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Dear Council<br>
<br>
here is today's NYT editorial. <br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/opinion/too-few-girls-and-minorities-study-tech-subjects.html?hp&rref=opinion">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/opinion/too-few-girls-and-minorities-study-tech-subjects.html?hp&rref=opinion</a><br>
<br>
Nothing really new but another fresh testimonial that there's still
a lot that needs be done about D & I...<br>
<br>
Fulvia<br>
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<h6 class="kicker">Editorial Board<br>
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<h2 itemprop="alternativeHeadline" class="articleHeadline"><nyt_headline
version="1.0" type=" ">Missing From Science Class</nyt_headline></h2>
<h1 itemprop="headline" class="articleSubHeadline">Too Few Girls and
Minorities Study Tech Subjects</h1>
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A big reason America is falling behind other countries in science
and math is that we have effectively written off a huge chunk of our
population as uninterested in those fields or incapable of
succeeding in them.<br>
<br>
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Women make up nearly half the work force but have just 26 percent
of science, technology, engineering or math jobs, <a
href="http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/employment_occupations/cb13-162.html">according</a>
to the Census Bureau. Blacks make up 11 percent of the workforce
but just 6 percent of such jobs and Hispanics make up nearly 15
percent of the work force but hold 7 percent of those positions.
There is no question that women and minorities have made progress
in science and math in the last several decades, but their gains
have been slow and halting. And in the fast-growing field of
computer science, women’s representation has actually declined in
the last 20 years, while minorities have made relatively small
gains. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
These jobs come with above-average pay and offer workers a wide
choice of professions. Opening them to women and minorities would
help reduce corrosive income inequality between whites and other
groups, and would narrow the gender gap in wages. Improving the
representation of women and minorities would also enrich American
scientific research and development, because they will add a
different perspective to workplaces currently dominated by white
and Asian men. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
Moreover, the people who do well in these professions will be much
more likely to lead the industry in the future and make decisions
that affect thousands of workers and customers. Many technology
companies, including Twitter until recently, have no women on
their board of directors, and few blacks and Hispanics in senior
management roles, in part because too few girls and minorities are
becoming programmers and engineers. </p>
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<p class="subhead"><strong>What’s Holding Them Back<br>
</strong></p>
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</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">he biggest career disadvantage faced by
many lower-income blacks and Hispanics is their limited access to
a good education. Compared with upper-income Americans, a greater
percentage are raised by parents who have not gone to college or
graduated from high school, and more grow up with single parents
who do not have the time or resources to enrich their children’s
education. Moreover, a smaller percentage of minority children
attend enriching prekindergarten programs, which studies have
shown aids the development of cognitive and analytical skills that
are needed to do well in science and math. A <a
href="http://bit.ly/19xkna0">recent study</a> showed that nearly
half of Hispanic 4-year-olds are not enrolled in any preschool
classes. While more than 60 percent of black 4-year-olds are
enrolled, most of them are in programs of low or mediocre quality.
</p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
Schools that serve minority and lower-income neighborhoods tend to
employ teachers with fewer years of experience and less
specialized training in math and science than schools in white and
upper-income neighborhoods, according to a 2012 National Science
Foundation <a
href="http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/pdf/seind12.pdf">report</a>.
By contrast, developed nations like Germany, South Korea and
Belgium tend to devote more resources like teachers to schools
that serve their most disadvantaged students than on schools that
serve advantaged children, <a
href="http://www.oecd.org/pisa/46623978.pdf">according to</a>
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.</p>
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</p>
<p class="subhead"><strong>Lower Expectations</strong> </p>
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Entrenched stereotypes about who does well in science and math
also work against minorities in classrooms. Too many teachers give
up easily on them simply because they are not expected to do as
well as white students. Despite those challenges, many minorities
still enroll in science and math programs in college but fewer of
them earn a degree in those programs in five years — 22.1 percent
for Hispanics and 18.4 percent for blacks — than whites (33
percent) and Asians (42 percent), according to a <a
href="http://bit.ly/1d5yTYY">study</a> by researchers at the
University of California, Los Angeles. Many of those who leave are
simply ill-prepared for the rigors of college-level math and
science. Others feel socially unwelcome because they make up a
tiny minority in largely white and Asian science and engineering
departments. They also have far fewer role models to look up to. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
Unlike minority children, girls as a whole do about as well as or
better than boys as <a
href="http://www.aauw.org/resource/why-so-few-women-in-science-technology-engineering-and-mathematics/">measured
by</a> their high school grade point averages in science and
math. And in the last several decades, women have made great gains
in fields like biology, chemistry, psychology and sociology; they
now earn a majority of undergraduate degrees and a growing
proportion of advanced degrees in life sciences. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
But women have made far fewer gains in physical sciences and more
math-intensive fields. When making choices about their majors and
careers, many young women rule out engineering and computer
science partly because they are uninterested, feel ill-prepared
for them or because society identifies these domains as male.
