Sixteen years after Barbie dolls declared, "Math class is tough!" girls are proving that when it comes to math, they are as tough as boys.
In the largest study of its kind, girls measured up to boys in every grade, from second through 11th. The research was released Thursday in the journal Science.
Parents and teachers persist in thinking boys are better at math, said Janet Hyde, the University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who led the study. And girls who grow up believing it wind up avoiding harder math classes.
"It keeps girls and women out of a lot of careers, particularly high-prestige, lucrative careers in science and technology," Hyde said.
That's changing, though slowly.
Women are now earning 48 percent of undergraduate college degrees in math; they still lag far behind in physics and engineering.
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But in primary and secondary schools, girls have caught up, with researchers attributing that advance to increasing numbers of girls taking advanced math classes.
Hyde and her colleagues looked at annual math tests required by the No Child Left Behind education law in 2002. Ten states provided enough statistical information to review scores by gender, allowing researchers to compare the performances of more than 7 million children.
The states are California, Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, West Virginia and Wyoming.
The researchers found no difference in the scores of boys versus those of girls — not even in high school. Studies 20 years ago showed girls and boys did equally well on math in elementary school, but girls fell behind in high school.
"Girls have now achieved gender parity in performance on standardized math tests," Hyde said.
The stereotype that boys are better at math has been fueled, at least in part, by suggestions of biological differences in the way little boys and little girls learn. This idea is hotly disputed.
Arizona's experience seems to mirror the new study.
A look at the high school math test scores from spring 2007 shows girls ever so slightly edged out boys on AIMS, the state's assessment test.
Their results . . .
• Falls below standard:
Girls: 25 percent
Boys: 29 percent
• Approaches standard: Girls: 16 percent
Boys: 14 percent
• Meets standard: Girls: 49 percent
Boys: 46 percent
• Exceeds standard: Girls: 10 percent
Boys: 11 percent
Kathy Lackow, who taught for 30 years and recently retired as a Sabino High School math teacher, said she wasn't surprised by the findings.
For the past decade, she said, her calculus classes had a roughly equal gender split and the scores were generally comparable.
Years ago, she said, she remembers attending workshops coaching teachers on how to get girls to perform in math class. In word problems, instructors were advised to switch between pronouns and to use both girls' and boys' names. Girls were not supposed to get called on just for the easy answers. And they needed to be called on with the same regularity as boys.
"I've never felt boys were inherently better," Lackow said. "I've always felt it was a matter of home environment and teachers' perceptions."
— Rhonda Bodfield
