Less than half of students at science competency

I don’t know which is scariest:

• (A) That only 27% of Georgia’s 4th graders are at competency for science learning.
• (B) That the national average is only 32%.
• or (C) That the definition of science competency is pretty amazingly low.

For a 4th grader, an example of skills demonstrated at “Proficiency” is “Recognize that gravitational force constantly affects an object.”  Really?  Most 4th graders don’t know that?

In a conference call on today’s release of national 2009 science scores of grades 4 and 8 and 12, members of the governing board of the the National Assessment of Educational Progress decried the one percent of students scoring at the top level. There was also concern over the growing number of students scoring below the most basic levels.

At the two grade levels where Georgia students’ test results were released, less than one-third are demonstrating solid academic performance and competency in science.

In Georgia, 27 percent of fourth graders performed at or above the proficient level on science, compared to the national average of 32 percent. In eighth grade,  27 percent performed at or above proficient, compared to 29 percent nationally. Twelfth grade scores were not released by state.

via NAEP science: Less than half of students at competency | Get Schooled.

New GaComputes Reports for CE21

Next week is the first NSF Computing Education for the 21st Century Community Meeting, in New Orleans, organized and hosted by NCWIT.  In preparing for that meeting, we gathered some of our evaluation work into handouts, and now we’ve uploaded them to our website.  Some of the new things that might be of interest to readers here (Warning: Most of these are technical reports, not peer-reviewed publications!  The technical reports summarize analyses — lots of data, little explanation):

• 2-Page Summary of “Georgia Computes!” for the 2011 CE21 Meeting

• We generated this as a summary for high school principals about the work going on in the School of Interactive Computing around CS Ed:  2010 CS Education flyer
• A really interesting report coming out of the statewide survey of CS1 students that we did last year.  Trevisan, B., McKlin, T., & Guzdial, M. (2011). Factors Influencing CS Participation: Introductory Computer Science Students Describe What Led Them to Computing. (GaComputes! Technical Report). Atlanta: The Findings Group, LLC.
• An analysis of survey results that helps us identify the factors that influence women and members of under-represented groups in pursuing computing. Engelman, S., McKlin, T., & Guzdial, M. (2011). Conditions that encourage participation in computer science (GaComputes! Technical Report). Atlanta: The Findings Group, LLC.
• An analysis of where we are with respect to AP CS Level A in Georgia.  Engelman, S., McKlin, T., & Ericson, B, Guzdial, M. (2011). Georgia Computes! Advanced Placement Analysis (2010).(GaComputes! Technical Report). Atlanta: The Findings Group, LLC.
• This is some of the raw data that influenced the recent blog post on contexts in workshops, talking about robots, Alice, Scratch, Pleo dinosaurs, and PICO Crickets. Engelman, S., McKlin, T., & Ericson, B., & Guzdial, M. (2011).Georgia Computes! Roll-Up Analysis: Student Workshops August 2009 to August 2010. (GaComputes! Technical Report). Atlanta: The Findings Group, LLC.
• This is an assessment instrument that we use in the Operation: Reboot project (aiming at helping unemployed IT workers become computing teachers) to evaluate their attitudes toward teaching.  Trevisan, B., Engelman, S., McKlin, T., Ericson, B.& Guzdial, M. (2011). Operation Reboot’s Teaching Opinion Survey (GaComputes! Technical Report). Atlanta: The Findings Group, LLC.