Gender and the achievement gaps
The Silent Gender Gaps
Recent reports have confirmed that boys, not girls, are increasingly on the unfavorable side of the gender gaps in education and developmental matters. Many factors are evaluated in this report. Source: Education Week
Federal Study Finds Gains in Gender Equity: Gender gaps in education "have in most cases been eliminated and, in others, have significantly decreased," according to "Trends in Educational Equity of Girls and Women," a by the National Center for Education Statistics. Girls appear to encounter fewer problems in the early, and they consistently outperform boys in reading and writing. As seniors, girls have higher educational goals than boys and they are more likely to enroll in college after graduating from high school. Once enrolled, freshman women are also more likely to complete a bachelor's degree within five years. At the same time, young women continue to lag behind mathematics and science achievement in high school and are less likely to major in those fields in college. Sources: Education Week and NCES
Boys to Men
A study that examines the gender differences in school achievement and suggests that boys are far less suited than girls to succeed in the current academic environment. Those researchers point, for example, to boys' lower scores on the language arts sections of standardized tests, to their out-of-proportion placement in special education classes, and to the number of times boys are disciplined compared with girls. Source: Education Week
One for the lads
The British tackled their own education gender gaps by letting boys be boys -- with mixed results. The lackluster academic performance of boys is headline news in the United Kingdom (and to a lesser extent, Australia), where schools already have taken steps to combat perceived discrimination in the classroom. The measures in place favor structured, teacher-led work, with an emphasis on silent work, frequent tests and strict discipline in the classroom. Source: Salon
Lost boys: While girls surge ahead in all subjects at school, boys are lagging behind. Is "girl power" to blame?
Do boys need their own dose of "empowerment"? The first calls for the empowerment of girls in education came slightly more than a decade ago, inciting a national response of extraordinary scope and intensity. By 1994, the federal Gender Equity in Education Act specifically banned discrimination against girls in school. Critics of empowerment efforts didn't dispute that girls at one point had been discriminated against in education, but claimed that by 1990, those inequities had largely been erased, and that girls had already begun to overtake boys in many academic and social areas. Source: Salon
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