Posted on 06/13/2018 6:24:41 AM PDT by reaganaut1
In much of the country, the stereotype that boys do better than girls at math isn’t true – on average, they perform about the same, at least through eighth grade. But there’s a notable exception.
In school districts that are mostly rich, white and suburban, boys are much more likely to outperform girls in math, according to a new study from Stanford researchers, one of the most comprehensive looks at the gender gap in test scores at the school district level.
The research, based on 260 million standardized test scores for third through eighth graders in nearly every district in the country, suggests that local norms influence how children perform in school from early ages – and that boys are much more influenced than girls.
“It could be about some set of expectations, it could be messages kids get early on or it could be how they’re treated in school,” said Sean Reardon, professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford, who conducted the study with Erin Fahle, a doctoral candidate in education policy there, and colleagues. “Something operates to help boys more than girls in some places and help girls more than boys in other places.”
The study included test scores from the 2008 to 2014 school years for 10,000 of the roughly 12,000 school districts in the United States. 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.
But in math, there is nearly no gender gap, on average. Girls perform slightly better than boys in about a quarter of districts – particularly those that are predominantly African-American and low-income. Boys do slightly better in the rest
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford,“
‘I find it difficult to imagine a more useless position.”
Another intellectual yet idiot skews the data to make his Social Justice thesis bs appear to be valid.
One of our younger female relatives finished her 8th grade at an intermediate school about 40 miles east of Stanford, a few years ago.
She and a female Russian girl, who could not speak English when her parents moved to the US 3 years before her eighth grade, won the top math awards. Some rich white boys in their classes were good in Math and even participated in the Math Olympics. However, they were no match for these two white girls.
One common thread between the two girls were their parents were outstanding in math and held jobs using high levels of math daily.
The young Russian girl was the best chess player in her class.
In conclusion, racists like me would say DNA, positive parents on both sides and inherited high IQs on both sides of these math geniuses in spite of being girls enabled them to score high in math..
Maybe according to Google et al., but I have multiple Math Degrees and where I went (Rensselaer) no courses were offered in Arithmetic.
ML/NJ
Geez! You sound as racist as me on this issue!
“Maybe males good in math correlates with higher income.”
And they pass that to their offspring.
It’s genetics.
People in rich, white, suburban districts are smarter than those who are not, and so are their kids.
Arithmetic is a branch of mathematics.Before eighth grade, it's arithmetic not math. — ML/NJ
Indeed - but a relatively specialized branch - with the interesting exception of the “word problem.”How well I remember sitting in grade school at the end of the day, and hearing the teacher’s assignment of Arithmetic homework. If it was a page of number crunching, the whole class would mutter about it.
OTOH if it was a page of “word problems,” the rest of the class would set up a loud moan - while I inwardly smiled and thought, “Only a few problems - and they will be interesting problems at that!"
When I was teaching grammar to elementary school students, the girls had no problem learning the definitions of the parts of speech. The boys hated it. So, I started having the class diagram sentences. The boys loved it! The boys could hang an adjective off a noun with no problem! We diagrammed sentences once a week to keep the boys’ language grades up.
B.S., if that was the takeaway from the study then it was a total waste of time. Let's study who does best at baseball in K-12.
There’s some black and brown kids, and people, in those neighborhoods too.
My sister thanks algebra, calc, trigonometry, and the like is comically easy.
I struggled to barely pass any algebra.
Give her an accounting problem with more than a few lines, there are problems.
I was usually very good at them.
You’re missing my point. :-)
Presumably both boys and girls from economically well off and stable families would benefit from that. IOW, boys and girls would have higher scores. Ditto for IQ. So what accounts for the difference in scores? One thing not looked at is whether or not the girls cared as much as the boys about excelling in math. Which is why finding out what both boys abd girks wanted to do for a living might help answer the question about why the difference in scores.
I sucked at higher math, especially the theory. The only reason I got through calc in college was tutoring from my then fiancé now hubby. I have no clue if that was due to my being a chick. I wanted to do well. Calc just gave me fits.
Good looking girls know they don’t need to know math it takes care of if self with age.
Not “according to Google et al”. When I was in primary school in Ireland (mid to late 1970s), all arithmetic was referred to as mathematics and the word “arithmetic” was never used.
It could be argued that the term “mathematics” with reference to real number manipulation is too general, in light of that, especially given the etymology of the word “mathematics” (which comes from Greek “mathema”, meaning “lesson”).
Do better, or is it that girls from this economic and social stratum are less inclined to want to excel at math?
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or is it because girls get interested in boys from eighth grade on, therefore fashion, lipstick, makeup, etc.is their priority..........
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