You know what i find interesting about the idea that boys test better in some areas but have lower grades?
That the conclusion is that there is something off with teachers, not the test.
My S had lower grades than my D, especially later in school (middle school on - he did much better in elementary). For him it was largely about (not) turning in homework (sometimes he didn’t do it, sometimes he did but forgot to bring it) Around 6th-7th grade is when there was a significant penalty for it being late. But he tested well, both in class and on standardized tests. I find in speaking to friends that this is often a boy thing.
I think the issue is the disparity exists, not that one measure necessarily trumps the other. The point is that they are measuring different things. Tests measure the mastery of the material at a single point in time. Often times homework and participation style grades tend to reward particularly learning styles, something that girls tend to be better at than boys.
And I disagree with your conclusion that people don’t believe there is something wrong with the test. We have spent decades and millions of dollars attempting to harmonize test results with a perceived appropriate gender balance.
Female teachers are more likely to factor behavior in grading, while male teachers do not. Boys will invariably get lower grades from female teachers because they act up more. Quite possibly there is a gender preference because the current generation of teachers has been indoctrinated that girls are at a systemic disadvantage.
Interesting, because boys tend to participate in class more than girls. Certainly at higher levels, maybe less so at lower ones. I was reading an article about Harvard Business Schools attempt to change that yesterday.
Maybe it is no longer true in grade school. It was in the 80s.
If we accept the former statement as true (though I am not sure it is), one could also say that boys get more latitude for the same type of behavior than girls do.
While that may be the case elsewhere, the male teachers at my second Catholic School were just as likely to mark one down for negative behavioral reasons.
Also, while the prevailing perception of boys being more likely to act up or fight was acknowledged, it wasn’t used to excuse such behavior or trying to justify/cater to it. If anything, this perception actually motivated most fathers in my old neighborhood and teachers in my Catholic School to do their utmost head off such behavior and encourage teachers to discipline/punish students who acted up.
Few would have felt there was anything wrong with students being graded negatively for behavioral reasons…and many teachers I’ve had who factored behavior into grading included male teachers…including some at my STEM public magnet.
If anything, most such parents viewed this as a good way to properly socialize boys who were more inclined to act up or misbehave so they don’t end up dropping out or turning to a life of serious crime which caused them to end up at Rikers or prisons Upstate which was unfortunately all too common among kids…mostly boys in my old NYC neighborhood.
Also, a few older college classmates from upper-middle class background who were given carte blanche regarding acting up or worse from K-12 in private/boarding schools ended up having serious adjustment issues during and after college on the academic and social fronts.
A few such classmates ended up having long history of short stints at various jobs because their inability to restrain their inclinations to act up(E.g. Being too argumentative in the workplace) tended to get them fired in very short order.
What intrigues me about the emergent “boys crisis”—the apparent failure of boys to thrive at the primary, secondary and post-secondary educational levels is that it seems to be a worldwide phenomena and actually is not particular to racial lines…
although Black, Latino, American Indian and southeast Asian males do lag behind in academic achievement k-12 https://www.apa.org/ed/resources/racial-disparities.pdf
There seem to be other societal problems stemming from this lack of college educated males that one might not think of at first… in that women aren’t able to find “acceptable mates to marry.”. (funny I was just listening to NPR the other day and they were saying in Russia this is a huge problem that women can’t find educated men to marry and this is shrinking their population growth rate in the country.)… anyway http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/07/why-college-educated-women-can-t-find-love.html
I think at some point it would benefit our country to try and bring the college educated gender gap more in line …
runswimyoga, as to your last point, I’ve been reading a lot on the topic of gender imbalance in various cultures, and one of the things I’ve learned is that in western countries (particularly the US), the preference for females in the current age is as strong as the preference for boys in other cultures. I wonder if that preference plays into how we treat both genders as a society. No data, just curiosity. I had two girls and then became pregnant with an unexpected boy. I was incensed almost to violence when people congratulated me on finally having a boy, because I saw myself as the mother of girls (had, in fact, worn pink every day of my first pregnancy) and actively never wanted a boy. But he was born, I was in love, and nothing was ever the same again! I do think that life is harder sometimes for some boys, but maybe it’s because my boy doesn’t quite fit the model of manly man, but who knows? It’s just that in my own family, the girls have always had everything come easier.
