Has anyone come across boisterious female math geniuses? Is that even within our genome? Every female Summa grad I ever met could sneak up on a nervous housecat.
When working on my degree in mathematics at a land-grant university, I took for granted that women were on average better than men at analysis because that's what I saw in my classes. There was the occasional lone cowboy who was more brilliant than anyone, but for every male genius, there seemed to be several incredibly smart females who were much less boisterous about their innate talent for numbers. After graduating university, I found that my anecdotal observations clashed with a popular culture which taught that boys were smarter than girls. Now, over 40 years later, this perception that female analytical thinking is inexplicably less than a male’s seems to be changing. With that in mind, I am introducing my granddaughter to some of the exciting bits of mathematics before she reaches kindergarten: Golden Ratio, geometric solutions of algebraic problems, complex numbers and Euler's identity, etc...I am finding that she is particularly attracted to problems solved by infinity, such as when the number of sides of a regular polygon approaches infinity to define a circle. She likes Peppa Pig, too!
these numbers are all meaningless. in international comparisons of mathematical achievement the US ranks around #28.
maybe like gym classes there be should separate math classes for girls and boys. of course the pc crowd would go berserk.
Possibly the white girls in affluent neighborhoods are not interested in math as much as a way of getting ahead (they are already ahead of the poor students)?
The focus on the gender gap in the math abilities could be because in general women continue to be the group with less wealth and power in our society, and also over-represented in the victims of discrimination, exploitation, and abuse.
We also happened to live in an age where STEM fields arguably wield more power and influence in shaping the world than humanities (which to me is another concern on its own)
Boys falling behind girls in reading is a problem, and it deserves focus and attention. But considering the relative impact, a i) boys-over-girls gap ii) in a STEM field iii) in the most affluent and powerful class of our society would understandably attract more attention and concern. I don't think that's particularly leftist, unless being a leftist means considering a big picture in a long term.
1
"The focus on the gender gap in the math abilities could be because in general women continue to be the group with less wealth and power in our society, and also over-represented in the victims of discrimination, exploitation, and abuse."
What does wealth, power, discrimination, exploitation, or abuse have to do with being good at math? (you forgot the keyword "oppression", btw)
It's interesting that you end your post with a preemptive defense against accusations of Leftism, as the arguments you used are basically the same used to explain any gap between genders and/or ethnicities by neoMarxists: that some kind of oppression is keeping the underdogs from catching up (never mind if the supposed underdogs are doing better in other areas).
In some poorer areas, there may be tangible pressure on boys against excelling in school. I was hit occasionally and belittled constantly by other boys, to a large extent because I could read without stumbling, and I had a large vocabulary. (Most of the other boys had vocabularies consisting half of four-letter words, used as all parts of speech.) In addition, I did not really understand that doing homework was crucial until long after high school.
Some fathers who have not been successful want their sons to fail too.
Fixing these problems could be difficult. Today, not fixing these problems could result in young men who are good at meth, not math.
2
Geometry teacher (male) to girls on first day of class: "I know why you girls are here, and I'm teaching to the boys." How would you interpret that?
In my inbox this past year from the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute's Carpe Diem columnist (male): multiple rants against "affirmative action for girls". No need to interpret.
1
"Geometry teacher (male) to girls on first day of class: "I know why you girls are here, and I'm teaching to the boys. " How would you interpret that?"
I wouldn't . It's an anecdote that sounds totally made up, and that in any case, like most anecdotes, shouldn't be considered to be extrapolatable to an entire society.
1
The data presented indicates that boys are typically 2 to 8 weeks ahead of girls in math while girls are typically over 8 months, nearly a school year, ahead of boys in reading and yet you reserve the headline and the bulk of your analysis to the disparity in math.
While the math angle is not trivial, the data demonstrating that boys consistently lag nearly a grade level behind in reading is a far more significant story and deserves your repeated coverage and analysis.
Who, if anyone, is responding to the disparity in reading? Which pedagogies have been developed to get boys to read? Where are the reading clubs and reading contests for boys? And if there aren't any, why are our schools ignoring the needs of boys?
2
I'm tired of hearing comments attributing girls' lagging performance in math and STEM fields to "innate traits" that hold them back. The only difference I see, is the less competitive nature of a lot of girls, because of the expectations that they need to "play nice" whereas when boys get competitive and ambitious, they are encouraged and rewarded.
That said, I'm equally tired of hearing the constantly comparison of performance that encourages "boys v girls" as if this is a zero sum gain. Let's face it, if the high end job market is gender-blind, girls (and their parents) will go for it as much as boys. In countries where that is the case, even countries like China, you are seeing as many girls as boys in STEM fields. Yet, the American cultural norm still value brawn over brains, where smart kids (regardless of gender) are labeled nerds or dorks. The tech boom is indeed the "revenge of the nerds," but along the way, they exclude all those who aren't their "type" which is truly sad.
The last thing I want to see, is to have #MeToo to force open specific job markets or coercively bring about changes to corporate cultures, but from the look of it, that seems to be the swiftest way. The larger societal culture needs to change in kind.
2
After careful consideration, my conclusion is that this study was a waste of money and this report a waste of time.
2
White suburban girls "dumbing" themselves down to fit into their perception of what the patriarchy wants them to be, perhaps? Or parental and societal pressure for boys form these districts to be high achievers?
2
Why wasn't this titled, "Boys lacking in English skills across demographics?"
It's only media approved if "girls" are lacking in some STEM area. Almost no journalist mentions the higher HS graduation rate, the higher college admissions and graduation rates, and higher income of so-called "girls."
All the other correlations, like fathers in the home, income, etc., a big, giant academia not needed to state the obvious, "DOH!"
Signed, Father of three WOMEN all STEM grads........and decidedly not rich.
2
"The biggest thing is family expectations and parents as role models." Gee, you think? A couple eggheads from Stanford had to do a study to come up with that nugget?
2
Oh my God you have got to be kidding or really have nothing else to report on. I don't care who does better as long as someone is doing GREAT. We need those GREAT minds to run a country. Boy or Girl.
Here is a cost saving idea. Instead of multiple studies looking at the quality of schools, the level of student achievement and/or the effectiness of teachers we only need to look at the income demographics to rank the schools, teachers and students. The considerable money saved can used to implement more equal funding as n the Finnish model.
Of course it's a BIG problem when boys do better at anything but not when girls do. If boys do better it's because they are boys, if boys do worse it's because they are boys.
1
The reasons for the gender gap in English are pretty well understood. Studies in the US and UK show that boys on average and across all groups are much less likely to read for pleasure, like to read books that are less demanding (at/below grade level, graphic novels) and to read more superficially (skipping and skimming). Boys are also more likely to be diagnosed with learning difference that make reading more difficult and less enjoyable. Less reading > lower language attainment.
1
Would to see these findings controlled for the presence of male role models in the household on a daily basis.
1
I don't doubt the presence of some small biological factors causing differences in math outcomes, but it's important to also note that in many countries --Iceland, Jordan, Qatar, Malaysia, Thaliand-- girls actually outperform boys in math (OECD Pisa Database, 2012). And the average girl in Shanghai performs much higher than the average boy in almost any other country. So when zooming out to look internationally, it's clear that cultural factors must also play a big role.
3
Not the average girl in Shanghai. The average in a select admissions program. Like the average girl in select admission NYC public schools.
1
Learning for children and teenagers is equally about character development. Schooling does what farm work, housework, and factory work used to do: providing a structure for children to learn and become ready for eventual full membership in society. It helps nobody being so pedantic and obsessed with some minor differences in test scores.
1
To those commentators who are criticizing the authors for focusing on the math achievement gap and not the English achievement gap, please understand that the highest paying jobs are all math achievement related and the lowest paying jobs are all English achievement related.
http://fortune.com/2015/04/27/best-worst-graduate-degrees-jobs/
The math achievement gap matters because the kids who are good in math today will be high earners as adults. The English achievement gap does not matter because those who rely solely on their English language skills will be barely scraping a living.
