.
Jeremy Adam Smith, author of the 2009 book "The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms and Shared Parenting are Transforming the American Family," described a cultural shift as women began to surpass men in college enrollment in the 1980s. The 1983 movie, "Mr. Mom," openly broached the idea that out-of-work fathers can contribute to families as stay-at-home dads, allowing more men to be accepting of the role in subsequent recessions, he said.
"Over the long term, the numbers are just going to keep going up," Smith said.—
Online: www.census.gov
Source: www.aolnews.com/story/in-a-first-women-surpass-men-in-advanced/1775518/
The Myth of Testing for Giftedness
The Chicago-area mom of two tween boys brought that same sense of intensity to her quest to find the best possible school for her sons, both of whom are gifted.
"My older son was tested -- given both IQ and achievement tests -- by his public school when he was in kindergarten," Moldofsky recalls. "It was an unprecedented move at the time. We later pursued private testing ... which he had as a first-grader."
The kind of testing Moldofsky calls "unprecedented" is decidedly no longer so. In fact, some parents are going so far as to engage their preschoolers in the kind of intense preparation once reserved for high-school students taking college entrance exams.
Private firms such as Aristotle's
Circle ,
a New York City outfit that aims to "carefully match parents to
experts with current insight and inside knowledge of admissions,
education and child development," cater to parents anxious to get the
best possible education for their child -- gifted or otherwise.
Supply and Demand
Simple economics are driving the use of assessment tests to evaluate younger and younger children for specialized programs and elite private schools in cities where the public system is floundering. So says Dr. Gillian Dowley McNamee, professor of child development and director of teacher education at Erikson Institute, a graduate school of child development in Chicago.
"There are so few good programs, and there is a lot of competition," she tells ParentDish.
The schools need a way to sort children who apply, but testing kids as young as age 4 for gifted, accelerated or magnet programs is a misguided way to do so, she says.
"The whole enterprise of testing kids under the age of 8 is riddled with problems," McNamee says. "They are so volatile (intellectually) that you can't reliably identify their potential."
Not only is the testing misguided, she asserts, it can be
potentially harmful. Children who do well on an assessment test, such
as the Otis-Lennon
School Ability Test
or the Wechsler
Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence
(WPPSI-III), may, in fact, not perform as well in school as their
test scores predict. In that case, McNamee says, parents -- and
schools -- run the risk of setting these students up for an academic
lifetime of failure and frustration.
Steven Roy Goodman, a Washington, D.C.-based educational consultant and author of "College Admissions Together: It Takes A Family," says he sees families at the end of their journey, when the child is preparing for college. However, he finds that the academic philosophy of his clients has been cemented well before they arrive on his doorstep.
Goodman specializes in Ivy League placements, and says all the parents he sees want their children to be happy. What varies, he tells ParentDish, are their definitions of happiness.
"Is happiness defined as a ticket to Harvard or Cornell?" he says. "Or is happiness defined as something like sitting with your family and being happy, even if your child didn't learn something specific that day?"
McNamee says there has been a definite cultural shift in the way parents approach the education of their children. The world economy and a preoccupation with studying for the "A," contribute to the frenzy for assessment through testing alone. It satisfies the craving for a simple yes-or-no answer to the very complicated question of a child's potential for success.
New Standards
Up until very recently, it was considered developmentally appropriate to begin serious reading instruction in the second grade. Now, however, kindergartners who once went to school to learn their ABCs are way behind if they aren't already reading simple words when the school year begins. Even a child's pencil grip can be enough to force parents into decision-making mode: Will she be able to work with her peers or will her pencil grip frustrate her and put her at risk of failing?
And for that matter, can you fail kindergarten?
Not everyone agrees that making kindergarten into the new first
grade is an appropriate response. Early learners need a certain level
of creative play in their school day, according to the Alliance for
Childhood. An organization comprised of childhood development and
educational experts, the group's March 2009 publication, "Crisis in
the Kindergarten: A New Report on the Disappearance of Play," lays
out the dangers
of eliminating play
in early elementary school.
The report asserts that the current state of early education is precarious, indeed: "Kindergartners are now under great pressure to meet inappropriate expectations, including academic standards that until recently were reserved for ?rst grade. At the same time, they are being denied the bene?ts of play -- a major stress reliever."
How Did This Happen?
