Girls close math gap with boys, stay far ahead in reading performance
MILWAUKEE (MCT) — Girls have bridged the gap with boys and now perform as well on state math tests, but boys consistently trail girls on state reading tests, sometimes by dramatic margins, according to a national report released Wednesday.
Jack Jennings, president and chief executive officer of the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Education, which produced the report, raised concerns about what the findings mean about the education of American males.
“In no state in the country are boys doing better than girls in reading at the elementary, middle or high school level,” he said. “It is a clear and unmistakable trend.”
The report examined math and reading tests given in all 50 states between 2002 and 2008. Only those states that had given comparable tests for three years in a row, including the 2007-’08 school year, were included in the report, which equaled 45 to 48 states at each grade level.
Researchers focused on differences in performance — both in actual scores as well as by proficiency levels — between the genders at the fourth, eighth and 10th or 11th grades.
What they found was that girls were doing as well or almost as well as boys on state math tests as boys, an area where females once had lagged far behind their male counterparts. Boys, on the other hand, routinely performed less well than girls on their states’ reading tests, by more than 10 percentage points on proficiency measures at the elementary level in six states.
“These data are new and are extremely important and need to be taken seriously,” said Susan Neuman, a professor in education studies at the University of Michigan and former assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Education.
Neuman pointed out that historical studies into differences between girls and boys’ reading performance found that, while boys would start reading at older ages, they were able to catch up and even pass girls by the fourth grade.
The shift in reading performance raises questions about classroom changes that have taken place over time, she said. She pointed to an emphasis on storybook-type reading and a reduction in physical activity in elementary schools as two factors that could disadvantage boys, who tend to like to read more non-fiction and have energy that needs to be channeled into exploratory activities.
“I think we need to re-evaluate our curricula, re-evaluate how we are managing our classrooms,” Neuman said.
Janice Kopfler, director of the learning center at Marquette University High School, said more attention also needs to be paid to the different type of reading comprehension expected at the secondary level than is taught when students are first trying to master the basics of learning in elementary school.
“As a school we’re seeing this as something we need to address,” Kopfler said of her all-boys school in Milwaukee. “We’re finding that just helping out at the lower level doesn’t guarantee that the students are going to be successful at the upper level.”
But Janet Hyde, a professor of psychology and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, cautioned against making curricular changes because of perceptions about gender differences. She has been critical about the move to create separate gender classes and schools based on such beliefs.
And she also said it’s not time to stop worrying about the girls. Even though girls have caught up to boys in math performance, something that Hyde and her colleagues have reported in scientific articles, stereotypes that women can’t succeed in math and scientific fields continue to hold them back from entering careers such as engineering, she said.
“We can’t declare a job well done until we change the attitudes as well as the performance,” she said.