3
Low paying jobs don't require high English skills. Very high achievement in English is required for top law jobs which are very high paying as are many other non-math jobs which require high English language skills.
1
I do find it sad that while I've seen many articles focused on helping girls catch up to boys in math, I almost never see any articles focused on helping boys catch up to girls in English. This article mentions it but gives it far less attention than score differences harming girls and writes it off as "boys just mature later". This despite the fact that the gaps in English are far worse than the gaps in math. Helping girls is good, but that shouldn't mean ignoring the needs of boys.
7
I think parents should start clubs for boys to encourage them to excel in STEM. I see a lot of focus on training girls for STEM. Also there is a high degree of discrimination by teachers (most of whom are women) towards boys - lower marks, lower encouragement and so on.
5
Hmm... those clubs have always existed.
2
The topic of discrimination by teachers, an openly overwhelmingly progressive body of humans, is conspicuously absent in these studies, as well as in the articles presenting them. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if some daring scholar's study showed a correlation between the rise in percentage of proselytizing Leftist and Feminist teachers, and the achievement decrease among boys with regards to girls, say, from the 1950s to today.
Boys are basically raised with feminine values, are expected to act like girls, and tend to be disciplined when they act like boys. Unsurprisingly, not all boys strive in that sort of environment.
Somewhat odd article in that it goes to great lengths presenting mildly-complex reasons for why various subtle social influences may result in performance differences, yet does not mention at all the possibility that males generally may have higher aptitude to mathematics and abstract concepts while women in general may have greater aptitude for language and communication. As this is a well known theory in psychology, it's strikingly odd that it's not even mentioned, especially as it's easily in line with the data showing that where math scores are lower the gap is lessened or in some places reversed and where scores are higher the males score higher. In other words both genders have a close to equal aptitude for achieving the lower range of scores while males (in general!) have a greater aptitude toward the higher scores. I wonder why the authors did not think of this very obvious possibility.
(Disclaimer: Please don't interpret this post as stating that males are in any way better or more valuable human beings than females, as that is not the intent of the post, nor is it implied by the post, nor does the author believe that to be true.)
4
It is generally known that girls do better in language, and we were always told that boys do better at math. The piece that is new is that boys do WORSE than girls also in math in lower socioeconomic environments, and only do better in higher socioeconomic groups. Therefore, the NEW information is that boys' performance is affected more than girls' performance by socioeconomic status. Hence, the emphasis on possible factors that affect the difference on both groups.
Of course, statistics hide as much as they show. The chart only shows the difference between both and girls in each individual school, but doesn't show the absolute difference in performance between schools, which is a lot more dramatic than the differences shown here. However, that is a well-known fact.
Your post is no offensive, as many here, but the fact that so many readers took offense with the article because it doesn't tout the genetic superiority of boys in math is disturbing to say the least. The fact that it speculates about social causes for the difference in performance between girls and boys in rich families and doesn't just conclude that the reason is that boys are smarter is attack on men in their view.
5
But girls are way ahead in verbal skills. Boys brains grow more slowly and there is parity later on. Girls have a higher graduation rate for high school and college. The public needs to see this pattern and teachers need to have a curiculum which helps boys.
3
I don't think there is much that teachers can do, because the problem is social and cultural. The fact that so many men were offended by this article and are pounding their chests while claiming male superiority in math (which is true at very high levels of abstraction, not high school levels) as the only possible explanation is a good illustration of those factors.
2
When boys do better, it's discrimination. When girls to better, it's hard work and inherent superiority. Right, NYT?
10
I don't think that's what the article says at all, but somehow I think your believe the opposite: when girls get chances to be equal is discrimination and when boys get opportunities is just what they deserve. Sad.
2
Here is an alternative explanation: the boys get effected by their environment more and therefore get deprived (or deprive themselves) more than girls in a poor environment. In a rich environment, neither gets deprived. Just look at how much worse boys from lower socioeconomic class are doing than girls in general. Fewer of them graduate or go to college. More of them get involved in gang violence and drugs. The last thing on their mind would be math.
2
It seems unethical to me to simply assume this is due to some parenting paradox among rich parents rather than the default conclusion, which is that math is more challenging with a higher bar in richer schools, thus confirming rather than refuting the possibility that girls just might not be able to reach that higher bar. I personally want to hope that's not true, but looking at this article, I think it's one of the major potential takeaways that not even mentioned here.
3
If that were the case (high school reaches the limit of women's ability in math) then less women would be graduating from college, where higher levels of math are required for graduation. However more women graduate from college than men, and more and more women are going into science fields (more women are graduating from medical school than men). Why this obsession with genetic superiority?
3
Drawing conclusions from data is the scientific method, ignoring data to fit a pre-determined conclusion is dogma.
8
The author's concern should be about the very large gap in reading between boys and girls, where girls have a huge advantage.
Instead, the focus is the relatively small advantage in math boys have over girls.
Why the incorrect focus?
7
Because that gap is not news and because much of it is due the different rates of maturation in the linguistic areas of the brain. Most of it goes away. The part of it that doesn't go away is usually due to socialization. (Of course, there is also the possibility of some genetic difference, but that is really difficult to tease out from other factors, doesn't predict the performance of individuals, and there is nothing you can do about it anyway).
2
Because despite all the feminism in lefty liberalism...there is still a deep-seated feeling that everything men do is superior to anything women do. Sports vs. doll play -- math vs. language or literature -- careers vs. family -- what men choose is inherently superior, because men have most of the money and power, and women are weak. For women to be equal to men, they have to pretty much BE men.
2
The good thing about posting the data is that people can see for themselves what the real problem is (massive gap in male reading performance), not the cherry picked math gap with a social justice bent.
The bad thing is that the supposedly intelligent people writing this article weren't able to make the same conclusion.
8
Because it's so horrible to try to understand how our society works so we can identify problems and try to find solutions. We should forbid these studies and stay in the dark, so we can continue talking about personal responsibility and do nothing to educate our children better. /s
2
Where is the outcry that boys are not doing as well as girls in school in general? This is the case across color lines, across all socioeconomic factors. From Dalton to the most ill-performing high school in the country, boys are doing worse than girls. Where is the outcry?
Where is the outcry that boys are not graduating high school at the same rate as girls?
Where is the outcry that boys aren't going to college?
Where is the outcry that there are more girls than boys in law schools? https://www.enjuris.com/students/ranking-universities.html
Where is the outcry that our boys are so far behind they don't know how to catch up? And that this starts in kindergarten? And they are miserable all through school until they drop out of the system?
9
There real concern, and actually this research proves that the gap is a lot more severe in poor schools, and the article speculates about some of the possible reasons that is the case.
1
Sure the gap is more severe in poor schools. What's not being acknowledged in most studies is that boys since about the mid-80s have performed worse than girls across all socioeconomic and race/ethnicity factors than have girls.
The wealthy kids get more support from home, of course.
That doesn't mean that there isn't a severe problem in our methods of educating students. As a mom of a boy who struggled starting Day 1 of kindergarten, I pulled out my hair at his complete boredom in school and the feeling that nothing there was worth anything--and this is in an academically supportive family. The thing is that boys are put on Ritalin in far greater numbers than are girls basically to get them to succumb to this sort of education. It is awful. Something should be done and it doesn't mean that girls need to suffer if boys are given more appropriate educations. All can do better with more appropriate more interesting educations.
I’m struck by two very important issues here:
“260 million tests” - I wrote a blog post once about why big numbers aren’t the same as meaningful numbers. And the lie in this number is that there aren’t 260 million 3rd through 8th graders in the US. So this includes HUGE duplication. Yet the number is bandied about as if it means the research is meaningful. What impact from duplication? I don’t know. But it is a concern.
The claim of boys outperforming girls is based on tiny change. I know with big numbers people like to think huge volume in the analysis gives them laser like accuracy to identify a .25 grade level advantage. But what is a .25 grade level advantage? Completely meaningless.
