Study: Gender Inequity in Schools Untrue
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Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 5/21/2008 2:05:00 PM
In what's being called the most comprehensive analysis to date of gender-based educational achievement, a new study released on May 21 says the so-called "boys crisis" in education is, well, bunk. When girls from fourth grade through the end of college make gains, says the report, so do boys."A rising tide lifts all boats," says Linda Hallman, executive director of the AAUW, an organization (known by its initials) that promotes equity in education. "When girls perform better in school, we see improvements across gender, race, and income lines."
"Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity in Education" analyzed data from all 50 states. In those states where girls do well on standardized tests, so do boys, the report found. Sadly, the opposite also was found to be true: Where girls do poorly, so, again, do boys.
For both sexes, across the board, standardized test performance in elementary and secondary schools has improved or remained stable, the study also found. And both men and women are more likely to take college entrance exams such as the ACT and SAT—and to graduate—than ever before.
Further, the proportion of males graduating from high school and earning college degrees is at an all-time high. Older and nontraditional female college students may outnumber male counterparts in earning college degrees, but this gender gap is almost absent among young people entering college directly from high school, the report says.
What's apparently more influential than gender, the report finds, is income. Children from the lowest-income families have the lowest average standardized test scores; and a rise in family income is associated with a rise in test scores. Educational-achievement differences further vary according to race/ethnicity and family income. Girls often outperform boys within racial/ethnic groups on the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test, for example.
Yet when those results are broken down, this gender gap is most consistent among white students, less so among African-American students, and least among Hispanic students. AAUW's researchers say that part of this achievement gap results from family income differences, but that the true overlap and relationship between race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status is obscured by the lack of federal data needed for a thorough analysis.
