When myths merit a closer look

NEA Today, Jan 1999

Study hard, and you get ahead-- right? Not so, at least for Latino and African-American students who may want to enter careers in math and science, says Alberto Rodriguez, professor of science education at New Mexico State University. He's analyzed reports from the National Assessment of Educational Progress and others, looking at the top students by ethnic group, and has found reason to suspect a "myth of meritocracy" in education.

What findings did your research turn up?

I took the scores for the top 10 percent of females in the 1995 math portion of the SAT and looked at each by ethnic group.

The top 10 percent of Puerto Rican women averaged only 6 points above the national mean. The top 10 percent of African-American women averaged 14 points below the national mean.

By comparison, the top 10 percent of Anglo-European women scored 98 points above the national mean, and Asian Americans averaged 130 points above the mean.

When I looked at Advanced Placement examinations, I found that only 4 percent of those students who successfully complete AP course in the sciences are Latino, African American, and Native American, even though these ethnic groups represent more than one-third of the American population.

How does this point to a myth of meritocracy?

You'd expect that many of the social and institutional factors that negatively affect minority students' performance would not have the same effect on these college-bound minority students. And according to the meritocracy myth, these students' hard work should have paid off.

But the gaps in achievement were still there.

What do we do from here?

We can't deny these gaps. We need to ask how to close them. And we need to ask ourselves how far does working hard really get minority students who are interested in pursuing college careers.

We must increase opportunities for students to feel connected. We must be more attentive to students so we can use their prior knowledge.

We need more socially relevant curriculums, and we need to make science more multicultural. When we discuss the nature of science, teachers need to realize that western science is one way of making sense of the world, but it may not be the only way.

Send E-mail to Rodriguez at albertor@mail.soemadison.wisc. edu. His research is published in "Busting Open the Meritocracy Myth: Rethinking Equity and Student Achievement in Science Education," Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, VoL 4, #23, 1998. $59 from Begell House, 212/725-1999.