This is, however, typical of the work we’ve seen from Stanford lately. “Full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”
3
I offer this comment in the interest of honesty and truth and not to prejudice anything or anyone against girls. Even so, I have been a substitute teacher in classrooms in rural districts and in one of the most sophisticated districts in the country, where women math teachers regularly recommended students for admission to Ivy League schools. I'll quote some girls I encountered in the algebra classroom of a very smart woman math teacher. "Mr. Lee," they cried. "This stuff is SO boring!" Some very brilliant historians like Edward Gibbon and George Lichtheim found mathematical orientation and aptitude to be a barrier or irrelevant to deep historical knowledge. Maybe girls see something about mathematics that eludes the prying inspection of educational sociologists and feminists. Maybe.
4
OR maybe math really IS boring.
1
Not always. There are some really elegant and beautiful proofs, going all the way back to the Greeks, who were really brilliant. But I have no great gift for the subject, I confess.
Boys and girls will develop differently, despite best intentions or efforts to eradicate "patriarchy". I struggle with the entire premise, focusing on the difference between boys and girls in different districts rather than showing the absolute test scores of both genders across all economic strata. This gender focus is divisive and now beyond tiresome. There is a larger and more troubling chasm that exists for both genders at the lower end of the economic spectrum but that data is not presented. And why not present absolute data, boys and girls in single parent versus dual parent households? I imagine that would also show significant underperformance in single parent households. These are the problems we should be focusing on.
6
I would agree with you if it were not for the fact that in spite of the sexism that still exists in our society girls and young women are outperforming boys and young men in more and more areas. This is a small piece of data, it doesn't intend to be the holy grail of student performance in schools, but it shows how vulnerable poor boys are in their education. They are also the ones that end up in jail more often (and there are millions of them). If more studies are done we may be able to find ways to ameliorate the situation. Maybe not everything that works for girls does work for boys.
3
@MR: What type of sexism are you speaking of? The one that bends our ears all day with "toxic masculinity"? The one that mistakes a woman having once felt uncomfortable around a man with sexual assault, and comes up with the grotesque concept of "rape culture"? You're right, that type of sexism is growingly, not "still", prevalent in our culture. The same sexism favors women in hiring, and tries to establish quotas in favor of women.
The misogyny of yore still touted as the main reason women don't (as a whole) earn as much as men, where still existent, is toothless. The shameless misandry that has permeated the culture, on the other hand, can be felt at every level of society, and will have a lasting effect on our culture as a whole. Enjoy the privilege until the last benefits of the "Patriarchy" wear out.
Please, do not blame any perceived differences on "stereotypical activities". It is actually quite possible to do both ballet and engineering. One of my children will be studying engineering at one of the top schools, but she has also been dancing since very young age. She has a strong artistic side to her, and this does not preclude her from being excellent in math and sciences, same goes for a lot of girls around her who have spectacular academic and research achievements in STEM while at the same time being amazing dancers, gymnasts, figure skaters... somehow the "girly" activities did not drag them down at all. Guess what, there are even guys who do ballet and at the same time are math whizes and science mavens. It is time to stop stereotyping.
4
What's tiresome about these studies is that they always begin with the presumption that boys and girls would be exactly the same if not for the influence of some kind of social contaminant. Not only is that presumption more improbable than Bigfoot, it reeks of the suggestion that girls need to be fixed. The simplest explanation is always the best one: boys and girls are different. And difference is not a pathology.
10
Isn't there research out there that at the higher levels of math, men, on average, outperform women, and that a lot of the difference can be explained by biology? Is it possible that in rich school districts, which are already performing several grade levels above, you're going to see a bigger gender difference just because the material is harder?
I'm a woman who achieved perfect scores on all three math regents exams. I was studious, really liked math and got kind of a kick out of how easy it was to get everything perfect with enough repetition. I never thought of math as a "guy" thing at all (my mom was a math-person, dad nosomuch). Then came calculus, chemistry and physics. Egads. The world of quantitative reasoning was not for me. I high tailed it out of STEM and landed myself comfortably in the humanities.
Honestly, I don't think culture made a lick of difference. Being studious necessary but not sufficient as material gets more complicated. I remember hitting that "wall" with STEM. It was a shock. I just didn't get it. I'm confident it had nothing to do with culture and everything to do with the wiring of my own brain.
14
Your own brain, perhaps. But to generalize from your personal anecdote to all women is where the danger comes in. And the cultural influences. And the denial of opportunity: “why waste a spot in medical school on a woman - she is less likely to succeed anyway”. We’re not so far away from attitudes like this.
Studying more math would help you understand the problems with making conclusions about “biology” based on anecdotal “evidence”.
4
We are not far at all from those attitudes, if you just check Breitbart et al, they use this kind of arguments. BTW, there are currently more women graduating from medical school than men.
1
FYI, more women than men entered medical school in 2017.
I don't need data to believe that perpetuating stereotypes is harmful. Most of us, to some degree, live up (or down) to expectations.
That said, this article is very poorly written. There are very obvious biases, starting with the assumption that the most important result is that affluent girls do slightly worse in math than their male counterparts. As other commenters have pointed out, there's a much more disturbing trend in these data that is hardly discussed at all.
Next, it's virtually impossible to assess the offered conclusions based on the data given. Math skills tend to vary dramatically. We need to know the absolute levels of math performance for each of these groups to know what the differences mean. For example, if most of the students in a poorly performing school can't do much more than single-digit arithmetic, small differences in the attention spans of boys and girls may account for the observed differences.
This article is another example of using data that support (but may not prove) a huge number of conclusions, then pulling out a subset of those conclusions in a very biased manner.
13
Fix a specific income value of parents in the upper chart. Then you can see the boy/girl gaps in several districts of a similar income level. Interestingly if the gap in math is large, the gap in English is also large, namely, both circles are at similar positions in the two ranges. This means the gap is also strongly due to the district or the region itself. For instance, looking at the second area from the left, you can see an upper singular circle in English, which is Birmingham, Ala. Then the circle of the same district in math is also at a singularly upper position. On the other hand, the two circles of Passaic City, NJ, are located both in the lower positions. This seems true at all income levels.
1
Wow, that's fascinating and has many implications. I guess those who are trying to defend innate ability as an explanation for everything won't like to see that.
Maybe in affluent communities boys are given more attention in the sciences than girls. I remember how badly I wanted learn to work the film projectors in grade school. Teachers always put me off in favor of the boys. I wanted to learn how to tune up a car. My father worked on our cars all the time. My mother talked him out of it. The consequences for me live on today: I'm still unsure of myself when it comes to mechanical things, changing a tire, etc. I wanted to be a physician. My parents told me that they wouldn't help me at all. In fact they undermined me by telling me that if I didn't get straight A's in all my college courses I would never make it to med school. No help or understanding was offered when I would get frustrated or upset. By the time I finished college I never wanted to see another classroom or test again. The professors were no better.
The messages I received told me that if I couldn't be perfect at it I was a failure. I was never encouraged to try again, given a helping hand, or told that failing was part of learning. As a girl it wasn't considered crucial for me to have confidence or to know how to change a tire, tune up a car, or be a professional. The mistake that many teachers and parents make is in how they react to their children's difficulties in a subject. My parents and teachers told me I was stupid. That didn't help me understand what was wrong. Students need encouragement, to be shown what was wrong and how to fix it.
3
I'd like to add that I graduated in the top 10 of my high school class. It wasn't until I was almost 40 that I understood what it meant: I wasn't stupid.
3
To the authors:
Have you re-analyzed the data by computing the girls/boys ratio of achievement using various percentile ranks (rather than means), including the ends of the achievement spectrum like the 5th and 95th percentile?
The issue, which I am trying to point at, is that you will see a higher percentage of high achievers in socioeconomically advantaged schools and that different subsets of students, e.g. average vs high achievers might drive the differences. Another way to analyze that (besides my suggestion to look at percentile ranks) would be to include an interaction term in your regression analysis.
"The Upshot" stands for data analysis journalism, but this story was not edited as a big data story. That requires more in-depth statistical work and (didactic) explanations.
In the absence of such an effort, narrative bias may have prevailed.
Looking very much forward (hopefully) to the authors' response.
