Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 7, 1995 TAG: 9507070075
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The research at the University of Chicago combined results of six national studies of education performance among American school children dating to the 1960s and found the genders were about the same in average scores over three decades, but that boys tended to crowd the ends of the scale.
Larry Hedges, a professor of education at the University of Chicago, said the results suggest that little progress has been made in efforts to equalize the educational achievement of boys and girls.
``We haven't seen the gender differences going away,'' he said.
The study is to be published today in Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Hedges said that by combining results of the six major studies - involving thousands of children - the researcher can draw statistically powerful conclusions about the gender differences in mental test scores.
Among the results:
For reading comprehension, perceptual speed and word association memory, boys outnumbered girls at the bottom of the scale by a 2-1 ratio and fewer boys than girls scored in the top 5 to 10 percent.
In math and science, boys outnumbered girls by about 3-to-1 in the top 10 percent and by 7-to-1 in the top 1 percent.
In some science and vocational aptitude tests, no girls scored in the top 1 to 3 percent.
Large differences among the sexes, favoring girls, were found for writing. ``The data imply that males are, on average, at a rather profound disadvantage in the performance of this basic skill,'' the study found.
Michael Timpane, vice president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching at Princeton University, said the study was ``a powerful analysis,'' but that the results ``are not totally different from earlier findings of lesser studies.''
by CNB