Those on the anti-testing bandwagon say school should not just be about filling a vessel with knowledge and then testing that vessel's integrity in order to achieve some kind of meritocracy. The knowledge must be contextual, it must be imparted in an environment of peers.
"The question needs to be, how do we use our talents and gifts to benefit the greater group?" McNamee says. "That is what gets missed when you look at 'giftedness.' And let's be honest -- we're only going to get a Mozart once every 300 years."
McNamee pins part of the blame on the now-notorious federal policy of "No Child Left Behind," which, she says, took a perfectly good instrument -- the standardized test -- and made it the only tool in a teacher's assessment toolbox.
"What we know about development has not changed in at least 15
years," she says. "And I do think it is unfortunate, what happened
under 'No
Child Left Behind
.'
It was a great idea to make sure no one was left behind, but what we
did was attach funding decisions to test results, and this is how we
came to this idea of a one-shot test as the decision maker."
She uses a medical metaphor, comparing the assessment test to aspirin. Both have their place, but neither one can be used as a universal panacea.
"No Utopia"
Eager to provide opportunities for their kids, parents are simply playing the game as the rules dictate. Kim Moldofsky's boys, now 11 and 9, are classified as highly gifted and consistently test above their grade levels without any kind of pushing or prodding from their parents, though she still has moments of doubt.
"My approach to educating my highly-gifted boys?" Moldofsky asks. "It often feels all wrong. My older boy has been to three schools so far, and unlike Goldilocks for whom the third time was a charm, nothing has the right fit. We're not going to pursue a fourth because he's slow to transition and, by now, I've learned enough to know there is no Utopia."
That, right there, might just be the rub. There is no perfect school, no ideal teacher -- and no flawless instrument with which to predict a child's future.
If we keep obsessing about performance and measurement, treating kindergarten like academic boot camp, we risk harming the very children we're trying so hard to protect, McNamee says.
"We are pulling the trigger on our own children, right in front of
our own eyes," she says.
Source: www.parentdish.com/2010/05/14/the-myth-of-testing-for-giftedness/?icid=main|htmlws-main-n|dl9|link6|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.parentdish.com%2F2010%2F05%2F14%2Fthe-myth-of-testing-for-giftedness%2F
Editor's Note: Check out "Nurture
Shock" for some real eye-opening evidence
based thinking.
Graduation Rates a 'Catastrophe' in Cities
|
City |
Rank |
Graduation Rate (%) |
|
Detroit |
50 |
24.9 |
|
Indianapolis |
49 |
38.5 |
|
Cleveland |
48 |
34.1 |
|
Baltimore |
47 |
34.6 |
|
Columbus |
46 |
40.9 |
|
Minneapolis |
45 |
43.7 |
|
Dallas |
44 |
44.4 |
|
New York |
43 |
45.2 |
|
Los Angeles |
42 |
45.3 |
|
Oakland |
41 |
45.6 |
|
Kansas City |
40 |
45.7 |
|
Atlanta |
39 |
46.0 |
|
Milwaukee |
38 |
46.1 |
|
Denver |
37 |
46.3 |
|
Oklahoma City |
36 |
47.5 |
|
Miami |
35 |
49.0 |
|
Philadelphia |
34 |
49.6 |
|
Large City Avg. |
50.0 |
|
|
Portland |
29 |
53.1 |
|
Fresno |
23 |
57.4 |
|
San Diego |
15 |
61.6 |
|
Long Beach |
12 |
63.5 |
|
Sacramento |
9 |
66.7 |
|
Seattle |
7 |
67.6 |
|
National Avg. - 2003-04 |
69.9 |
|
|
San Francisco |
5 |
73.1 |
|
San Jose |
2 |
77.0 |
The
report
,
issued by America's Promise Alliance, found that about half of the
students served by public school systems in the nation's largest
cities receive diplomas. Students in suburban and rural public high
schools were more likely to graduate than their counterparts in urban
public high schools, the researchers said.
Nationally, about 70 percent of U.S. students graduate on time with a regular diploma and about 1.2 million students drop out annually.
"When more than 1 million students a year drop out of high school, it's more than a problem, it's a catastrophe," said former Secretary of State Colin Powell, founding chair of the alliance.
His wife, Alma Powell, the chair of the alliance, said students need to graduate with skills that will help them in higher education and beyond. "We must invest in the whole child, and that means finding solutions that involve the family, the school and the community." The Powell's organization was beginning a national campaign to cut high school dropout rates.