7
Is it possible the type of math being taught at lower income areas and higher are qualitatively different. The latter being more advanced and abstract in which theoretically the males excel?
4
The conclusions seem flawed to me. I suspect they reflect a value bias. I suspect there are all sorts of explanations, and we just don’t know. For instance, the “English” cloud suggest that girls are somehow naturally better than boys at language, across the board. I’m not so sure but the authors seem OK with that, so let’s assume that. Maybe a similar result is true of boys with regard to mathematics. Maybe there’s something about mathematics that appeals to boys more than girls, so the math cloud should all be under the line, and maybe the reason it isn’t is that lower income boys don’t get a chance to recognize or act on that appeal as much as higher income boys. Those are just total speculations, but the point is we really don’t know what’s going on, and we seem to be letting our biased values (which I share) influence our explanations.
8
Did the researchers look just at the gaps or did they also look at the performance levels relative to some norms or other districts? Were the females/males in either type of district above or below State mean scores? For example, were the boys in the low-income areas doing considerably below State norms whereas the girls were just slightly below, so the focus should not be so much on why girls are doing better but what can be done to help the boys.
In schools in well-resourced districts, gaps are often found between subgroups and students within the district, but a good analysis also looks at how subgroups perform relative to those subgroups across the State or Nation. Sometimes a gap exists because a subgroup performs so far above the norm, but is of less concern when the other groups are still performing way above the norm. We should always look at what we can do to alleviate gaps between gender and ethnic, and socioeconomic groups, but it is less anxiety provoking when the gap is between a sub-group performing at the 99.9th percentile, while the "lagging group"is at the 98th percentile.
1
The article points to "social norms" and cites the idea that any mention of innate differences should be taboo. But isn't one possible explanation of the math results this: In poorer areas, the kids are just not learning very much math. Hence, there is a random variation in the gender gap. Where the kids actually learn some math, the innate aptitude of the boys has an opportunity to manifest itself.
Of course, this very suggestion works counter to boosting achievement in math, and therefore must be false. And the suggestion that the inference is political correctness at work must itself be false, since, as we learned in another Times article recently, there is no such thing as political correctness.
I don't see how to get the comments from the web page of the article itself, only from the main Times webpage.
13
The article doesn't discuss innateness or whether there is a natural superior or inferior ability of boys or girls either in language or math. The point they make is that EVERYBODY does better when children are immersed in an environment in which learning is seen not as something unchangeable (you have "it", or better give up because you are never going to learn) but rather as an ability that is developed through effort.
The major point of the article is that while the stereotype is that girls do better in language and boys do better in math, in reality language skills are pretty much the same in all socioeconomic environments, but in math boys are better only in affluent environments. That FACT in itself could disprove any innate theory regarding boy's superiority in math. When they are discussing differences based on socioeconomic status, they are looking for explanations based on those differences.
Most people are not so concerned about proving or disproving male superiority, but about making sure EVERYONE, regardless of gender or social class, gets a shot at success.
5
Actually - this finding support the hypothesis that males on average have more innate potential in math. Training in any skill tends to increase differentiation based on innate potential.
If we assume that the the high income schools provide more/better training in math, then kids who have more innate potential will benefit more than those who have less.
Other than political pressure on science it is hard to figure why we should not consider the possibility that females on average have more language inherent potential and males more math inherent potential.
4
MR, the fact that boys are better only in affluent environments doesn't disprove the hypothesis that the gap in performance has innate factors. Suppose we compare human performance in playing the piano with that of chimps. The gap in performance will be greater for affluent humans because they can afford to buy pianos. Still, the reason why humans do better has something to do with the fact that humans are innately better at the task than chimps.
If researchers are looking only for explanations "based on [socioeconomic] differences," then maybe they are unnecessarily limiting the scope of the hypotheses they are considering.
I don't see how objectively inquiring into what actually explains observed data is a matter of being "concerned with proving or disproving male superiority." And it's not either/or: the practical concern of helping people is not inconsistent with the theoretical goal of finding the truth about what explains the data.
1
Math is unlike other subjects. It appeals to those who excel at and care about its internal logic. Both my kids were math majors, one boy and one girl. My son was more recognized, which made my daughter more determined. My son is a computer engineer for Google and would die for a job paying half as much that involved pure mathematics. My daughter works as a medical research statistician. But if you gave both a high level calculus problem,they would have more fun. Either you love math or you don't. If you don't, do something else.
10
You still need to pay your taxes, calculate your mortgage, balance your checkbook, and solve a number of calculations requiring skills you learn in algebra in everyday life. I've never missed not learning calculus, but I use my basic knowledge of statistics, arithmetic, and algebra on an almost daily basis. In fact, someone with no notion of statistics would have a very hard time understanding the chart in this article.
It might be informative to see the absolute grade levels broken out by sex, for each subset of disciplines as well. In "rich, white and suburban" districts, do girls perform worse than they do in other districts? Probably not.
It may be that the best explanation is not in terms of some kind of bias directly affecting the "gap", but instead separate effects on boys vs girls that are not as interpretable in terms of NYT's favored political lens. For example, maybe girls' performance is not very sensitive to wealth, whereas boys' performance is, for reasons unrelated to cultural attitudes on gender roles.
By only showing the differences, or the "inequality," we are subtly encouraged to focus on some kinds of narratives rather than others. The weakness of this kind of research is that the data can be sliced many ways, and different narrative stories are supported by different ways of slicing.
Cimpian, btw, was a coauthor of a very shoddy paper in Science (Leslie et al, 2015) on gender representation across disciplines, which failed to note that including math GRE scores would have made their favored explanatatory variable (expectations that success is determined by innate brilliance) basically irrelevant. Dig into that data, and you'll see that this kind of research is based on finding stories that right-thinking people want to believe.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-mostly-not-du...
5
What we must now do is recognize that, given a chance, many girls excel at math, and many boys excel at reading and writing.
Too often, we stereotype groups and then pressure literary boys and mathematical girls to choose a path that doesn't suite their specific talents. I don't know how many scientifically or mechanically inclined women have told me that they were discouraged from following their dreams.
That said, intelligence testing does show that the mean verbal ability of boys is lower than that of girls, and the mean mathematical ability of girls is lower than that of boys. That isn't just an artifact of measurement: brain scans show that men and women use different brain regions to do mathematics, and that there are other differences between the male and female brain as well.
We shouldn't go to the opposite extreme and pretend that as many boys with excel at literature and as many girls at math. This tendency is almost as bad as the tendency that it replaces, as it pressures kids into choosing careers in which they will be at a competitive disadvantage and that they won't find as fulfilling as careers that are appropriate to their *individual* affinities.
6
This is an embarrassingly bad article by The Upshot, which usually concentrates on evidence rather than one-sided speculation. The evidence, which appears to be strong, is that in poor communities African-American girls outperform African-American boys in math, while in wealthy communities, European-American boys tend to outperform European-American girls in math. There is also strong evidence that girls outperform boys in language skills. The reasons for these disparities are not to be found in the data. However, there are a number of speculative answers in the Upshot article, almost all of which blame the parents of the girls in wealthy homes for the girls inferior performance in math, by using words such as stereotypes, traditional thinking, and role models. I think that the article would have been better without the speculation, or if there were speculation, also allow for possible answers that did not reflect the strong biases of the authors.
21
Because affluent white and Asian boys have so many role models in Silicon Valley, and the girls don’t. The girls hear, every day, about the harassment, the abuse, and with so many other career options available to them, they opt not to pursue high tech.
4
The inherent downfall of most research is that it can only focus on a small portion of the problem, and even then, the research outcomes are unfortunately referenced as sum-total gospel. This situation is worsened by poor choice of methodology. Why research an issue statistically that would be better understood by embedding in the actual environment?
Would be nice to know the performance data in African-American communities that are not low-income since they do exist. Would also be nice to know how the existence of robust athletic programs affect the presented research data (do children choose athletics over math club when given the option?).
