Report Card Shows Improvements in High-School Physics

High-school physics enrollments are growing, girls are filling nearly half the seats in physics classrooms, and salaries of high-school teachers are rising. In those areas, high-school physics gets an A, though other areas still need improvement, according to a recent report by the American Institute of Physics, which surveyed more than 3000 public and private high schools across the US.

In 2001, 31% of students took physics in high school, compared with only 20% in 1987. Contributing to the rise, the report says, are an increase in the percentage of high-school graduates who attend college and a perception that colleges have stiffened their entrance requirements. Because of the greater demand for physics, high schools are offering more advanced, honors, and conceptual physics courses. According to the report, conceptual physics courses are “likely to have had the biggest impact on enrollments.”

Girls approached parity with boys in high-school physics classes in 1997—-the year studied in AIP’s previous high-school physics survey—and dipped slightly in 2001, from 47% to 46%. Hispanic and African American students, traditionally underrep-resented in physics classes, accounted for nearly half of the absolute gain in physics enrollments in the past decade. In 2001, 21% of Hispanic and 22% of African American high-school students took physics, while 47% of their Asian American and 33% of their white schoolmates did.

In 2001, the corps of high-school physics teachers numbered 21 000. That’s an increase of about 15% since 1987; during the same period, the number of students taking high-school physics grew nearly 50%, from 624000 to 931 000. To handle the increased enrollments, teachers now teach more physics classes. As a result, the report says, a higher proportion of physics teachers than in earlier surveys see themselves as physics specialists and say they are better prepared to teach physics.

Only about a third of high-school physics teachers majored in physics or physics education in college, though most majored in math or a science discipline.

Salaries for high-school physics teachers have outpaced inflation over the past 15 years. The median annual starting salary was $28 000 in 2001, while for experienced high-school physics teachers the median was $49100. Nevertheless, teachers holding a bachelor’s degree in physics earned on average almost 50% less than physics bachelors working in government and industry.

AIP also reports that about a quarter of high-school physics teachers are members of the American Association of Physics Teachers and around a third are members of the National Science Teachers Association, fractions that have been steady over the past 15 years. Those figures include overlap, and AIP found that, of the more than half of high-school teachers who belong to neither organization, few have established other networking forums with their peers.

For the first time, AIP surveyed teachers about “physics first,” the movement that advocates switching the order in which the sciences are taught in high school (see Physics Today, September 2001, page 11 ). Most respondents strongly opposed switching to physics first. However, the report notes, few teachers have had direct experience with putting physics first in the science curriculum.

These and other findings about students, teachers, and courses in US secondary schools are reported in Broadening the Base: High School Physics Education at the Turn of a New Century. Single copies of the report may be obtained free of charge from AIP, Statistical Research Center, One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740; e-mail stats@aip.org . The report may also be downloaded from the Web at http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/hstrends.htm .