UC Berkeley News
By Robert Sanders, Media Relations
24 July 2008 tages - CMS-->
BERKELEY — Girls now equal the performance of boys on standard mathematics assessment tests, probably because girls now match boys in the number and level of math courses they take in elementary and high school, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
That wasn't the case 20 years ago, when studies showed nearly identical performance at the elementary school level but girls lagging boys at the high school level. Since then, girls' participation in higher level mathematics classes has risen to the same level as boys', with predictable results, according to study co-author Marcia Linn, UC Berkeley professor of education.
"In the past, there were differences in test scores, and women took fewer advanced courses in mathematics than men," she said. "Now that enrollment in advanced math courses is equalized in high school, we don't see gender differences in performance on state tests."
The Wisconsin and UC Berkeley researchers report their findings in the July 25 issue of Science.
Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, the researchers reached their conclusions after sifting through mountains of data, including math scores from 7 million students who were tested in accordance with the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The team compared not only the average performance of all students on these tests, but also the scores of just the most gifted children, as well as the ability of children to solve complex math problems. In all cases, girls measured up to boys. [To read the entire release, go to: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/07/24_math.shtml ]
1 comment:
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
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