The conclusion that children from affluent families perform better because they have examples in the home to emulate and they're highly invested in their grades fails to account for differences in lifestyle experience. For instance, kids in lower-income homes will usually hold some form of employment while in school and may also be caregivers to younger siblings, both detractors from high performance in school. Couple this reality with the possibility of encountering teachers who may be more enthusiastic about teaching in a low-income neighborhood in exchange for student loan forgiveness than their students' prospects of future success and another round of pitfalls arises.
4
The story buries the lede. The last paragraph of the article says that: "Instilling children early with motivation and confidence to do well in school is crucial, researchers say." This is the key to bright and successful students but we simply do not know how to motivate students and install them with confidence in large numbers when that does not come from the family. And yes, money does matter; it certainly enhances an education. But fundamentally I believe, perhaps incorrectly, that even with modest funding motivated and confident students will succeed, by and large, so long as they are not dragged down by environmental and external factors.
6
My daughter will likely major in math next year in college, but it has been uphill battle. In middle school, despite higher math scores, she was placed into advanced English. Advanced Chemistry in high school? Band teacher says no, you can't leave my band one semester (she took the Ad Chem). Sexism and bullying for girls on the Robotics Team? (yup, just powered through) Luckily, she jumped into a college Calculus class, found a mentor and her passion. I would say there is a lot of bias, perhaps unconscious, among teachers and administrators. It surprises me still.
7
Yes to this comment, unfortunately. The worst bias my daughter encountered was from the AP physics teacher, who also happened to coach several of the academic teams, including the robotics team. I believe it was mostly subconscious on his part, but many girls in the class were miserable and questioned their decisions about persuing science in college. It was heartbreaking to watch their confidence plummet. And the administration turned a deaf ear, probably because of his coaching- the boys did very well.
4
I think the article confuses the incorrect stereotype that girls perform worse than boys at math with the well documented fact that when boys and girls are left to make their own decisions - especially in the most egalitarian societies - boys pursue STEM fields and girls pursue fields in the humanities.
So when the article ends with "When students reach high school and have more choice in the classes they take, the gender gaps in achievement grow even larger."
Nobody should come away with the assumption that limiting choice or socially conditioning girls to go into math fields is going to close the gender achievement gap because it has and will widen it.
That does not negate the truth that there are social biases, but that they coexist with existing facts that show boys and girls, on average, pursue different careers.
9
My impression is that many teachers look at students the way coaches look at athletes. With training, most kids should be able to run a mile in 8–10 minutes, but if you have a kid who has what it takes to run it in 5 minutes, that’s whom you focus on.
5
Most teachers don't need one top student to win a race, but a good number of students who meet the standards on standardized tests.
1
I wonder if my parents had given my brother the "Easy Bake Oven" and me the math flash cards, math puzzles and games at Christmas when we were kids, I would if I would be the math genesis today instead of him. Maybe yes, maybe no. I'm pretty good at math but a real nock out in the kitchen when it comes to baking. Even though various influences do play a vital role in this equation, in the end, I think much of the "out performing" comes from one's innate ability rather than one's gender.
4
Sincere apologies for the grammatical errors in my writing. This is what happens when one's spouse attempts to have a conversation while I'm typing.
My comment should have read:
I wonder if my parents had given my brother the "Easy Bake Oven" and me the math flash cards, math puzzles and games at Christmas when we were kids, would I have been the math genesis today instead of him? Maybe yes, maybe no. I'm pretty good at math but a real knock out in the kitchen when it comes to baking. While various influences do play a vital role in this equation, in the end, I think much of the "out performing" comes from one's innate ability more so than one's gender.
1
Marge, I love it when commenters care about grammar and spelling, so I hope you'll accept my correction in the spirit in which it is offered: I think you meant "genius," not "genesis."
2
Marge: my parents never gave me an Easy Bake oven -- mom thought it was stupid. By age 3, I was on a stool next to her and grandma, learning to cook FOR REAL -- shelling peas, cutting out cookies or biscuits, etc. Simple stuff at first. But no Easy Bake oven, ever.
My dad really DID buy me lots and lots of flash cards. They were a big thing in the 60s. It was supposed to "fix" the problems I had in math, where I was CLUELESS. I missed 3 weeks due to mumps in 3rd grade and never caught back up. 40 years later, I was diagnosed with "dyscalculia" -- basically like dyslexia for math. It was not laziness or stupidity, as my parents and teachers screamed at me for years. I had a genuine learning disability! but nobody tested for this or cared in the 60s, so I was put into "the stupid" track and forced to go to summer school (where my grad school tutor admitted I had no ability whatsoever to learn any math at all). I barely graduated, despite being in HONORS and AP classes in everything else.
Not everyone is or can be good at math. All those flash cards did nothing for me.
2
Perfect studies and article so that we can get beyond gender stereotyping.
1
I agree with points made on greater emphasis on boys to do well on math, BUT, in concert with some of the comments below, if the conclusions reached in 'Coming Apart' for Caucasian households in America hold water and the offspring of the cognitive elite on average have higher average "g factor" (because some cognitive traits are attributable to genetics and are typically passed to the next generation), then it's understandable that an unusually high concentration of outliers in mathematical ability to the general population in a relatively small sample size will push the distribution curve outward. Differences within such a population will have greater variance than an evenly distributed sample size. Combine that with the studies that show the average male brain is out of the gate quicker on math while the average girl's brain is quicker with communication, with both sexes generally catching-up to one another in both fields by brain development maturity. Combine these two factors -- along with opportunities to hone the math skills of the mathematically inclined at an early age -- and it's understandable and non-controversial that the average boy math score will be higher than the average girl score in a wealthy school district, while greater parity will be found in less wealthy areas.
4
Perhaps I am misreading you: which tested population contains the "cognitive elite"? Are you equating wealth with innate intelligence?
On an individual by individual basis, certainly not! Also understand I am not saying that an individual's parents provides any certainty on one's intelligence. High intelligence is found in all neighborhoods and communities. HOWEVER, on a statistical average (since we are talking about statistics here), yes, the higher paying professional fields require higher cognitive intelligence and intelligence is heavily influenced by genetics. One unscientific example: the kids I grew up with who got the best grades, scored high SATs and were known for being smart generally drifted into high cognitive professions and make more money; those kids are now adults living predominantly in higher income zip codes predominantly married to people with similar credentials before settling down to have families. Hard facts I accept, but don't count myself as the beneficiary of. If anyone reading this has a different experience with those they grew up with where there is no correlation regarding academic smarts and income in later life, please share!
2
I've been really surprised to note the soft sexism that upper middle class families I know display to their daughters. They expect them to achieve, sure, but don't expect them to have serious or breadwinning careers.
More thankful than ever these days that my middle class parents did not convey any of that to me.
7
This article bothers me.
It only gives us data on how boys and girls do compared to each other because the wrier has a agenda
From this article we are told girls outscore boys in poor communities and the opposite results are found in wealthy communities.
From that you might think girls from poor neighborhoods do better than girls in wealthy ones.
I strongly doubt that.
I believe the low numbers that you find in poor neighborhoods for boys are the result of truancy.
Many boys there join gangs and are less likely to go to school.
Both the girls and the boys there do not reach their true potential.
In rich communities both girls and boys go to their classes and the results show what the people in poor communities would be if they could reach their true potential.
Math and language are given as if you can compare achievements levels
from just those two categories.
I think that gives you a incomplete picture.
I believe you should compare memory skills compared to logic.
Girls do better at memory and boys are better at logic.
Better memory in elementary school can be the reason girls do better at language because they have a larger vocabulary.
Better logic can explain why boys do better in math.
I am not a educator so I assume what I have written doesn't give us the whole picture as they must know more than I do but does show you how this article fails to show us the true picture.
10
"Recent research has found that black boys in particular struggle in the face of poverty and RACISM. Black and Latino boys and those in poor neighborhoods often get the message that doing well in school is not manly, a variety of research has found."
Yes, "the message that doing well in school is not manly" is a strong example of racism.
Please, stop doing it. It became a bad norm to just throw a word as a fact, without any need for a proof. Please cite CONCRETE examples of racism, not generalization THEORIES.