@OhioMom2, I am not talking about individual class participation when I reference “participation style” grading. What I am referring to is the trend towards collaboration and group work. I think there has been a fair amount of studies done on the fact that girls work better in groups while boys tend to work better alone. But again, I am no expert and am really stretching my memory back through conversations I have had with my wife, who has had to learn something of these issues because of work she does with kids from particular immigrant groups.
Studies differ on whether this is actually the case, or whether it’s simply that people perceive the same behaviors among boys and girls to be less or more collaborative, depending on whether it’s a boy or girl being observed.
And then there’s the issue of, if there really is such a difference, whether it’s due to an actual difference between boys and girls, or in the way boys and girls are socialized.
“Female teachers are more likely to factor behavior in grading, while male teachers do not. Boys will invariably get lower grades from female teachers because they act up more.”
The public schools in my town do a good job of separating out behavior/comportment grades from subject matter/content mastery grades so this wouldn’t be an issue. Is this not done elsewhere?
My report cards always had that stuff pulled out separately (i just saw them as I was going through old stuff at my parents house two weeks ago). The cards had like 40 different things we could get O, S or U on (outstanding, satisfactory or unsatisfactory). This is early elementary school - after like 3rd grade we didn’t get graded on our ability to sit in circle or be quiet or whatever.
Look, it’s really not that complicated. When you take a math test, 40 out of 50 correct answers gets you 80 percent whether you act up in class or get along with your peers and teachers. But when you are one of four kids responsible for a project on Enrico Fermi, more subjective measures of grading come into play. That is where most of the research I am talking about is focused. And @dfbdfb, even if I understood what you were saying it wouldn’t matter. Whether girls actually work better collaboratively or are simply generally perceived to do so is immaterial because kids are being graded on that perception
@ohiodad51 “And @dfbdfb, even if I understood what you were saying it wouldn’t matter. Whether girls actually work better collaboratively or are simply generally perceived to do so is immaterial because kids are being graded on that perception”
It may be that the outcome is the same, but it seems to me that it does matter whether girls are getting higher grades because they are actually doing a better job, or because the grader imagines they are. Based on my micro sample of two girls and one boy, I can tell you that the girls are much better at simply staying on task for a longer time. I am told by others that this is a common experience.
@Much2learn, I would agree (from my own sample) that girls stay on task longer. Whether that does or will translate into more “success” in the professional world I don’t know. The flip side of this is that, again based on my micro sample, is that boys tend to be better puzzle solvers, and stronger when all the variables aren’t controlable. I think my point is that the term “better” is subjective, and it depends what the particular criteria set up by the grader is seeking to measure. Speaking very, very broadly, it does seem to my non professional eye that most school work is geared today more towards these longer more collaborative projects, and I think that in the main favors girls.
It is a fascinating area of research to me, quite probably because it is so far from my wheelhouse. I was talking with the wife about this last night, and she reminded me that our son read a book as part of his freshmen orientation last year dealing with how a student’s own perceptions of how they should do in a given subject affect they way they score on standardized tests. So who knows what we are actually measuring at any point anyway?
so the women of the next generation will be ready and willing to marry males without a college degree, right?
men used to often marry a women who would stay home and “run the house”… are the women in college now ready to do the same with the roles reversed?
I know you said you aren’t sympathetic, and many people clearly hold the same opinion based on the “likes”, but this is a real problem that has significant implications for our society in the future.
Well, my PhD-holding sister-in-law is married to a man who didn’t finish college (but does hold a professional certification), so since we seem to be accepting microsamples in this thread, the answer must necessarily be yes.