Are There Differences in Achievement Gaps Between Boys and Girls

Posted by Beth DuBose on Mar 18, 2010

This month the Center on Education Policy released a report that looked at data from 2007-2008 to determine if there is a difference in achievement gaps between boys and girls. The Center on Education Policy looked at the achievement of boys and girls on the state reading and mathematics tests used for NCLB accountability. The data for these analyses were drawn from an extensive set of test data that has been collected from all 50 states by CEP with technical support from the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO). State education officials have verified the accuracy of the data.

The report addresses four main questions:

 
• What is the current status of performance differences between boys and girls in reading
    and math at various grades and achievement levels?
 
• What trends have emerged in the achievement of boys and girls at the elementary, middle,
    and high school levels since 2002, the year NCLB took effect?
 
• What trends have occurred since 2002 in the performance of male and female 4th graders
    at the basic, proficient, and advanced levels of achievement?
 
• Have achievement gaps between boys and girls narrowed since 2002?

Below are the main findings from the report:

 
• In math, there was no consistent gender gap in 2008. Rather, there was rough parity
    in the percentages of boys and girls reaching proficiency at all three grade levels. The
    percentages of boys and girls scoring proficient inmath tended to be similar, with boys edging
    out girls slightly in some states and girls doing slightly better in other states. No state
    had a difference in math between boys and girls of more than 10 percentage points.
 
• In grade 4 math, states tended to have greater shares of girls reaching the basic level
    and greater shares of boys reaching the advanced level. Themedian percentages for girls
    and boys were quite similar inmath at the basic, proficient, and advanced achievement levels.
    However, the number of states in which one gender outperformed the other varied by
    achievement level. In grade 4 math, more states had higher percentages of 4th grade girls
    reaching the basic level, while more states had higher percentages of boys reaching the
    advanced level. At the proficient level, the number of states in which one gender out performed
    the other were roughly equal.
 
• In reading, girls outperformed boys in 2008 at the elementary, middle, and high
    school levels. Higher percentages of girls than boys scored at or above the proficient level
    on state reading tests at grade 4, grade 8, and high school; in some states, these gaps
    exceeded 10 percentage points.
 
• In grade 4 reading, higher percentages of girls than boys reached the basic, proficient,
    and advanced achievement levels in 2008. The median percentages of 4th grade
    girls reaching all three achievement levels—basic, proficient, and advanced—were higher
    than the median percentages for boys. (The median is the midpoint; half of the states
    with sufficient data had percentages above this point and half had percentages below.) In
    no state did boys outperform girls in reading at any achievement level.
 
• Although reading achievement gaps between boys and girls have narrowed in many
    cases according to the percentage proficient indicator used for NCLB, boys have made
    less progress in catching up to girls according average test scores, which are a better
    indicator for this purpose. Since 2002, percentages proficient gaps in reading between boys
    and girls have narrowed in the majority (52%) of instances analyzed across the states with
    sufficient data and have widened in 40%of instances. But mean (average) test scores, which
    are a more useful indicator of gaps because they capture improvements across the achievement
    spectrum, present a less positive picture.Gaps inmean test scores have widened almost
    as often as they have narrowed—45% of instances compared with 46%.
 
• For both boys and girls, states with gains in reading and math proficiency between
    2002 and 2008 far outnumbered states with declines at the elementary, middle, and
    high school levels. At least 70% of the states with sufficient data posted gains in percentages
    proficient for both genders in all subject/grade level combinations except high
    school reading, where 63% of the states with data showed gains. In reading, upward
    trends were slightly more prevalent for boys than for girls, but in math, the numbers of
    rising trend lines were similar for boys and girls.
 
• In a majority of the states with sufficient data, both boys and girls in grade 4 have
    made progress in reading and math since 2002 at the basic, proficient, and
    advanced achievement levels. In general, the numbers of states with gains in the percentage
    of males at the three achievement levels were similar to the numbers for females.

To download the complete report, visit the Center on Education Policy