9
Where Males Outperform Females in Math: Poor, Black & Brown, Urban Districts
In 2016 and 2017, 29,907 test takers took the high school equivalency exam, the Test Assessing Secondary Completion (TASC), in New York City.
Of the five TASC subtests (Mathematics, Reading, Science, Social Studies, and Writing) taken 124,869 times, the Mathematics subtest was taken and failed most frequently by both sexes of New York City test takers. (The Math subtest failure rate for New York City females was 62%; for males, 54%. The Reading subtest failure rate for New York City females was 29%; for males, 30%.)
When a New York City test taker of either sex failed a single subtest (while passing the other four subtests), that single subtest test was, by a considerable margin, Mathematics. (The single subtest (Math) failure rate for females was 62%; for males, 54%. The single subtest (Reading) failure rate for females was 7%; for males, 9%.)
What PC nonsense! An incoherent mess of "maybe this" and "maybe that" based on an agenda to find some, any!, sort of victimhood narrative. The reality is that if a girl finds that math comes more easily than English and social studies, she will get good grades in math, whether or not her parents "enroll her in ballet" instead of computer camp. No one is trying to steer her out of the STEM fields so the boys can make all the money.
What about the decades before anyone had heard of "STEM"? I suspect we'd find still that boys, on average, did somewhat better with math and science and girls on average outperformed boys in english and social studies. That is how we're wired, again, on average.
10
So mentioning 'innateness' is counterproductive and ultimately doesn't help anyone, right? Then, what to think with this sentence: "In no district do boys, on average, do as well or better than girls in English and language arts. In the average district, girls perform about three-quarters of a grade level ahead of boys."
The reasons for any gender discrepancy in English or language arts isn't even broached. The real reason? Because the writers ascribe this difference to innateness, so self-evident in life that any elaboration is unnecessary. However, the converse, that boys have any edge at all in mathematics is sexist, patriarchal thinking, and somehow disempowers women. What utter sexist cherry-picking tosh.
23
Exactly! Where's the theory that boys are being discouraged from excelling in English?
5
Terrible article using data to advance a political agenda.
20
As a working mother in a wealthy L.I. suburb, I am continually astounded at how few of my fellow moms work full-time. Their main occupations seem to be shopping, socializing, going to the gym, grooming activities (hair, nails, etc.), and volunteering. The dad-breadwinner model is alive and well in these affluent suburbs, with dad often working in finance, and nobody seems to be worried about the impact this has on children. It's like nothing has changed since the 1950s.
My son said to me recently: "most moms don't work." Based on his experience, that's an accurate statement. I seized the moment to tell him how important and fulfilling work was for me, and how I would work even if I didn't need to financially, because it is such an important part of my identity, and it makes life more interesting! He was genuinely surprised.
I agree with the commenters expressing alarm that girls are outperforming boys in English everywhere, and significantly. That's the subject of other articles, some of which I have already read, with interest. But this article has a different subject. Right or wrong, like it or not, the habits and culture of wealthy families has an outsized impact on our society. If those families are perpetuating 1950s-era gender roles, that is going to show up somehow in their kids, and I for one buy the theory that they are showing up in these math results.
34
"I seized the moment to tell him how important and fulfilling work was for me..." . It's so nice to think that one can have such a conversation with one's child. Instead, I just give him a hug and take him for hamburger. Now that I know better, I will have a more educated response for him the next time. Thank you.
1
Some women really really like 1950's era gender roles. They make a concerted effort to arrange their lives so they end up in such a role. That is what it means to have real free choice among many options.
We do not need any studies. "Math" was developed by men for men. Girls do much better then boys in elementary math - addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, fractions etc. Most girls lose their edge when they start studying algebra, geometry and other "higher" math categories because they do not think the way those classes are designed and/or taught.
It's not the "girls" or creative boys fault. It is the design of higher "math" and they way they are taught.
Algebra is mathematical shorthand. Geometry is the study of space. Tell students that and that understanding elementary math is necessary to understand higher math but they are different.
Girls and creative boys will probably outperform mainstream-thinking boys in a heartbeat.
4
'One way to boost achievement in math, researchers say, is to avoid mention of innate skill and stress that math can be learned.'
I disagree. I'm highly competent when it comes to learned techniques and methods in differential and integral calculus. My mental arithmetic is very good. I was ranked in the top 3% of university graduates for mathematical ability.
But I'm a plodder. I lack flair and imagination. I'm no more a mathematician than I am a poet.
Real mathematicians see novel solutions. I see only the mundane.
What real mathematicians do can no more be taught than one can teach a dullard to be a Dante. Those who teach mathematics in American high schools are not usually professional mathematicians.
11
"Real mathematicians" comprise a minuscule part of the population. And indeed, they do have rare talents.
For everyone else interested in working in math-related professions--engineering, computer science, finance, etc.--the required math skills can be learned by most reasonably intelligent people. They won't likely prove Goldbach's conjecture or the Riemann hypothesis, but they can have a lot of fun and make a decent wage.
Agreed about most primary and secondary school math teachers.
1
What the article said is that hard work can make a person of average intelligence successful in school, not a genius. Many children give up too easily because American society emphasizes innate ability over hard work when it comes to learning. However, I am a professor and I see all the time how hard work often trumps sheer intelligence with no effort in the long term.
Now, we are talking about doing well in school. To become an Einstein or a Van Gogh you need talent (but still, effort counts).
2
Boys have been consistently outperforming girls on the SAT math section for over 50 years with a measurably better results around 30 points - this has not changed despite all of the attention.
The highest performing cohort as always had about a one-third to two-thirds female-male ratio.
But I do enjoy it when sociology researchers find sociological causal models to explain long-term and sticky data differences but I also sometimes question their math because - you know....
22
I like how you use the SAT scores as the end all be all to discussing boys and girls mathematic abilities. I question people who rely on one area for data--because it's not very scientific. Unless you are content to say that most boys usually perform better than most girls on the SAT. There are so many other examples that would turn that on its head. Early coders were female until someone decided coding was feminine enough.
3
Of course, you do realize that the boys and girls on the lower socioeconomic groups rarely take the SAT.
2
Sure - I can understand how tens of millions of SAT data points could be out-weighed by a few anecdotes about how women 'ruled' coding in the good ol' days.
2
As is so common, the study looks at variation in America. In today's Scandinavia, girls often do better on math and science as well as language standardised exams. Why? Because (1) classrooms, the curriculum and the entire society have moved to vastly improving gender equity AND (2) education, particularly science knowledge and skills, is highly valued by all social classes in Northern Europe AND (3) most social, cultural, religious and economic differences have been mediated by public programs advancing equality and tolerance. Learning, cognitive performance and brain development are socially mediated, something we have known but not done much about, since the 19th century.
9
gender equality does not mean girls outperform boys.
7
No, but where there is gender equality, they often do. In North America we tend to provide a poor context for both boys and girls, and neither reaches anything like their potential.
1
This hits really close to home. I remember becoming discouraged in my math skills in grade 4 and feeling unsupported in regaining my confidence. Ever since I have felt uncomfortable in my math skills, even now as an economics student in university.
People blame young girls for not speaking up in class, not volunteering for math competitions, etc., when we have been discouraged from speaking up and trying all our lives for fear of being wrong and judged for it. Not to mention girls throughout elementary to high school that were good at math and regularly answered questions still never got the credit and encouragement the boys did. I remember my best friend, second best at math in our class, feeling so dejected when she didn't get invited to participate in a math contest that boys who performed worse than her got invited to.
If we want girls to feel more comfortable at math we need to make them feel safe in taking risks and give them the same opportunities as boys.
11
Girls do have the same opportunities as boys.
So how do we get parents to talk more to boys to close that gap? Why is a gap at every age at every income acceptable?
6
I'm starting to get creeped out by these articles.
Boys are ahead by a couple of months at most in math, and we get a long article assessing where and why and how this is occurring, and what can be done about it.
Girls are ahead by many months--often a full academic year--in reading, and that warrants one lousy paragraph.
Sorry, but I think boys up to a year behind is reading is more critical that girls behind by 1 month in math. And it distresses me that these kinds of analyses are common.
