Gender and the Achievement Gap

The achievement gap based on gender has been focused on in recent years highlighting the gap between male and female achievement in math and science, with females lagging behind. Now, a lot of research has been focused on males lagging behind females in reading and writing.

Research states that females outperform males in reading and writing at all grade levels. Recently math test scores in fourth grade showed a gap with males performing higher than females, but it also showed a much smaller gap in 8^th and 12^th grade.

College is made of mostly females (54%), which is evidenced by female enrollment in college preparatory classes more than males while in high school. Males are also more likely to dropout of high school. Across all ethnic groups, except Asian Americans, females were more apt to attend and complete college than males. Males are also more likely to be diagnosed with a reading disability than females while in school.

Females enter school with better literacy skills and the gap increases slightly during the kindergarten year. Some studies indicated that females performed better at word recognition and comprehension tasks. Teacher characteristics were found to contribute to the size of the gap in comprehension. Students of female teachers and those with more years of pre-service training showed smaller gender differences.

Difference in approaches to learning among young children contributes to the gender gap. Young males were rated by teachers as using fewer effective learning strategies and these lower ratings were associated with lower gains in literacy skills during kindergarten. In early childhood, males and females had similar attitudes toward reading, yet, the achievement gap in literacy increases throughout elementary school. This trend may reflect the fact that boys reading interests were not being addressed in school. Boys reported disliking the kinds of things that they had to read for school and preferring magazines and adventure and scary stories. One study showed that high interest reading materials was associated with improved reading performance in boys.

Gender differences are found not only in school, but also in the workforce. It is common knowledge that males and females in the same position with the same education make different salaries most often. Males are known to make more money and hold more superior roles, especially in the business field. Most research attributes this gap to competition, stating that males are more competitive than females, which drives them to excel. Cotton (2010) discovered that males outperform females on the first round of a timed test when told that it was a race. After the first round, the next four rounds, there was absolutely no evidence of males performing better than similar ability females. In fact, there was some evidence that males may perform worse than females in later periods, therefore discrediting the fact that males make more money because they do better in a competitive setting.

An article written by Willingham (2009) called “Is it True that Some People Just Can’t Do Math?” explained that most differences in math are seen across different countries and when looked at closer, all individuals are capable of being successful in math and science, but that the approach to teaching it has to change. He states that to learn math, you need three types of knowledge: factual, procedural and conceptual. He highlights five suggestions for teachers: 1) Think carefully about how to cultivate conceptual knowledge, and find an analogy that can be used across topics, 2) In cultivating greater conceptual knowledge, don’t sacrifice procedural or factual knowledge, 3) In teaching procedural and factual knowledge, ensure that students get to automaticity, 4) Choose a curriculum that supports conceptual knowledge, and 5) Don’t let it pass when a student says “I’m just not good at math”.

Willingham suggests that allowing students, mostly females, to say they are not good at math is teaching them that it is socially acceptable to not do well in math because of your gender. Willingham claims that this is not true and that it falls in the teachers’ hands to discredit these beliefs and show the child that they CAN do math!