Feminists

A year ago in this report, I summarized National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results to give elementary teachers an overview of gender differences in academic achievement by subject area. At that time, I was pleased by girls' gains in math and science scores because improved scores suggested that long-standing gender gaps favoring boys might be closing in these areas. Less positive were results showing that boys continued to score lower than girls did on national assessments in reading and writing and had lower performance than girls had in the first round of tests for the arts. At that time I was encouraged but concerned about inequities in NAEP scores, but now I am alarmed--not about the NAEP results themselves or the fact that educators still have progress to make toward gender equity in education. What alarms me is selective reporting of "facts" from NAEP statistics used to back up proclamations such as "Girls RULE! Mythmakers to the contrary, it's boys who are in deep trouble!" These headlines blazed across the cover of The Atlantic Monthly's lead issue for Summer, 2000, highlighting a classroom scene dominated by a triumphantly smiling girl with book in hand, arm raised to get a turn, and a sullen-faced boy slumped at a desk in the background.

In the publication's featured article, "The War Against Boys," Christina Hoff Sommers launches an attack to debunk "the myth of the downtrodden girl" (p. 70) and declare, "only in sports are boys ahead" (p. 60). Sommer asks, "How did we come to believe in a picture of American boys and girls that is the opposite of the truth?" (p. 62). Then she fires a volley of charges naming Carol Gilligan, professor of gender studies at Harvard University, the American Association of University Women, the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, and a score of other scholars, researchers, and journalists as perpetrators of a great hoax convincing the public and educators that schools have shortchanged girls. To support the thesis that girls are the advantaged lot and plead the plight of boys as the group with odds stacked against them Sommers cites NAEP statistics in ways that fall short of telling the truth that she invokes in the article. Sommers did not report, for example, NAEP 1999 Trends in Academic Progress that examine achievement for both genders by comparing performance on national assessments given across three decades. These results show similar performance for males and females across all the assessment years for most subjects and levels. There were significant differences in some subjects, especially reading. Even in reading, however, differences for genders were smaller than those for different ethnic groups. NAEP trends also show that boys, ages 9 and 13, have increased their reading scores and that the gender gap in reading for 9-year-olds narrowed substantially between 1971 and1999.

Sommers also neglected to report achievement by gender for social sciences. On the 1998 civics tests, 4th grade boys scored higher than girls did. On geography assessments last administered in 1994, males performed better than females at all three grade levels. On U.S. history tests, also given in 1994, there were no significant differences between male and female students at grades 4 and 8, but males outperformed females at 12 grade.

In The Atlantic Monthly article, Sommers heralded girls improved achievement on 1996 math and science tests to support claims that "parents, teachers, and administrators now pay more attention to girls' deficits in math and science" (p. 74). She did not tell readers that gender differences in science were insignificant at grades 4 and 8 or that 12th grade males continued to outperform females. Neither did she mention that scores in math for males and females in 8th and 12th grades were not significantly different and that males scored higher than females at 4th grade level

The 17-point advantage reported by Sommers for girls over boys on the 1996 NAEP writing assessments were accurate for the oldest students. For 4th and 8th graders, girls scored higher than boys did by 14 and 15 points. Large gender differences in writing have persisted since the first writing assessments were given in 1984, and boys' scores decreased significantly from 1984 to 1996 in grades 8 and 11. If there is an area in which boys are academically at risk, writing is it.

Downward trends in writing achievement for males should be a source of concern for all educators, but they hardly justify headlines such as "Girls Rule!" or "The War against Boys!" Contrary to Sommers' assertion that boys outperform girls only in sports, most academic areas with a history of assessments show that boys continue to perform better than girls or, as in reading, their performance is improving. NAEP evidence of positive trends in achievement for both genders are well established. I hope that elementary teachers will congratulate themselves on the progress they are making toward gender equity in academics instead of being misled by selectively reported "facts" that have the potential to impede or reverse efforts to make education more equitable for both boys and girls. Check out NAEP trends and recent results for yourself at http://nces.ed.gov/commissioner/remarks2000/8_24_2000.asp and http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/site/home.asp and get your own view of the facts.