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Re: Bimodal Grade Distributions



On Wednesday, April 17, Karl Trappe wrote:

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the numbers still show that (with
composite certification still allowed) over 1/3 of all teachers who teach
physics in high schools in the USA have NEVER taken a physics course in
their lives!!! Science, with 3 times as much new vocabulary as a foreign
language, should be harder than teaching a foreign language without ever
taking it!!!

Funny you should mention this. Just today, in the mail, I got a copy of the
AIP Report "Overcoming Inertia: High School Physics in the 1990s" by Michael
Neuschatz and Lori Alpert. It's chock-full of hard numbers, compiled from a
survey of over 3300 high school physics teachers. Of these responding teachers
(there are appendices to the report which discuss possible biases and error),
less than 1 in 5 had had a year or less of college physics (still too high,
but not as bad as 1 in 3). Among public school teachers, 3/4 (74%) had either
full or temporary physics certification, while 24% had certification in another
science or mathematics. The remaining 2% either had no certification or were
certified in a non-science or math field.

I think the results of this report might be worthy of discussion here, and I
will be interested to hear other people's views of it. To get a single copy
free of charge, contact

AIP Education and Employment Statistics Division
One Physics Ellipse
College Park, MD 20740-3843

email: jcabrera@aip.org

Mike Thayer
Laboratory for Astrophysics & Space Research
The University of Chicago
thayer@odysseus.uchicago.edu | http://astro.uchicago.edu/home/web/thayer/