“Form an image of yourself and make the future conform to it” – Friedrich Nietzsche

According to a recent study led by Swarthmore professor Thomas Dee, having a teacher of the opposite sex hurts students’ academic performance.

Using data collected from 25,000 8th graders who took part in the National Education Longitudinal Survey (NELS), Dee and a team of researchers from Stanford University claim that students performed about 4 percent better on tests when their teachers were of the same sex.

In addition to test performance, the study also looked at the perceptions of teachers and students. The study found that female teachers are much more likely to see boys as disruptive. Also, girls are considerably more likely to repot that they did not look forward to a subject, that it was not useful for their future, and that they were afraid to ask questions.

Given the predominance of female teachers in middle school –more than 90 percent of the nation’s middle-school reading teachers are female, as well as more than 70 percent of math and science teachers—these findings may provide important insights into our school reform initiatives.

Although it is tempting to draw hasty conclusions about sex, gender and schooling based on the news reports, it is important that we not read too much into these findings based on media reports. Instead, we should pay careful attention to how the study was conducted and analyzed on the school, classroom, and individual outcome levels. A few quick thoughts before reading the study:

In order to completely understand the findings, we must see if the study controlled for school type. Specifically, issues of urbanicity, school size and grade distribution are critical factors. Why? Because urban schools tend to recruit and retain particular types of teachers. Also, 8th graders in a K-8 school may be dramatically different than those in a 6-8 or 7-9 school.

On the classroom level, it is important to consider student characteristics. It is possible, for example, that certain teachers receive higher concentrations of boys and/or disruptive students. This could be more of an explanatory factor than gender per se. Also, the study shows considerable variance across subject areas. This is a classic black box issue that reiterates our lack of understanding of what is occurring inside of classrooms.

Additionally, it is important to consider the direction of causality on the level of individual outcomes. Do low achieving students blame their performance on non-responsive curricula and teacher indifference or vice versa?

Lastly, the study was conducted using NELS data, which was collected in 1988. As such, we don’t have a sense of how this may have been different for today’s eighth grader, who was not even born when the data was collected.

If the study’s findings bear out, it is important that we not consider reactionary policy initiatives like same sex schooling, which has already been offered in the popular media as a possible response to the study. Since there aren’t enough male teachers in the field to fill an all-boy school, many male students would still end up with female teachers, particularly in urban schools. Furthermore, the recruitment of male teachers for the sole purpose of educating all-male schools would produce a less qualified and engaged teaching force, which is even more detrimental to students than having a teacher of the opposite sex.

Most importantly, even if the study is empirically sound, we must not concede to its “truths.” Instead, we must consider and change the ways in which schools reproduce problematic gender roles, identities, and attitudes that undermine students’ educational outcomes.

Many media folk are up in arms about CBS’s decision to airbrush new anchor Katie Couric’s photo for its Watch! magazine. Apparently they thought that a slimmed down Couric would be more attractive. Hmm, I wonder if this would happen to a male anchor…

Yesterday, Ne-Yo responded to the recent rumors about his sexuality by appearing on Hot 97’s Angie Martinez show. In addition to denying the gay rumors, he confirmed that another rumor about him was true. A few weeks ago, a photo of a man alleged to be Ne-Yo receiving oral sex began to circulate around the internet. Until now, Ne-Yo, who is reportedly married with children, has remained silent about the photo. Now that his sexuality is being publicly scrutinized, however, Ne-Yo publicly confirmed and explained his encounter with the anonymous woman.

Although I don’t doubt (or even care about) Ne-Yo’s honesty with regard to the two rumors, I find it interesting that he responded in this way. With his masculinity in perceived peril, Ne-Yo chose to embarrass himself and his family rather than allow doubts about his sexuality to linger.

Clinton’s Blindness on Welfare Reform
By Robert Scheer

To hear Bill Clinton tell it, his presidency won the war on poverty three decades after President Lyndon B. Johnson launched it, having changed only the name. Unfortunately, however, for the mothers and their children pushed off the rolls but still struggling mightily to make ends meet even when the women are employed, the war on welfare was not the same battle at all.

Clinton masterfully blurred the two in a recent New York Times opinion column,  as did most others on the 10th anniversary of the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, writing as if getting mothers and their children off the welfare rolls is the same as getting them out of poverty. In the absence of any evidence that poverty is tamed, he celebrates a “bipartisan” victory, which was good for his image but not necessarily for those it claimed to help.

The ex-president gloats over the large decrease in the number of welfare recipients as if he is unaware of the five-year limit and other new restrictions which made it inevitable. Nor does he seem bothered that nobody seems to have thought it important to assess how the families on Aid to Families with Dependent Children fared after they left welfare. The truth is we know very little about the fate of those moved off welfare, 70% of whom are children, because there is no systematic monitoring program, thanks to “welfare reform” severing the federal government’s responsibility to help the nation’s poor.

The best estimates from the Census Bureau and other data, however, indicate that at least a million welfare recipients have neither jobs nor benefits and have sunk deeper into poverty. For those who found jobs, a great many became mired in minimum-wage jobs — sometimes more than one — that barely cover the child-care and other costs they incurred by working outside the home.

Yet, in rather the same way that President Bush likes to follow sentences about Sept. 11 with the words “Saddam Hussein” to imply a connection unsupported by facts, Clinton follows his boasts about welfare “reform” by announcing that “child poverty dropped to 16.2 percent in 2000, the lowest rate since 1979″ as if that proves a causal relationship.

But if crushing welfare is such a boon to poor children, the effects should be snowballing the further we get from the bad old days, right? Well, no: The same census data Clinton cites for 2000 also records a 12% increase in childhood poverty over the four subsequent years.

For the rest of this article, click here.