The group, joining Education Secretary Margaret Spellings at a Tuesday news conference, was announcing plans to hold summits in every state during the next two years on ways to better prepare students for college and the work force.
The report found troubling data on the prospects of urban public high school students getting to college. In Detroit's public schools, 24.9 percent of the students graduated from high school, while 30.5 percent graduated in Indianapolis Public Schools and 34.1 percent received diplomas in the Cleveland Municipal City School District.
Researchers analyzed school district data from 2003-2004 collected by the U.S. Department of Education. To calculate graduation rates, the report estimated the likelihood that a 9th grader would complete high school on time with a regular diploma. Researchers used school enrollment and diploma data, but did not use data on dropouts as part of its calculation.
Many metropolitan areas also showed a considerable gap in the graduation rates between their inner-city schools and the surrounding suburbs. Researchers found, for example, that 81.5 percent of the public school students in Baltimore's suburbs graduate, compared with 34.6 percent in the city schools.
In Ohio, nearly 83 percent of public high school students in suburban Columbus graduate while 78.1 percent in suburban Cleveland earn their diplomas, well above their local city schools.
Ohio Department of Education spokesman Scott Blake said the state delays its estimates by a few months so it can include summer graduates in its calculations. Based on the state's methodology, he said Columbus graduated 60.6 percent of its students in 2003-2004, rather than the 40.9 percent the study calculated.
By Ohio's reckoning, Columbus has improved each year since the 2001-2002 school year, with 72.9 percent of students graduating in 2005-2006, Columbus Public Schools spokesman Jeff Warner said.
Warner said the gains were partly because of after-school and weekend tutoring, coordinated literacy programs in the district's elementary schools and bolstered English-as-a-second-language programs.
Cleveland's current graduation rates are also higher than the statistics cited in the new report, school district spokesman Ben Holbert said.
Spellings has called for requiring states to provide graduation data in a more uniform way under the renewal of the No Child Left Behind education law pending in Congress.
Under the 2002 law, schools that miss progress goals face increasing sanctions, including forced use of federal money for private tutoring, easing student transfers, and restructuring of school staff.
States calculate their graduation rates using all sorts of methods, many of which critics say are based on unreliable information about school dropouts. Under No Child Left Behind, states may use their own methods of calculating graduation rates and set their own goals for improving them.
The research was conducted by Editorial Projects in Education, a Bethesda, Md., nonprofit organization, with support from America's Promise Alliance and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The alliance is based on a joint effort of nonprofit groups,
corporations, community leaders, charities, faith-based organizations
and individuals to improve children's lives.
Source: news.aol.com/story/_a/graduation-rates-a-catastrophe-in-cities/20080401064409990001
What's to blame for
differing test scores between the sexes?
The reason that home-schooled boys score as well as their female counterparts in English is twofold, said Manthey. First, they are more likely to be given a choice in their reading material. Second, “they’re less likely to fall through the cracks,” he said.
Manthey’s research shows that boys are more inclined to read nonfiction than fiction, and are more likely to relate to subjects related to science, sports and stories that revolve around male characters.
“Then you see boys required to read books like ‘The Joy Luck Club,’” he said, referring to the book by Amy Tan about immigrant mothers and daughters.
It’s no wonder, said Manthey, that boys tune out in English class.
Aaron agrees. “I’m trying to sell ‘The Joy Luck Club’ to a classroom with about 18 boys, and that is definitely a hard sell.” But while the first semester of his class may focus on stories about women, said Aaron, the second semester incorporates texts that are more likely to appeal to a male audience.
“I am definitely aware that there is a gender difference, and you have to be on your toes and hit all the different groups and modes of learning,” he said.
Manthey, however, worries that the system is set up for girls, leaving boys in English class behind.
“I think in the last 20 years or so, schools have focused very heavily on educating girls,” said Napa County Office of Education Superintendent Barbara Nemko. “Because the focus was so much on girls, we have not been focusing on boys.”
Peters said one controversial theory in educational psychology is that boys believe “the classroom game is rigged” and that “it is taught by women and set up for girls.”
And when the state and federal governments base accountability on
student subgroups like ethnicity and socioeconomics with no regard
for gender, Manthey worries that educators simply don’t
care.
Source: Joe Manthey, www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2008/03/03/news/local/doc47cb98fd7b93d238964869.txt
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