On Friday, the American Institutes of Physics released a rating of states by a "Science and Engineering Readiness Index" (or SERI). The Orlando Sentinel blog covered this late Friday night, but I have delayed comment until the end of the holiday weekend and I suspect few of you were going to read it anyway. But you should click through.
The ratings are based entirely on various measures of success in calculus and physics (see FSU physicist Paul Cottle's March 2011 explanation of the components). The summary display is a map with colors for above- and below-average ratings by state, and there is no surprise that the South is generally below-average and the Northeast generally above-average (lowest rating: Mississippi; highest: Massachusetts). What is surprising is that with three exceptions (FL, GA, TN), the whole sunbelt from California to North Carolina comprises the bulk of below-average states on this composite measure.
If this strikes you as similar in some regards to the coverage of the updated federal education Civil Rights Data Collection, updated and released on Thursday, it should. Both are rough measures of equality, and the press release tied to the federal data release pointed to inequalities in access to an academic curriculum: in the sample of 7,000+ districts, "more than 2 million students in about 7,300 schools had no access to calculus classes." That gap in availability of challenging math courses shows that the issue is not just one of the standard science sequence, where physics is last in the lab course sequence and thus has a structurally lower enrollment demand. That sequence is a factor, but not alone. And if there is one thing Florida can claim in its expansion of AP enrollment is growing training of teachers for advanced topics in high school.
Much to his credit, Cottle is careful to explain that SERI is just one indicator. But it's fair to put this one out there. As states face the ARRA funding cliff this fall, they are going to face enormous pressures to reduce availability of a broad variety of courses not defined as "core" to preserve what the politics of education defines as "essential." You can graduate high school in most states without taking calculus or physics, as well as art or music. So in many cases they will be shorted.
“And if there is one thing Florida can claim in its expansion of AP enrollment is growing training of teachers for advanced topics in high school.”
I have no idea what training this is. Uh, sure you aren’t confusing this with salary structure inducements for advanced degrees? like a masters? or a specialist degree?