… except for one subgroup, says “Why Are Rich, White Girls Struggling in Math?” (Atlantic):
In reading in particular, girls have consistently outperformed boys. Some studies have also found that in a typical U.S. school district, girls have all but caught up in math… a new study by a team of researchers led by the Stanford education professor Sean Reardon finds that girls’ dominance in school isn’t the case across demographics. Yes, the study confirms: Overall, in the average U.S. school district, girls and boys are performing about the same in math. But the study finds that in communities in which most families are affluent and white, and in which adult men far outearn women in income, girls continue to lag behind their male peers in math achievement. In some of these districts, boys on average outperformed girls in math by two-fifths of a grade level.
At the other end of the affluence spectrum, a near-opposite phenomenon is playing out: In poor communities of color, namely those where families are predominantly black or Latino, girls on average outperformed boys in math by one-fifth of a grade level, in addition to significantly outperforming them in reading.
(i.e., if a young man of color has difficulty getting an interview at a STEM employer, he can thank the do-gooders at Atlantic for broadcasting that he is statistically likely to be unqualified for the job)
Here’s the most bizarre part of the article:
Fahle cited a study that analyzed the conversations of a sample of families as they observed a science exhibit at a museum. While parents were equally likely to talk to their sons and daughters about the exhibit, they were three times more likely to explain the science to the boys.
How would parents in the world’s least scientifically literate developed nation be able to “explain the science” to anyone? Admittedly the folks who go to a science museum are a selected subgroup, but do readers remember hearing a lot of cogent and correct scientific explanations flowing from parents to children at museums?
Readers: Assuming that the results are not an example of “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False,” what do you think accounts for the data? Could it be “The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM” (also Atlantic), which suggests that STEM is a last-resort career for anyone and “rich, white girls” have a lot of options other than nerdism?
If as Larry Summers pointed out males tend to predominate on the far left and right sides of the curve for mathematical aptitude then it would make sense that the affluent white males who might be over represented on the right side of the curve would have daughters who would lag their sons, no? The Latino example could then be the left side of the curve and it too would make sense, no?
Here’s the most bizarre part of the article:
Fahle cited a study that analyzed the conversations of a sample of families as they observed a science exhibit at a museum. While parents were equally likely to talk to their sons and daughters about the exhibit, they were three times more likely to explain the science to the boys.
How would parents in the world’s least scientifically literate developed nation be able to “explain the science” to anyone?
You say that’s a bizarre part of the article. I would say that your comment is the bizarre part. The science at these museums, in all likelihood, doesn’t requires advanced degrees to understand. Perhaps the explanations involved could often be found to be imperfect. It doesn’t matter. The point has to be that the boys are encouraged to take an interest more than the girls.
Vince: Watch some fresh Harvard graduates (i.e., folks who just completed 17 years of American education) explaining why it is hotter in our summer than it is during our winter: https://ed.ted.com/on/xKxsSA5w
Keeping in mind that these folks won’t likely have children of museum-going age for at least another 10 years (during which time they will not crack open a science textbook), tell me what you think they are going to be qualified to explain.
Note the bias in the descriptions. If girls do better in something, then no explanation is required. But if boys do better, then the girls are struggling or lagging, and it has to be explained in terms of evil behavior by rich white men.
The data is probably OK but they are massaging it in a very selective way. They only are looking at boy vs. girl but the rich girls (let alone the boys) are miles ahead of both the girls and the boys in poor communities. 2/5th of a grade level is insignificant compared to the real story which is that we are spending $25,000/yr or more on “educating” kids in poor communities and they emerge from 12 years of schooling as functional illiterates and innumerates – not even able to do simple math or write a simple sentence. The former is a minor statistical quirk that will have little or no impact on our national competitiveness. The latter will have a dire impact in a world where China and India are turning out millions upon millions of math capable students ready to do high tech work while US employers can’t even find people qualified to run a cash register. This is called “burying the lede”. The Atlantic is so busy virtue signalling and worrying about whether rich men do the dishes slightly less frequently than rich women that they don’t notice that the house next door is on fire.
It doesn’t matter whether or not the parents’ explanations of the science are accurate or useful; what matters is that the children get the sense that science is important and useful to understand, and that they are capable of that understanding, because their parents are taking the time to explain it to them. If that’s 3x more likely to happen when the kids happen to be male, that’s problematic.
The most frequent cause for many problems in the country appears to be white men. Rich white men or poor deplorable ones. Also mentioned in the comments above, and in many other posts and related comments here.
So how do these deplorable people come into existence? They are born … to women! This problem simply cannot exist without (maybe unwilling) help from women. In the past, women unfortunately had no choice, but now they do — undoubtedly at least in the progressive liberal pro-choice states. Women can greatly help by exercising this choice wisely to eradicate this biggest social problem within a few decades.
While parents were equally likely to talk to their sons and daughters about the exhibit, they were three times more likely to explain the science to the boys.
Worst of all is that some parents still mansplain to strong, independent wymyn. That subgroup urgently needs to be reeducated. Wymyn are perfectly capable of learning science on their own.
Yea, it totally has to do with boys being “encouraged” to do math and science. Moving the NASA tee shirts will definitely erase a fact that has existed since it was measurable. A fact that has been intractable no matter how much money we spend.
PhilG, side note: A story that may be of interest to you: Canadian courts approve three legal guardians(two identify as “male” and one identifies as “female”) of a child. I think this is unprecedented in common law history. The pressing question is of course what are the child support implications????
Re “if a young man of color has difficulty getting an interview at a STEM employer, he can thank the do-gooders at Atlantic for broadcasting that he is statistically likely to be unqualified for the job”. It is always a bad idea, and in this case also illegal, to use group statistics to evaluate individuals.
If the government took the trouble to make something illegal, doesn’t that mean that it is a good, or at least expedient, idea?
It’s also more expedient to murder your spouse than to go through divorce proceedings. That doesn’t make it a good idea.
It would be nice if the Invisible Hand were so powerful that it would erase arbitrary discrimination, but it simply isn’t.