Boys, Girls, and Math
posted by Deven Desai
An study appearing in Science (no free access) apparently finds “There’s no real difference between the scores of U.S. boys and girls on common math tests.” (this link is to Science’s reporting about the article). Some interesting points include “Overall, the researchers found “no gender difference” in scores among children in grades two through 11.” and data that “suggests that cultural and social factors, not gender alone, influence how well students perform on tests.” On the SAT, however, boys out performed girls. The study argues that is because more girls take the test which obscures the results.
The part of the report that may be of most use to law and policy folks concerns No Child Left Behind:
Using a four-level rating scale, with level one being easiest, the authors said that they found no challenging level-three or -four questions on most state tests. The authors worry that means that teachers may start dropping harder math from their curriculums, because “more teachers are gearing their instruction to the test.”
As a side note, the first thing I thought of was the Barbie “I hate math” moment of more than fifteen years ago. A quick search of Barbie and math brought up possibly 466 news article that linked that event to the study (and the few I checked were not all AP wire coverage). In addition, Lawrence Summers’ statements about intrinsic aptitude pop up quite a bit in coverage of the study. So would the study have made such a splash without that history? As for Barbie, maybe someone will point out that its image is not as stable as Mattel might wish (whether that should matter is a different question depending on the legal context). And Mr. Summers, well this link seems to be his speech about the aptitude issue. Draw your own conclusions.
July 25, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Posted in: Education
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Responses (8)
John Armstrong - July 25, 2008 at 4:12 pm
While everyone’s been talking about this, I would think you’d be more interested in the attempt to apply Title IX to math and science departments. That seems to have more of a law angle.
Deven - July 25, 2008 at 9:03 pm
You would think that? Why? Just teasing. Interesting tip. Of course the post does point a law angle (two in fact) the No Child Left Behind and the trademark/reputation issues that pop up around this one as it is reported.
Thanks for the comment.
Not snark - July 26, 2008 at 6:59 am
It is unfortunate that the finding of no difference in girls and boys scores coincides with the elimination of hard, complex math problems from the text.
Deven - July 26, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Dear Not Snark (thanks for clarifying),
I am not sure what to make of the apparent coincidence. Not having access to the article, I can’t say whether anything in there looks at the two together.
Still from the reporting I think they uncouple them a bit, because they looked at several levels of testing (beyond the No Child levels I believe) when reaching their conclusion.
Snark - July 27, 2008 at 1:29 pm
The study appears to focus on mean scores. Larry Summers, however, was positing that boys might have more variance. That is, boys would perform as well as girls on average, but boys would have both higher and lower extreme scores. The reporting does not seem to discuss this angle.
scottynx - July 28, 2008 at 7:12 pm
The results of the study can be interpreted as consistent with what Larry Summer said: That girls and boys have the same average achievement, but boys have higher variance, leading to an over-abundance of males at the higher (and lower) ends of the achievement spectrum.
It seems that only the wall street journal reported on the “boys higher variance” part of the study with this headline: “Boys’ Math Scores Hit Highs and Lows”
Here is Andrew Gelman of Columbia talking about the variance part of the study as well, and the contrasting parts that were emphasized by the WSJ vs the NYT (and virtually all other newspapers).
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2008/07/nyt_vs_wsj_on_g.html
Also, here is Alex Tabarrok of marginalrevolution talking about how the study vindicates summers:
Summers Vindicated (Again)
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/07/summers-vindica.html
Deven - July 29, 2008 at 2:52 am
Scottnyx, Thanks. The post does not endorse the WSJ or get the contrasts you note so I suppose you are responding to comments.
I am more interested in the way the articles look to Summers and Barbie to draw attention to the study. I think the study may be useful or at least get to some of the issues in play, but I wonder whether it would be so prominent without the recent history.
J - July 29, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Deven,
It seems pretty clear that the study would not be at all prominent without the recent Summers controversy. I think a more interesting question is whether the media would be reporting on it more accurately or honestly in that scenario.
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