111
Excellent comment!
6
And why is there this GIANT push to influence girls to take math and STEM classes and major in STEM subjects...but no similar push to get BOYS to take English Lit or Creative Writing, and pursue classes in those subjects and major in Liberal Arts? WHY NOT?
1
There’s a large elephant in this room that this article lamely skirts in order to show that somehow it’s the girls who are being held back: it’s the boys in the inner-city districts that are actually failing to realize their potential. And the reason seems fairly clear to me: a much higher percentage of them live in single-parent households without a father. This same set of fact# could much more effectively be used to show the effects on math achievement on boys who live in single-parent households than in showing some suppression of math achievement in girls.
50
I agree with this. The solution is not to create "girls only" competition clubs for math further excluding the boys! I live in a rural white area and boys are under performing girls in most subjects and the general populace is disconcertingly content with that.
7
"One way to boost achievement in math, researchers say, is to avoid mention of innate skill and stress that math can be learned."
This cannot be emphasized enough, on math and everything else. There is a tendency in the US to believe that intelligence is just something you are born with or not. Most students--at all levels--give up if they don't understand new material immediately because they assume that "there not good at it" or are not "intelligent enough". There is a part of intelligence that is innate, but the ability can be developed or diminished based on exposure and effort. The key element is EFFORT, but as long as popular belief supports the notion of innate intelligence as something unchangeable the potential of our children (as in the long term of our nation) will be stifled.
11
SOME math can be learned. Eventually you run into your limitations. I was good at calculus and number theory, but met my match in linear algebra.
7
Don't disagree - same happened to me. But those areas of math are beyond what most people will encounter in high school or even college. As a general rule, "don't talk about innate ability" I think will serve the most people the best.
4
Yes, innate ability has a role on everything you do (math and language, but also sports, music, or any other human activity). You won't become a major league player if you don't have natural talent, but that doesn't mean that you cannot play sports in high school. You won't be a professional musician if you don't have some innate talent, but you can enjoy playing with your friends. Not everyone has what it takes to be a professional mathematician, but most people (with some exceptions due to dyslexia or other learning disabilities) can do high school math if they have decent teachers and apply themselves. And the same goes for all other subjects.
Many gifted children crash at some point because they are so used to getting good grades without making any effort that when the time comes when they really need to study to keep their grades they don't know how to, or simply assume that they have reached their limit.
The same way children that develop later, or that need to make a bit more effort to catch up at school get very soon the message that they are not smart and therefore should not bother. We don't need a lot of people to do linear algebra, but we need citizens that understand what compound interest is when they get a loan.
When Los Angeles County’s “Math Field Day” competition experimented with giving lower-income districts a scoring advantage, parents, students and teachers in those districts boycotted the competition, and the idea was dropped.
Similarly, A “girls only” math contest is tantamount to an admission girls are incapable of performing at the level of boys, in whatever district you choose. If the competition is supposed to encourage girls to excel in math, it’s going exactly backwards.
22
Briefly and in passing, the article mentions the large, significant and universal gap in language arts performance, in which girls perform better than boys everywhere.
Could the authors explain why this was not discussed in further detail? Are there norms, stereotypes, cultural values, expectations and unconscious bias that is holding back the performance of boys in language arts?
74
I think nobody really cares since the money is in STEM not in gender studies.
9
In fact, the language arts gap in favor or girls is much larger than the math gap in favor of boys at wealthier school districts. The gap is really large but somehow math is more important.
11
Reading comprehension and writing are hardly "gender studies."
4
When I think of the best students I've encountered, they've all been girls. By that I mean they do the job of being a student very well: studying, behaving, taking notes, timely, helping others, keeping organized binders/folders/notebooks.
But when I think of the most brilliant students I've met, the ones who seem to naturally just get the material we're studying instantly while seeming to have poor studying/organizational habits and sometimes hygiene habits as well, they've all been guys.
Obviously there's no telling how much work they put into class at their homes but my experiences reflect at least some of what's in this article: a smattering of boys at the top closely followed by a very sizable group of girls who are in turn followed by a bunch of guys who also tend to occupy the very worst spots in the grade book.
41
This is classic stereotyping. There is not a shred of evidence for it.
You are seeing what you expect to see. Boys blow their horn, and act like boys and people call it genius. If girls behaved similarly they would be shunned. Its the male behavior that you equate with genius. Even when girls are clearly better - as you admit - you can't just say the girls are the geniuses. This is exactly what prejudice looks like.
They used to say this about musicians. Girls could never be great, inspired - merely competent. Then they hid people behind a curtain when they did auditions and no one could tell if a man or a woman was playing an instrument. It was total nonsense that only men could be great musicians. God Almighty when will this prejudice ever end??
2
One aspect that almost all of these studies fail to investigate, is the actual academic performance of the parents. Is there a correlation between children who perform well in math and their parents who may do the same? I think researchers are reluctant to investigate this variable because of the fear of treading down the path of a Bell Curve analysis or finding that biology may have a role as well a culture. If a study is going to have some real science behind it, it is going to require the need to ask the uncomfortable question.
17
It would be quite difficult to separate parents' "innate" math abilities from our comfort with math, right? How could we separate the genes I passed to my children from my ability to clarify any points of confusion with math over their many years of education and my willingness to emphasize numerical literacy as well as verbal literacy?
2
Well, since you are delving into the racial trope of intellectual superiority\inferiority based on race and ethnicity, let me just add my two cents. I am a black woman with degrees in both math and physics. All three of my children are excellent math students easily passing their college calculus courses. On my standardized graduate exam, I scored in the 92 percentile on the quantitative section. The hard question, Mike, is when this country is going to wake up to the lost talent they are allowing to rot in poor performing schools and debilitating neighborhoods both urban and rural.
8
Thank you, Renee!
1
Math is an area where the differences between the top performers and everyone else are really large. If you did a nationwide chart of boys and girls who score 800 on the Math Level II Achievement test, or a 4 or a 5 on the Calculus AP test, you would see a large number of boys, and a few girls, mostly concentrated around Boston, New York, and San Francisco. If you hunted down the truly elite, those ready to take graduate-level math while still in high school, you would probably find a couple of hundred boys scattered around these areas.
From a macro-economic point of view, the off-the-charts elite are not important, but they are the ones that push technological and mathematical advancement. The half-dozen scroungy-looking young programmers who joined with Bill
Gates in New Mexico in 1975 ended up making quite a splash. The quiet fellows in university towns are not as well-known, but their inventions and algorithms can be found on every smartphone.
7
I got a 5 on my AP Calc test...after missing the first 2 months of classes due to major illness. I went to public high school in a small town in central MN; I was 17 when I graduated, and I am a woman.
Math is like breathing for me. It just makes sense.
"Girls are better at language, boys are better at STEM" BOTH of these assumptions/stereotypes are HARMFUL. While they may be true as an overarching statistic, they are detrimental to the individual. I encounter this bias nearly everyday as an electrical engineer.
These studies are valuable for many reasons, but they show trends in large populations. We absolutely need to STOP applying them to individuals within those populations.
12
Thank you for your post!
1
Wasn't the New York Times arguing a couple of months back that disparity in outcome between different racial groups was caused solely by racism and that to even consider other factors like cultural values, family circumstances, biology is racism?
Now it seems to be arguing that other factors such as parental influence/expectations and even (gasp!) "innate skills" may play a role in outcomes!
For what it's worth, at the very tail of the distribution, men dominate in both maths and science. Check out how many Nobel Prize or Fields Medal are male vs female. Or at the high school level international competitions like IMO or IPhO. Or even lower level competitions like ASHME, AIME, etc.
28
True equality will be achieved when girls outperform boys in language *and* math, instead of just outperforming them in language.
11
This authors talk about the gender achievement gap in terms of boys in affluent districts doing slightly better than girls, and wax on about how sexist parents are. What about the giant and universal gap that girls have over boys in reading? Just two sentences? Seems like they are pushing an agenda that isn't really supported by the data...
