“The Boys Have Fallen Behind”
The Boys Have Fallen Behind
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28kristof.html













The Boys Have Fallen Behind
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28kristof.html
This entry was posted by Carol on Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 10:51 AM and is filed under Books, Movies, Television, Homeschooling Academics, Public School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Boys falling behind is an artifact of the data. More girls than boys take the SAT each year and each year the boys outperform the girls by a lot both as a percentage of the highest scorers and in absolute numbers. Statistically girls do better on measures with a low ceiling because they are tabulating how many students achieve some threshold and do not measure any higher than that threshold. Many state criterion referenced tests are pretty easy. So, the greater variance among boys only shows up at the bottom of the scale. If the tests were more difficult, the strengths of boys would be just as glaring as they are on the SAT. Comparisons of classroom grades also take into account girls’ greater compliance. Similarly there are now more women than men in college, but not in rigorous fields where men far outnumber women.
Twice as many males scored 750 or higher on SAT math as females.
Twice as many males scored 690 or higher on SAT math as females.
etc.
So, the boys falling behind story is just media hype.
I love this blog btw. I come often to use it as a reference. My son is going to start using the Veritas Omnibus this fall, so I appreciate your grade level curriculum lists.