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| Posted: May 23, 2008 |
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For years there have been worries about a reported "crisis" in the education rates for boys and young men. This week, the American Association of University Women issued a report stating that income, race and ethnicity were bigger factors than gender. Two experts answered your questions. |
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| Joe W. of Anchorage, Ala. asks: |
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| Boys have poorer grades in school, but tend to do better on tests than girls. Why is this? Do teachers show preferential treatment towards females or are males uninterested in classroom education? |
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| Tom Mortenson responds: |
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 The testing literature describes different distributions of boys and girls along the "normal curve." That is a few more boys than girls score at the high and low ends of the test score distribution, and girls' scores tend to cluster around the center of the normal distribution. But I would be careful about putting too much value on raw test score results - children are far more complex than a single test score, and success in life depends substantially on character traits that can be taught and learned and that are never measured in psychometrics. |
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| Linda Hallman responds: |
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 While on average, boys' GPAs are lower than girls' are and boys do perform better than girls on some tests like the SAT, these patterns are not seen across the board. As the AAUW report Where the Girls Are shows, boys AND girls from upper-income families perform well and comparably, and they attend college at the same rates. On the other hand, both boys and girls from lower-income families are achieving, in general, far less well-and the divide is widening. This pattern has remained steady over many years. Another way to look at these data is to hone in on your local information, which should be available through your local school board. While the data they collect may not be easily accessible, the measures used in the Where the Girls Are study are widely used indicators of performance. If you see patterns in your community that diverge from those AAUW presents, it may suggest that other, local factors are present that warrant examination. No one should be satisfied with unfavorable achievement, however, whether in grades or on tests, and understanding how various student populations are performing is an excellent way to set priorities in targeting resources and planning a platform for advocacy. |
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