23 May 2008
When Girls Do Better in School, So Do Boys, Study Finds
Children of the poor lag behind, but trends are positive
Washington -- In recent decades, both American boys and girls have made remarkable strides in education, and there is no evidence that the gains made by girls have come at the expense of boys or that a crisis exists for boys in particular, according to a major new report on gender equity in American education.
The report, Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity in Education, was released May 20 by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), a nonprofit advocacy group that has sought gender equity and education for women since its founding in 1881.
The report’s authors say that theirs is the first study to take a comprehensive look at how gender, family income level and race/ethnicity are associated with academic performance.
“The past few decades have seen remarkable gains for girls and boys in education, and no evidence indicates a crisis for boys in particular,” the report’s authors state, adding: “If a crisis exists, it is a crisis for African American and Hispanic students and students from lower-income families -- both girls and boys.”
In fact, the report found that family income level and race/ethnicity are closely associated with academic performance.
In 2006, almost three-fifths (58 percent) of U.S. schoolchildren were categorized as white, one-fifth (20 percent) as Hispanic, and 15 percent as African American, while Asian-American students and “other races” accounted for 4 percent each.
In 1992, the AAUW released a widely disseminated report, How Schools Shortchange Girls, which found that girls in grades K-12 experienced various forms of gender bias that undermined their self-esteem and discouraged them from pursuing study in such subjects as math and science. In recent years, a number of critics have said that attempts to achieve greater gender equity were producing unintended negative effects on boys.
For example, in The War Against Boys (2001), Christina Hoff Sommers argued that, under the guise of helping girls, many schools have adopted policies that penalize boys for behaving in ways natural to their gender. As a result, wrote Sommers, boys lag behind girls in reading and writing ability and are less likely to go to college. The author is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative public policy research organization.
Critics also have said that women today earn 57 percent of bachelor's degrees, 59 percent of master's degrees, and half the doctorates awarded in the United States.
Gender differences have been difficult to tease out of the data on schoolchildren. On tests such as the SAT and ACT, boys in each racial/ethnic group, on average, nearly always outscore girls in the same group on math and usually on the verbal part of the exams as well. But this gender gap seems to be due to the fact more girls than boys take the tests.
In the few states that now require all high school students to take the SAT or ACT, the gender gap disappears, and this fact alone speaks against any simple finding of a crisis for either gender. Moreover, in states where girls do well on standardized tests, so do boys, and in states where they do poorly, the boys do just as poorly.
Previous studies have not looked at gender differences in the context of income and ethnic or racial differences. But the AAUW report’s authors were able to infer income levels from data on the school lunch program, using participation as an indicator of family-income level. Children from families with incomes at or below 130 percent of the poverty level are eligible for free lunch, while families with incomes between 131 percent and 185 percent of the poverty level are eligible for reduced-price school lunch, for which students can be charged no more than 40 cents.
For the period July 1, 2006, through June 30, 2007, for a family of four, 130 percent of the poverty level was $26,000, and 185 percent was $37,000 annually, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.
The report found family income level and race/ethnicity to be closely associated with academic performance. “On standardized tests such as the NAEP, SAT, and ACT, children from the lowest-income families have the lowest average test scores, with an incremental rise in family income associated with a rise in test scores,” the authors state. “Race/ethnicity is also strongly associated with test scores, with African American and Hispanic children scoring lower on average than white and Asian American children.”
But there is good news buried in all the numbers. Trends are positive. For example, higher percentages of fourth and eighth graders from lower-income families scored at or above basic, at or above proficient and at advanced levels in math in 2007 compared to 1996.
During the decade from 1994 to 2004, overall average performance for both girls and boys improved. “Girls are more likely than boys to take college entrance exams, but the growing number of girls taking these exams has not come at the expense of boys,” the report’s authors conclude. “More boys and young men are taking college entrance exams than ever before.”
“A rising tide lifts all boats,” AAUW Executive Director Linda Hallman said in presenting the report. “When girls perform better in school, we see improvements across gender, race, and income lines.”
