Female Blazers leap across the gender gap

Three decades ago, institutionalized education was a boy's world. But no more, say education experts. Though long seen as the disadvantaged and dominated sex, girls now seem to rule the school system and many say at the expense of boys.

Last year marked the thirtieth anniversary of Title IX, the landmark legislation banning gender discrimination in all federally funded educational institutions. Now, recent Department of Education (DOE) studies show girls are surpassing boys academically. Parents, students, educators and researchers alike are slowly coming to grips with the new gender gap.

Head of the class

The nation's females hold a commanding lead in almost every significant academic indicator. Studies conducted by the DOE and various universities say girls participate in more extracurricular activities, take more AP courses, get better grades and have higher college enrollment than boys.

Some education experts attribute girls' higher grades to a factor called academic "engagement," which describes students' commitment to school through criteria like time spent on homework and preparedness for class. A 1998 DOE study determined that girls are more academically engaged than boys and that the gap widens over time. By twelfth grade, boys are four times as likely as girls not to do homework.

But David Sadker, author of Failing at Fairness: How Our Schools Cheat Girls, believes these statistics are misleading. "Although more girls are in college, they're more likely to be in the least prestigious colleges and the least prestigious programs," he says.

The testing conundrum

Although girls earn higher grades in school, they are consistently surpassed by boys in important standardized tests such as the SAT. "It's an interesting puzzle that people don't look at enough," Sadker says. "Even on the SAT II, which is supposed to be a closer measure to school, you still have boys outperforming girls."

But although boys make up most of the top 10 percent of SAT scores, they also make up most of the lowest 10 percent. Nancy Cole of the Educational Testing Service calls this the "spread" phenomenon. Male scores on almost any achievement test are simply more variable than female scores.

Other experts say test results can be even more misleading because of other socioeconomic factors. According to Christina Hoff Sommers' 2000 book The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men, a greater percentage of girls from low-income homes or with parents who had limited education take the SAT than boys, resulting in a lower average score for girls.

Teacher's pet

Many experts trace the growing gender gap back to an educational movement in the 1990s, which Sommers describes as having been developed to protect girls from America's "oppressive, patriarchal society." Educators began developing workshops and seminars and creating new curricula for gender-fair classrooms across America, she writes.

Many students see pressure to accommodate girls in high school today. According to an informal Silver Chips survey of 100 students conducted during the week of Jan 13, 65 percent of Blazers believe girls receive special treatment in schools.

Senior Eurykah Fon agrees that the school staff is generally more accommodating to girls. "They are nicer to girls because they feel we are the weaker sex and need support," she says.

Perceived favoritism may be a result of gender-focused teaching styles, says English teacher Phyllis Fleischaker. "Girls are more receptive to sedentary activities," she says. "Boys tend to need more movement and physicality in their learning."

Closing the gap

To fix these inequities, the Bush administration began sponsoring single-sex schools and classes last May with varied results.

U.S. History teacher Amy Thomas once attended a traditional all-girls private school and believes the single-sex classes were beneficial. "They focused on our needs as women. We learned about things that interested us, like women's history," she says.

But junior Maria Luckyanova does not think single-sex schools are the answer based on her mother's experience as a teacher at an all-girls school. "The implication from all of the teacher meetings was that girls can't handle failure," she says. "At Blair, my teachers have the same expectations of me in both success and failure."

Some teachers think that school systems are balanced already and that balance should be maintained. Fleischaker says, "I'm reluctant to have strict programs to reach one gender or another. All teachers should attempt to accommodate all learning styles."