LP> "So how do you stop boys from trying to grab the teacher's at
LP> You can't, David Sadker says, but teachers can run their clas
LP> better, whatever its structure, with more equitable teaching.
LP> distinction is between managing a class and teaching a class,
LP> Myra Sadker says teachers and administrators can improve a gi
LP> education, and therefore her self-esteem and her future by ju
LP> following a few simple steps:
LP> The real progress in fighting sexism in schools, the Sadkers
LP> says, is occurring in independant schools.  Public schools,
LP> except for the isolated cases they hear about, are not
LP> addressing the problem.
Lots of sides to this topic. The AAUW used Sadkers' research to 
draw conclusions that are disputed by others..... I find the 
research on sex based brain differences fascinating.  The notion 
that girls are not being treated fairly is politically correct, 
but open to some dispute.   
Please consider the following:
From Christina Hoff Sommers _Who Stole Feminism_, p.163):
"...gender inequity in the form of teacher inattention to girls 
is what the Sadkers' research is all about, and many Wellesley conclusions 
stand or fall with their expertise and probity. The Sadkers, who 
collected data from more than one hundred fourth-, sixth, and eighth-grade 
classes, reportedly found that boys did not merely get more reprimands but 
received feedback of all kinds: 'Classrooms were characterized by a more 
general environment of inequity: there were the *haves* and *have nots* 
of teacher attention.... Male students received more remediation, 
criticism, and praise than female students.'
"How much is that? I wondered. And how well, if at all, is the 
disparity in attention correlated with a disparity in 
student achievement? I was curious to read the Sadkers' research papers. 
The Wellesley Report leads readers to the _Phi Delta Kappan_ for 
technical details on the Sadkers' findings. But the _Phi Delta Kappan_ is 
not a research journal, and the Sadkers' publications in it are 
very short -- less than four pages each, including illustrations and cartoons 
-
- and merely restate the Sadkers' claims without giving details concerning 
the research that backs them up.
"In two exhaustive searches in the education data base (ERIC), I 
was unable to find peer-reviewed, scholarly articles by the Sadkers in which 
their data and their claims on classroom interactions are laid out. 
The Sadkers themselves make no reference to such articles in the Wellesley 
Report, nor in their 1991 review of the literature on gender bias in the 
_Review of Research in Education_, not in _Failing at Fairness_. The 
Wellesley Report does refer readers to the final reports on the Sadkers' 
unpublished studies on classroom inequities. The Sadkers did two of these, 
in 1984 and 1985, both supported by government grants. The first is called 
_Year Three: Final Report, Promoting Effectiveness in Classroom 
Instruction....the other is called _Final Report: Faculty Development for 
Effectiveness and Equity in College Teaching.... Since the conclusions of 
the Wellesley Report rely on studies like these, I was determined to get 
hold of them. But I found it even harder to get my hands on them than on 
the AAUW's research on self-esteem."
Sommers: "The 1985 study seems to have vanished altogether. After
exhaustive library and computer searches, I called the Department 
of Education, which informed me it no longer had a copy. The 
librarian at the Widener Library at Harvard University did a computer 
search as thorough and high-tech as any I have ever seen. Finally, she 
requested it from the Library of Congress. "If they do not have it, no 
one does," she said -- and they did not.
"In the meantime, one of my undergraduate assistants called David 
Sadker himself to ask how to find it. He told her that *he* did not 
have a copy and urged her to have a look at the article in the 
_Phi Delta Kappan_. We had come full circle."
Sommers: "I did find the other study: _Year Three: Final Report,
Promoting Effectiveness in Classroom Instruction_. It was 
available in the Education Library at Harvard.... Holding the 189 pages 
photocopied from the microfilm, I wondered if I might be the only person 
in the world -- besides the Sadkers and some of their graduate students -- to 
have looked at its contents. Yet it contains the data behind the contention, 
now on the tip of many politicians tongues, that girls are suffering 
from an attention gap that seriously compromises education.
Sommers: "What had the Sadkers found? They and their assistants 
visited hundreds of elementary classrooms and observed the teachers' 
interactions with students. They identified four types of teacher comments: 

Continued in the next message...
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/Wildcat5! v2.0GC
---------------