For decades now, education researchers have discussed the fact that girls tend to do worse in math (and to a lesser but still significant degree, science) than do boys. As follows, girls also tend to go into math and science related fields less often than do boys. This has been known by researchers for decades, and efforts have been made, without much success according to new PISA results, to resolve this gender gap. But less has been made of an equally troubling fact: boys are tending to do worse than are girls in education overall. Following is an excerpt from an article about this trend by Eduardo Porter writing for the New York Times:
Six out of 10 underachievers in the O.E.C.D. — who fail to meet the baseline standard of proficiency across the tests in math, reading and science — are boys. That includes 15 percent of American boys, compared with only 9 percent of girls. More boys than girls underperform in every country tested except Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.
Across the board, girls tend to score higher than boys in reading, which the O.E.C.D. considers the most important skill, essential for future learning.
At the bottom, the gap is enormous: The worst-performing American girls — who did worse in reading tests than 94 out of every 100 of their peers — scored 49 points more than bottom-ranked boys, a 15 percent gap. And the deficit across the O.E.C.D. was even bigger.
And it is not only the least educated boys who are falling behind. Research by Mr. Stoet and David Geary of the University of Missouri based on PISA tests from 2000 to 2009 concluded that on average, boys score worse than girls across the three subjects in 70 percent of the countries tested.
Clearly, more work needs to be done to investigate preferences of girls and boys in education around the world. More work also needs to be done to investigate how much good teaching and parenting practices can influence these gaps. If these trends are allowed to continue in the coming decades, we will begin to see some striking differences in female and male careers.
For more information, please visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/business/gender-gap-in-education-cuts-both-ways.html?_r=0