Women who do earn degrees in these fields leave those professions
at much higher rates than men. And the women who graduate with
degrees in engineering and computer science are<a
href="http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-24.pdf"> less
likely </a>to be employed than men. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
In many cases, women seem to have internalized society’s belief
that they are incapable of mastering these fields as well as men.
Carol Dweck, a professor at Stanford, and other psychologists have
<a
href="https://www.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/system/files/cdweckmathgift.pdf">found</a>
that female students who are made to believe that math ability is
innate have lower scores and are less likely to study math than
girls who believe that math skills can be acquired through hard
work. Another <a
href="http://allenmcconnell.net/pdfs/mcst-JPSP-2009.pdf">study</a>
showed that female college students got more questions right on
math tests when they were told beforehand that “college students
are good at math” than when they were told “women are bad at
math,” which suggests stereotypes undermine women’s performance.<br>
</p>
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<p class="subhead"><strong>Insufficient Resources</strong> </p>
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These gaps could be reduced if every child had access to free
public preschools. Earlier this year, President Obama proposed
making high-quality preschools available to 4-year-old children of
families with incomes of up to 200 percent of the federal poverty
line, at a 10-year cost of $75 billion. Studies have shown that
every $1 invested in preschools saves society $7 in the future
through lower spending on remedial education, higher productivity
and less crime. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
The country should also make sure that the schools that primarily
serve minorities have the resources and support they need to hire
qualified teachers so their students are not at a disadvantage
relative to children in more affluent areas. States will need to
take the lead to make this happen, but the federal government can
also assist through grants and other support.<br>
</p>
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<p class="subhead"><strong>Conventional Teaching Methods</strong> </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
The Knowledge Is Power Program, which operates 141 public charter
schools around the country, has effectively used smaller class
sizes, longer school days and summer school to help lagging
minority students improve test scores in math, reading and
science. Teachers at KIPP schools maintain high expectations of
all students, working intensively one-on-one with children until
they comprehend every important concept. Though the program has
been criticized for its dropout rates and admissions policies, one
recent independent <a
href="http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/Newsroom/Releases/2013/KIPP_2_13.asp">study</a>
of KIPP’s approach showed that middle school students who spent
three years in its schools had math scores that on average put
them 11 months ahead of where they would have been had they not
joined the school; they were 14 months ahead in science
achievement. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
Teachers also need to make science and math education much more
practical and hands-on. Girls have shown much more engagement in
subjects when they learn the <a
href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/IEEE99.html">connection</a>
between what they are studying and real-world problems. That may
partly explain why so many talented girls prefer to go into life
sciences, where that link has generally been more apparent.<br>
</p>
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<p class="subhead"><strong>Not Enough Role Models</strong> </p>
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Groups like the National Action Council for Minorities in
Engineering have been <a
href="http://www.nacme.org/middle-high-school-programs"> showing</a>
minorities and girls that they can imagine themselves as
scientists or engineers, providing role models to speak to middle
school students and helping high schools set up engineering
academies. A five-year <a
href="http://www.cs.bowiestate.edu/cas/stem.html">program</a>
funded by the National Science Foundation at Bowie State
University, a historically black university in Maryland, provides
training and mentorship to high school science and math teachers
and a summer science academy to 10th graders. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
For both women and minorities, academic and social support is
critical. The University of Maryland, Baltimore County has
programs for <a href="http://meyerhoff.umbc.edu/">minorities</a>
and <a href="http://www.cwit.umbc.edu/scholars/">women</a> that
provide students with scholarships, mentorship, internships and
involvement in cutting-edge research. Students enrolled in its
programs are much more likely to graduate than other comparable
students. </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
More than half of the American population will be made up of
minorities <a
href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/population/cb12-243.html">in
2043</a>. And the number of women who are the primary or sole
earner in their families is <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/business/economy/women-as-family-breadwinner-on-the-rise-study-says.html">growing</a>.
Those trends make it imperative that one of the most dynamic
sectors of our economy no longer remain a male and largely white
and Asian domain. </p>
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