What you were suggesting would harm far more kids than the surplus of money.
@anon71262119 - I mentioned a fairly long list items I would address at the beginning of the thread.
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Whelp in the context that funding = revenues I would agree with you. I wasnāt thinking about it in that fashion when I made the original statement, so thank you for helping me clarify my thoughts
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@pfury, Iām contemplating your comments regarding school profits, and Iām sympathetic to what I perceive is the issue underlying your concern. The problem as I see it is, a for-profit scholastic organization can seek to maximize the educational experience of its students, or it can seek to maximize its profits, but it canāt do both. Are your concerns related to this issue?
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One problem. You think girls are under represented in STEM now? Just wait. Iāve honestly never met a female math teacher/professor. Though I only have a bachelorās.
I like your idea in principle. But NOW and ACLU would sue any district that tried this right into the ground.
My first college math teacher was an Iranian woman who wore a head dress.
3/7 math teachers were women.
3/7? 42.8%!!! See how totally sexist STEM is?!
In this example STEM is exactly 7.2% sexist.
Lame joke.
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Related. There is some research related to female students doing better in subjects like math when the classes are separated by gender. I donāt have it in front of me at the moment, and I canāt recall the data about boys.
No idea. We tend to have mostly women in the lower grades, with more men in high schools and colleges. Interesting, because I could make an argument about why the first grade teacher who teaches your child to read is perhaps the most important one. I liked preschool diagnostics because I liked being at the foundation, and I loved seeing kids with their parents.
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This is a large part of my disdain for higher education actually. The caveat is I canāt even find blame with the low level colleges, and theyāre the ones impacting 75% of the student population. High level administration in schools are judged (ie, rewarded, compensated, etc) by their ability to keep their school competetive in the āmarketplace.ā To do this, there was a steady shift upwards in the cost of higher education in every segment.
I attribute this, largely, to the hyper-competitive shift that colleges caught in the ~70-80s. Since higher education KNEW the government would increase funding alongside their spending, they had no fear of destroying the market by being hyper-competetive, while not having the same scrutiny that public (K-12 type) schools have about managing their budget effectively. This led to an overwhelmingly large spike in tuition costs (and certainly on a cost/benefit ratio). All the while knowing they have the most amazing safety net in the world via the US govt.
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This is dead on. A childās mind is so much more malleable at a young age, and with as much contact as you have with individual teachers at a young age (I had 2 K teachers for my entire grade of ~30 or so, while having a different teacher for every class in HS). Getting that much face time puts so much more importance on the quality you get at that level.
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Really? Out of 3 math courses, I had 2 female 1 male. It seemed that through all of them the students of opposite gender to the professor has a harder time understanding what was being presented.
I could see something like that transforming the representation of girls/women in the stem fields. Imagine that- Female maths/science/shop teachers showing the next generation of women that it is in fact possible for them to develop skills and succeed in mens fields.
And in welding? Fugetaboutit. The women in the courses I took were 100% lost. The contrast was absolutely amazing. For guys- instructor stops in the booth, points at a couple of things, and its done. With the women, honestly, no amount of explanation or demonstration was going to help. To their credit- they were basically 100% self taught, and very good.
Main complaint when weād talk, across the boards- āHeās mean and moves too fast.ā. My response- āNah. Heās cool. We just donāt communicate the same. Women talk about things. Men point and grunt.ā.
Anecdotal experience coming, but I (education douche alert!) have degrees from three different quantitative departments - CMU statistics, Pitt statistics, Pitt epidemiology - and the proportion of male:female professors was much more evenly distributed than you might expect. Pitt statistics was pretty heavily male, but CMU statistics and Pitt epidemiology/biostatistics both have a large representation of females on faculty. In fact, several of the local quantitative departments have female chairs.
More broadly, I think the point stands that gender matching teachers and students seems like it could have some unintended domino effects for the worse. No disrespect, Skyz, just not feeling ya on this one. Although maybe I could see it making sense at a YOUNGER age (which could be what you meant - like 5, 6, 7 year olds only). I think you have a point that males benefit from a strong male mentor and females benefit from a strong female mentor, but that needs to come from home, IMO.
You notice how Skyz, Basement_Gainz and I all have pretty different viewpoints but never really get into it with one another? Good old Western PA folk.
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Itās the common bond we all share- A mutual love of the Steelers!
(donāt hold back. Iām expecting it.)
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Agree 100% on this though.
@ActivitiesGuy @SkyzykS
Had a friend from Philly tell me that he hates driving in the burgh. āEveryone just waits at lights and waves each other through and takes their turn. Thatād never fly in Philly! Youād die!ā
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Iām envious of your advanced degrees. If I could afford the time and cost of getting a masters and beyond, I would in a heart beat. I loved school. Probably why I read so much now.
If I could go back, right now, Iād study: Epistemology, Statistics, Economics, and get an MBA for the hell of it.
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Your balance sheet thanks you.
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@ActivitiesGuy and @SkyzykS. You think of mostly private schools separating kids by gender with all female, or all male schools.
It looks like the research on itās effectiveness is pretty mixed. I didnāt find anything really convincing to justify doing it across the board.
Some of the reasoning has to do with boys lagging girls in reading comprehension, girls not being as competitive when pitted against boys, and kids of both genders being distracted by the cutie in the next row. wink.
I did find a NYT article with this, āThe federal Education Department says there are about 750 public schools around the country with at least one single-sex class and 850 entirely single-sex public schools.ā As you might guess, itās controversial, and yes the ACLU has gotten involved in it in at least a couple of states.
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The public high schools where I grew up were segregated by sex. (They long ago abandoned this practice.)
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Iām surprised. Was this common in the South in the 1970s? I donāt know if you grew up there, but I picture an East coast Dead Poetās Society thing, or parochial schools.
I did grow up in the South (not in a rural area, thoughāwas in the burbs of a large city), and go to HS in the 70s. I canāt speak to how widespread/common the practice was, however.
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