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Future Teachers and SAT scores
February 06, 2004Each year, over a million college-bound high school students take the SAT test. And each year, The College Board publishes reports which are gold mines of information for statistics junkies like us.
We decided to have some fun with the 2003 report (pdf), looking specifically at the average scores for groups of students headed towards different college majors.
As you may well know, the SAT test is divided into two halves: Math and Verbal, with the scores reported separately for each. For some unfair comparisions, it is interesting to see how math and science fields do on the Verbal, and how language and humanities fields do on the Math.
The Math SAT: As would be expected, Mathematics majors scored highest of all the majors on the Math portion, with a 626 point average. They soundly trounced the Language and Literature majors, who were 76 points behind. But here's the kicker: Language and Literature scored 67 points higher in Math than Education majors!
Not to put too fine a point on it, but well over half of future teachers will end up either teaching math or a math-heavy field such as science. Meanwhile future linguists, authors, and literature critics might not ever see another equation in their life.
And yet with Euclidian aplomb they fairly kicked Education majors' butts (by 1.75 standard deviations, no less).
Ok, we hear your protests. Not every teacher will teach math, granted. So let's look at the Verbal scores.
The Verbal SAT: Here, Language and Literature majors got their reciprocity, outperforming all other majors with a score of 603. Mathematics majors were forced to lick their wounds 58 points back. But (and you knew this was coming) the Math majors came off as quite cultured in comparison to our soon-to-be public school teachers, beating Education majors by 63 Verbal points!
This is embarrassing.
It could be worse: In a comparison of 21 college categories (we're eliminating the non-college categories of "Home Economics" and "Technical and Vocational") Education majors come in third-to-last place on the Math portion. Only "Agriculture or Natural Resources" and "Public Affairs and Services" majors scored worse.
In the Verbal portion--which should be a teacher's strong point, or so we thought--Education majors took the silver medal in the race for last place. "Public Affairs and Services" again occupied the basement.
All we can say is, Thank God for government majors.
Now isn't it about time we dismantle "Schools of Education" nationwide, and actually permit college students who major in something else (anything else but government) to become teachers? Please?
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Charles
Could you please let me have your contact email so I can write to you about our educational problems here in Australia
Jean, it's chett at mac dot com. (Trying to confuse the spambots, you know.)
chett February 7, 2004 03:12 AMI wonder what any of this has to do with what those seniors actually get a degree in? These are high school students, and we just don't know what they wind up doing.
Also, most universities and colleges of which I'm aware require prospective high school teachers to major in the subject they intend to teach. "Education majors" usually refers to those who will teach in elementary school.
Michael February 7, 2004 10:25 AMMichael, thanks for your comments. You are correct that the correlation with high schoolers choosing education majors and scoring low on the SAT doesn't prove anything.
However this trend is many years long. For some reason, the least educated of our high school students are attracted to the Education major.
While some localities may reqire a major in the area of future high school teaching (we know that many private schools have this requirement), I don't know of any such regs at the university or state level.
If you have any specifics of which I'm not aware, please send them along, I'd love to see them.
chett February 7, 2004 10:39 AMOnly about 30% of the people who start college actually finish a Bachelor's degree in five years or less. So many of the people in the College Board's survey will never graduate much less make it into a specialty program of any kind. Also many of these people want to teach elementary school which doesn't require a full degree in math or science.
Just dumping colleges of education would not solve the problem of finding good teachers, however. Even a very intellegent person with a degree needs some training in order to become a good teacher. We need an intern/residency program, of the type that doctors go through, for teachers. They spend their first few years working with an experienced teacher to learn their craft while teaching less than a full schedule. More expensive than what most systems do now (nothing) but cheaper than colleges of education.
Tim February 7, 2004 11:41 AMChett, my university requires academic majors for secondary ed, education in general requires a higher GPA. E-mail me and we'll talk.
Michael February 7, 2004 12:27 PMTim, I respectfully disagree that teachers should have two years of training. That's one of the whole points of this site is that teaching (and education reform are not rocket science.
While not every one is cut out for teaching, with a strong foundation of background knowledge, and some skill in classroom management (the only "class" that I think should be offered for teachers), anyone who wants to teach should be able to teach.
chett February 7, 2004 12:41 PMWouldn't it make a whole lot more sense to work backwards to find the real truth? - Let's look at Teachers (or scientists, or lawyers, or whatever else) and see what their SAT scores were and how they did on verbal and math portions.
I would be willing to bet that most teachers (not all) had pretty mediocre scores..
None of the people in my Masters science/math education program were ed majors in college...
Jeff February 7, 2004 03:43 PMJudy,
Quite a few people would have mediocre scores using your criteria. I remember reading a list published in Time a few years back that stated that SAT scores of famous novelists. Amy Tan got an 1100, I think, and many others were less than stellar.
Still, with hard work and training, they managed to be successful. What would be your point in finding out the SAT scores of teachers? And what would be the relevance of those scores to adult, professional success?
Unless you've got an axe to grind, which I suspect is the point.
SuzieQ February 7, 2004 09:01 PMI have to respectfully disagree with the position that elementary teachers don't need math coursework. Only a person who had not taken or understood algebra could assert that the standard addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division algorithms, and other mathematical skills so disdained by constructivists, are useless to a child's future education. It is imperative that we get at least some college algebra into the heads of our future elementary school teachers.
Wacky Hermit February 8, 2004 09:10 AMAnybody who doubts the truth of what Wacky Hermit said _must_ read "Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics" by Liping Ma. Successful teaching of elementary mathematics requires a much greater depth of matehmatical understanding than many people suppose, and the lack of that understanding has serious consequences.
Steve LaBonne February 10, 2004 03:32 PM