56
Ah, the New York Times, so predictable. A small advantage in math scores by a sub-set of boys of well-off families must be analyzed and explained away as a result of - someone! - placing their thumb on the scale of gender justice. Meanwhile the elephant of a huge advantage in verbal scores by girls across the board is barely mentioned, although it stands our clearly in the graph, I guess because that is just right and natural. Hmm, maybe, if we are truly interested in gender equality, we ought to put some resources into figuring that one out. (e.g. maybe provide reading materials that most boys are actually interested in? E.g. Sci-fi, sports, adventure, comics? Nah!!)
95
There is always the question of whether educators should play to students' strengths or shore up their weaknesses (as George Miller once pointed out). Maybe boys need exposure to touchy-feely topics that girls are better at dealing with. In any case, maybe we are doing them a favor by expecting more from them, rather than pandering to them with comic books, even if the girls have an advantage.
Where is the outcry over boys not performing as well as girls in English?
107
And where is the concern about cities like Detroit where boys are performing far below their male peers elsewhere, and graduate at shockingly low rates? Women’s progress should not be measured solely as “doing better than men.” There needs to be an independent evaluation of competency.
4
I had the same reaction. Looking at those two charts, the title of this article should be "boys lag girls in language ability." But the comparatively small gap in math fits the politically correct narrative better.
4
Heh, yes, the Times seems to have an article every other day on women's issues but you rarely see one on male issues, or the plight of the working class, or what have you. It's gotten to the point at which I roll my eyes when I see another, indeed, I almost didn't read this one, which would have been too bad since it was pretty good.
1
Boys display greater variability on IQ tests. Boys from wealthy districts score higher than girls and boys from poor districts score lower than girls.
3
The reading gaps are found in every district. And they are much larger than the math gaps in the rich districts where boys outperform girls in math. I hope we worry less about affluent girls based on this work and more about poor boys.
43
Parents: take note of a nugget in this piece that might be overlooked: choosing suburban life, which tends to nudge families toward the Dad-breadwinner and Mom-caretaker model has a profound impact on how kids form their identities and goals.
The communities close to me in Massachusetts are definitely on the rightward part of the chart in this piece (affluent, professional, high academic achievement)). In urban community where I live, there is only a one month gap between how boys and girls perform in math. My kids are growing up with peers who have two working parents and where mothers are just as likely to out-earn fathers. But in the 'burbs, mothers take a back seat professionally if they work at all, especially in Asian families. Sure enough, the math gap for boys is pronounced.
So for families who think suburban life is best for their children - think again.
9
In order to do that, you would have to look at the absolute statistics, not just compare boys and girls in each district. If the girls are behind the boys in the rich district, they may still vastly out-perform both the girls and the boys in the urban community.
6
I'm making a big bet on this that staying in the workforce - even though we don't need it - will be what best serves my girls in the long run. Hope I'm right.
1
I am a senior and in my life experience imo here are two of the facts that influence education.
On overall education, the role of the parents are the most crucial factor whether children do well in schools.
Regarding individual subjects things like gender, ethnic background and natural selection have a role in determining whether ones does better or worse in a particular subject.
9
Interesting that the article leaves out inheritance of math skills.
There is a established correlation between math skills and income. Higher math skills are correlated with higher income.
The students that earn the most study engineering and computer-science, degrees with a hefty component of math. Those students eventually achieve an annual return of 12% over a 20-year period. Business and economics degrees earn an 8.7%.
23
growing up in the 60s to WW2 fathers who were high school grad machinist types, we were taught math from a young age. Tolerances, gaps, circumferences, helping with projects and tune ups, measuring wood, doors, windows etc made us cognizant of math and most I know did 2 year of calculus even if we weren't engineers. Now when I see my daughters friends(especially male including boyfriends) basic mechanics from bicycle repair to oil/tire change are a mystery to them and I don't feel they are incented to integrate math into their lives. Also, even though we were decent athletes(and remain so in our 60s) there was much less time playing sports than there is now. Not is is a 24/7/365 distraction(pleasant though it is) and many hard subjects are pushed aside.
19
Perhaps the authors should have read up on the human brain and not relied entirely on test results. As an anthropology major in college, I was required to take a course on brain development. On average, men's are larger - they have about 500 ccs more brain than women, however, women have a much larger corpus collosum - the bundle of nerve fibers that connect the two hemispheres. Our brains are different, we learn differently and different areas of our brains develop at different rates. In years of pouring over test results, researchers have found that girls, in general, do better with language skills earlier than boys do and boys are generally better at math; however, by late adolescence, they usually catch up to one another. I know that, in my own experience, when I took algebra as a 14 year old it was incomprehensible to me! I barely scrapped by with a grade of C and promptly forgot it all! Many years later when I returned to college in my late 20's, I took it again (with fear and trepidation, I might add). Suddenly, it all made perfect sense. I got an A and kept wondering why I couldn't grasp it before. (Then, of course, I took the brain development course and had an "aha" moment!).
We may be introducing our girls to more advanced math a bit too early. Girls take these courses, don't do well and label themselves "bad at math".
66
Your comment, based on science, makes more sense than the whole article does.
31
unfortunately, you're gonna get crucified for claiming that biology has anything to do with aptitude, as was Lawrence Summers.
25
Well, liberty, I can't help that. As I mentioned in my comment, our "aptitudes" catch up. I turned out to be pretty good at math, after all. (Also did well in computer science and logic). I think, if girls were introduced to advanced math with a "language" approach, it would help. Don't just talk about the concept of negative numbers (which gave me a headache in high school) give real life examples. I was too timid at 14 to push my teacher to explain this to me. If he had once mentioned an overdrawn bank account or places on earth that are below sea level, I think it would have instantly explained to me what he was talking about. But he just pushed the abstraction with one formula after the other. Lost me completely.
9
I am one of five, the product of a rich ,white, suburban district, while I attended Yeshiva ( private school).My brothers outperformed my sisters and myself in math, My sisters and. I outperformed my brothers in languages, while we all learned how to read,write and speak both English and Hebrew, starting in the first grade,
I outperformed all my siblings, academically. was valedictorian, ,a Regents Scholar. (which required my scoring above 90 on al New York State Regents exams, including math regents ), was admitted to the Ivy League, and graduated #1 in my department, and in the top 1% of the City University of New York.
I don't believe that my struggles with math had anything to do with parental expectations.My parents expected me to get into the Ivy League, and were hoping I would become a U.S. Senator, or a doctor, at the very least.
Regardigg "There is also a theory that high -earning families invest more in sons ,because men in this socioeconomic. group earn more than women, while low-earning women invest more in daughters, because. lower class woman have more job opoortunities than men" :that theory dates back to 1973, and was only a theory.
"High income parents enroll. their daughters in ballet, and their sons in engineering."
It's news to me that parents can "enroll " children in engineering. The equating of ballet lessons and engineer enrollment is bizarre.
This whole piece is based on outdated stereotypes .
76
The stereotypes still exist for parental expectations. My friends with girls enrol them in ballet and art classes during the summer. I sent my sons to engineering and computer camps as well as sports. We live in Canada, highly educated career women with successful careers. Go figure. There seems to be an expectation for girls that they develop these soft skills as part of social role of accomplishment that is valued. That message affects what they put their effort into.
5
This is troubling to be sure. But why isn't the arguably more troubling gap in reading outcomes for boys the headline? Is it because we simply do not value language, literacy, and the humanities in the face of the all holy STEM?
39
How can this be a "NYT Pick"? The NYT wrote the article! Besides, we all know the answer: It's not the humanities that the Times devalues, it is boys.
7
No, it is because if a boy/man fails, it's the boy's/man's fault and if he can't pull himself up by his own bootstraps, he deserves to be down there.
If a girl/woman fails, then there must be someone there that's holding her down, usually the patriarchy. And society as a whole has to do everything in its power to make that girl's/woman's live better.
A tribe with 9 women and 1 men can survive. A tribe with 1 woman and 9 men cannot survive.
Boys/men who fall through the cracks and are ignored are a consequence of this.
And.... who eads books anymore? Can we see some hands here?