In case anyone possibly missed the Tierney business last week, go read this.
Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about: "Gender Similarities Characterize Math Performance" by Hyde, Lindberg, Linn, Ellis & Williams in Science, 25 July 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5888, pp. 494 - 495. This study, using recent data from 10 states, found no gender gap in math:
Effect sizes for gender differences, representing the testing of over 7 million students in state assessments, are uniformly <0.10, representing trivial differences (see table, top left, and table S1). Of these effect sizes, 21 were positive, indicating better performance by males; 36 were negative, indicating better performance by females; and 9 were exactly 0. From this distribution of effect sizes, we calculate that the weighted mean is 0.0065, consistent with no gender difference (see chart on p. 495 and fig. S1). In contrast to earlier findings, these very current data provide no evidence of a gender difference favoring males emerging in the high school years;
The author's suggest maybe earlier studies found differences in higher level problems because at that time girls took fewer and/or lower level math courses in school. (And I'm pretty sure that some dismissed this as a problem at that time, saying "See, girls are just more interested in people.") This isn't the case anymore, girls now choose these classes, and this may be why the gender gap has disappeared.
But wait! What about that variability thing? You know, the whole "it isn't that the boys are better on average, they just have more high and low achievers" thing Lawrence Summers spoke about? This study has some things to say about that too:
Data from the state assessments provide information on the percentage of boys and girls scoring above a selective cut point. Results vary by ethnic group. The bottom table on p. 494 shows data for grade 11 for the state of Minnesota. For whites, the ratios of boys:girls scoring above the 95th percentile and 99th percentile are 1.45 and 2.06, respectively, and are similar to predictions from theoretical models. For Asian Americans, ratios are 1.09 and 0.91, respectively. Even at the 99th percentile, the gender ratio favoring males is small for whites and is reversed for Asian Americans.
Did you catch that last part? In the 99th percentile, the ratio is reversed for Asian Americans. Interesting, no? On the Science website, the news note about the article mentions that Hyde (the lead author of the study) says this suggests there are complex cultural factors at work here. The study concludes:
Our analysis shows that, for grades 2 to 11, the general population no longer shows a gender difference in math skills, consistent with the gender similarities hypothesis (19). There is evidence of slightly greater male variability in scores, although the causes remain unexplained. Gender differences in math performance, even among high scorers, are insufficient to explain lopsided gender patterns in participation in some STEM fields. An unexpected finding was that state assessments designed to meet NCLB requirements fail to test complex problem-solving of the kind needed for success in STEM careers, a lacuna that should be fixed.
There is much more to the story and I recommend checking it out.
...
When I was in eighth grade, I was not permitted to take Algebra. Algebra was not offered as a formal class, but two students were allowed to study it with one of the student teachers on the side. I was not on of those students. This was not because I was a girl, but because of what happened during the free part of the math class period. You see, I was not one of the girls who went up to sit on the teacher's desk and giggle with him while he told dirty jokes. They got to take Algebra.
It would be nice if I were kidding. I am not.
Instead, I sat at my desk, wanting to stick a pencil into my eye to relieve the pain of doing 50 more math problems about something tedious I'd known how to do since the fourth grade.
My high school did not allow students to go directly into Algebra either. You had to get "permission" from your eighth grade math teacher. I brought him the slip. He looked at me, somewhat enjoying his little moment of power. "I don't know," he said, "this quarter you may be getting a B..."
Now, in fairness, I was getting a B. Why? Because I could not frigging stand calculating the area of a circle for the 121st damn time (by hand, this was 1981). So I may have missed an assignment or two. However, there was no frakking way this joker was going to prevent me from getting into Algebra. I knew it, too. I looked at him. I adopted my first and best ever Are you fucking kidding me? look. He looked at me for no more than a second after that and signed the paper.
At eighth grade graduation, he said to my mom, "I do believe your daughter was very bored in my class."
And that year we never got yearbooks. Something about my math teacher taking off with all the yearbook money. But maybe that was just a rumor.
Fortunately, high school was different. It wasn't all good, but at least it was different.