How does NCS deal with girls who are ahead in math?

[Anonymous]

Staffing - students have equal access to all the high level courses but these are HS with classes of 75 or 80 - not 400+ like TJ, not enough teachers to be able to offer a one section course in that department. Samr thing happens in the "Reserve way" where STA kids have to come over to NCS for courses like anatomy and enviornmental policy.

[Anonymous]

sorry my spelling was horrible on that post - please grade from content not grammar/spelling!

[Anonymous]

Upper school parents: Anyone know STA's math placement schedule? For example, what level math are the boys placed in at 9th grade, in general?

If your son in 7th grade wasn't placed in honors math, is it possible for him to ever get placed in the higher math courses in upper school or will he remain a course or two, behind?

Are summer (for credit) math courses an option?

[Anonymous]

NCS does a solid job with the above-average math student. They have more trouble with the truly outstanding girls. There are some signs that the school is beginning to address this issue, with a new focus on STEM, and a big article in the 2009 NCS magazine on how a few students have excelled on math teams. If your DD is in the top 10%, she should be fine. If she is in the top 1% or better, you're going to have some good years and some bad years no matter which school you pick.
As for the StA question, we were told that math classes are kept separate until 12th grade so the girls don't have to worry about having boys in math class. Maybe more protective than useful, but that's the philosophy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NCS does a solid job with the above-average math student. They have more trouble with the truly outstanding girls. There are some signs that the school is beginning to address this issue, with a new focus on STEM, and a big article in the 2009 NCS magazine on how a few students have excelled on math teams. If your DD is in the top 10%, she should be fine. If she is in the top 1% or better, you're going to have some good years and some bad years no matter which school you pick.
As for the StA question, we were told that math classes are kept separate until 12th grade so the girls don't have to worry about having boys in math class. Maybe more protective than useful, but that's the philosophy.[/quote


Really, an NCS administrator said they separate the girls and boys in HS math so the girls don't have to "worry"?

[Anonymous]

PP here: I don't remember the exact wording, but the general idea was that girls often get intimidated in math early in adolescence. NCS seems to find it particularly important to give them a protected environment in which to concentrate on the math itself rather than competing with the boys, either in the math or for attention in class. Not relevant for me and not relevant for my DD - maybe even detrimental. But it's obviously been true enough for enough NCS girls for them to have made it a policy. If they provided sufficient opportunities for the exceptional math students, I wouldn't care whether there were or weren't boys in the class.

[Anonymous]

SAM2 wrote:The spreadsheet linked from the FAQ page has a summary of how NCS students have done at the last few MAA mathematics competitions: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AnukIDABt_JKdDdZYXlQbnFUQ0VfMHRpTFp1SUIxS2c&hl=en&pli=1#gid=11 . Results are very respectable, so at least based on that narrow results-oriented metric, it seems NCS is doing something right.

Actually, the spreadsheet would make me very concerned if I had a DD at NCS. STA and NCS draw from a similar talent pool, yet at AMC-12 Math Distinguished Honors + Honors STA scores at 8.44% and NCS scores at 4.96%. This is a huge difference. It suggests that NCS is falling short in helping girls achieve their potential and would have much to learn from STA. And not just NCS --- at 2.45% Holton has much to prove. Too much marketing hype and insufficiently impressive results!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Actually, the spreadsheet would make me very concerned if I had a DD at NCS. STA and NCS draw from a similar talent pool, yet at AMC-12 Math Distinguished Honors + Honors STA scores at 8.44% and NCS scores at 4.96%. This is a huge difference. It suggests that NCS is falling short in helping girls achieve their potential and would have much to learn from STA. And not just NCS --- at 2.45% Holton has much to prove. Too much marketing hype and insufficiently impressive results!

Or else it could be very consistent with the long-standing (yet frustrating) disparity between male/female achievement in math competitions. If you take a look at the honors lists for AMC, there are many more male names than female names. At math magnets like TJ, the number of male students is surprisingly higher than the number of female students. There are lots of scholarly (and not so scholarly) articles on this disparity. I'm not trying to open debate on the causes or cures for it, but just noting that the disparity exists, so it's not entirely surprising to see all-girls schools with weaker numbers in math competitions than all-boys schools.

[Anonymous]

13:40: The claim is that girls schools know how to teach girls math in ways that eliminate these disparities. And yet, while according to the spreadsheet, SAT scores are actually quite a bit higher at NCS than at STA, the girls' math performance seems to be much worse. Why?

[Anonymous]

Faculty availability, I think. They've long had divisions of labor, with some advanced courses taught at NCS that St. A boys go over to, and math is at StA.

[Anonymous]

Very random from looking at the St. A list of NM Semis - 3 (maybe 4) of those 12 kids went to Norwood for K-8.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:13:40: The claim is that girls schools know how to teach girls math in ways that eliminate these disparities. And yet, while according to the spreadsheet, SAT scores are actually quite a bit higher at NCS than at STA, the girls' math performance seems to be much worse. Why?

(1) I didn't read the prior claim as saying all disparities are eliminated, but rather just suggesting the school is taking steps to reduce disparities. I think educators across the country have been trying to address these disparities for years, so I'd be amazed if NCS could eliminate them with some simple change.
(2) Why does NCS not do as well in math competitions as its standardized SAT/PSAT scores might suggest? I don't know for sure. I've read some articles suggesting that the most persistent area of male/female disparity in math is at the very top-end -- precisely the area addressed by these competitions. Also, I've seen other studies suggesting that boys generally try harder & perform better in contest-type situations like this. The "why?" is really a bigger question than I'm capable of handling, but those are my uneducated best guesses.

[Anonymous]

NCS actually does very well in competitions admistered during school hours where all the girls compete. all the math meets conflict with sports so they loose many participants that way. i also don't understand where the "why is ncs lagging behind sta" in math is coming from, as a parent with students at both school i would say they do an equally strong job.

[Anonymous]

Math is a serious problem at NCS and they know it. It is not well taught and the offerings do not address the top end.

[Anonymous]

Many of the teachers at NCS are too passive.