Report shows academic achievement gap between girls, boys

Posted on Fri, Sep. 19, 2003
Report shows academic achievement gap between girls, boys
By Alaina Sue Potrikus
Knight Ridder Newspapers 0/20/03

WASHINGTON - Throughout the industrialized world, girls are better readers than boys, according to a startling new study of 42 countries. Girls also have higher expectations than boys do of someday holding good jobs.

In addition, female college graduates - less than half of all graduates a decade ago - now outnumber their male counterparts in most industrialized countries, according to a 453-page report released this week by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

"It just blows you away," said Barry McGaw, director for education at the OECD, a think tank on global social issues. "Fifteen years ago, we were saying that girls don't stay in school and don't go on to post-secondary education. Look what they've done in 15 years."

The study's results jibe with recent U.S. reports showing strong educational surges by women.

For example, 3 out of 5 members of high schools' National Honor Societies today are girls. Girls outnumber boys 124 to 100 in advanced placement courses. As recently as 1987, boys outnumbered girls in those demanding classes.

Girls also tend to get better grades. A survey of U.S. high school seniors who took the SAT in 2000 found that 44 percent of the young women reported A averages. Among men, 35 percent did. And a count of valedictorians in the Philadelphia area last spring turned up 106 females and only 64 males.

Sociologist Andrew Hacker, author of "Mismatch: The Growing Gulf Between Women and Men," isn't surprised by the surge in women's performance. According to Hacker, 3 out of 4 high school senior girls say they spend an hour or more on homework daily. About half of boys say they do. Conversely, boys report watching more television than girls do and spend more time on video games.

"Women are proving themselves to be better at being good students and scholars than men are," Hacker concluded in an interview. "It's not in the genes. It's almost as if being a man and being masculine, macho and powerful is not conducive to being a good student."

The OECD's McGaw attributed the growing gap to a kind of obstinacy in boys, especially boys in lower-income families.

"Working-class boys define themselves as `not girls,'" McGaw theorized. "So, if the girls value education, that's what boys don't do."

Kaye Peters, who teaches English at Central High in St. Paul, Minn., said she sees it all the time. "Boys don't want to look too smart and don't want to look like they're pleasing the teacher," Peters said.

Her theory: "Girls can negotiate the fine line between what peers want of them and excelling at school. Boys have a harder time balancing being socially accepted and academically focused."

The OECD study found that, except in Switzerland, Japan and Turkey, women now earn more university degrees than men. In all but Austria and Iceland, girls have higher occupational expectations than boys. And in tests of fourth-graders and 15-year-olds, girls were better readers than boys in every industrial country.

Industrial countries include most of Europe, Asia and southern South America, as well as the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Generally speaking, the gap between American girls and boys was similar to the disparity in other countries. For example, 15-year-old American girls scored an average of 518 on the OECD's reading test while boys scored an average of 490. Their gap of 28 points is close to the worldwide average of 32.

Boys that age continued to score ahead of girls in math in about half of industrialized countries. Boys are "marginally but not significantly" ahead in the United States, the OECD found.

Microbiologist Alice Reinarz, associate dean for undergraduate studies at Texas A&M in College Station, said girls can close the gap.

"A lot has to do with the way women are reared and socialized," she said. "If they get messages from families and teachers that they can do well in science, they will. If they get several messages that they can't do math or science, then they won't."
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(Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondent Susan Snyder of the Philadelphia Inquirer contributed to this report.)

To review a summary of the OECD's "Education at a Glance 2003" study, go to www.oecdwash.org