A Synopsis of New York State Physics Education: People, Places, and Problems

Physics has been identified as a cornerstone course for students who want to pursue a post-secondary STEM degree. It is also considered to be a foundational course for many of the either sciences. Even with its importance, physics course offerings are inequitable and qualified teachers of physics are seldom found. Many physics teaches are often the only one in their school, are teaching out-of-field, or likely to leave teaching. This poster presentation consists of a synoposis of several studies regarding New York State Physics programs over a multi-year period. New York State has a robust data collection system, in part due to No Child Left Behind, that has allowed for several studies regarding physics education. The research studies conducted using these data have included qualifications of teachers; distribution of physics courses; distriutions of quality physics teachers; retention, attrition, and migration of teachers; student achievement on statewide physics examinations and AP examinations; and studies including mediation analysis of student achievement on examinations based on teachers. Studies presented on this poster will include: 1) The extent of and the ramifications of out-of-field physics teaching; 2) Physics teacher isolation and it's influence on student achievement; 3) Access and Inequities in physics course and qualified teacher distribution; 4) School and teacher level physics predictors for Statewide and AP examinations. Our studies have determined that in NY nearly 25% of high schools don't offer physics and nearly half of those that do offer physics only have one physics teacher. It was also shown that students of these isolated teachers scored significantly lower on average compared to their non-isolated counterparts. Large inequieties were also found with the socioeconomic status of a school being a main predictor of both student sucess as well as course offerings including AP examinations. When focusing on AP Examinations the percentage of female students and the socioeconomic status of the school were main predictors of student achievement, regardless of teacher qualifications. We hope a synopsis of our research will prompt other PhysTEC states to conduct similair studies to help navigate the current and upcoming issues in physics education programs.