What's to blame for differing test scores between the sexes?

By JILLIAN JONES
Register Staff Writer

In an era of high stakes accountability for schools, educators are placing an ever-greater emphasis on raising test scores in English.

For school districts in Napa County, where Hispanic populations are large, this has meant a heightened focus on the needs of English learners, who typically bring down averages on standardized tests.

But while the ethnic gap dominates most discussions of Napa’s state and federal rankings, there is another set of contrasting scores that crosses all ethnic lines.

It’s the gender gap, and at a time when the state and federal government are pushing for improvement in English scores, boys are falling behind.

Some say the reason is neurological. Others blame the schools. But whatever the case, evidence suggests that boys score lower on standardized English tests than their female classmates.

Last year in Napa Valley Unified School District, 39 percent of 11th-grade boys scored below basic or far below basic on the California Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) test in English, compared with 27 percent of girls. In the top two categories on the STAR test, 48 percent of 11th-grade girls scored proficient or advanced, as opposed to 37 percent of boys.

Napa High School English teacher Justin Aaron said his honors English classes for ninth-graders usually have a five to one ratio of girls to boys. In his lower level ninth-grade English courses, he said, he usually sees closer to a one to five ratio of girls to boys.

“It starts to balance out by the time they’re seniors,” said Aaron, “but even then it is still predominantly girls” in advanced English classes.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Daniel Peters, who practices in Napa and San Ramon, said the reason for the contrast has to do with brain development. Girls have larger hippocampuses, he said, the part of the brain that aids in learning and, in particular, language arts. Girls also use more cortical areas of the brain for verbal and emotional functioning, said Peters.

Conversely, boys use more cortical areas dedicated to spatial and mechanical functioning, he said. The result is that, neurologically, girls are better wired for language skills than boys, said Peters.

“What are boys and men always known as? Not being able to express their feelings or even themselves,” said Peters. “Writing is just another layered version of being able to express themselves. Boys and men just don’t seem to be as good at that as girls and women.”

But while the neurological differences between boys and girls are generally accepted in the scientific community, many believe that the gender gap in language arts has as least as much to do with the schools as brain development.

Educational consultant Joe Manthey, who led a workshop through the Napa County Office of Education about educating male students, cites the almost nonexistent gender gap for home-schooled students in English as proof that schools are part of the problem.

The reason that home-schooled boys score as well as their female counterparts in English is twofold, said Manthey. First, they are more likely to be given a choice in their reading material. Second, “they’re less likely to fall through the cracks,” he said.

Manthey’s research shows that boys are more inclined to read nonfiction than fiction, and are more likely to relate to subjects related to science, sports and stories that revolve around male characters.

“Then you see boys required to read books like ‘The Joy Luck Club,’” he said, referring to the book by Amy Tan about immigrant mothers and daughters.

It’s no wonder, said Manthey, that boys tune out in English class.

Aaron agrees. “I’m trying to sell ‘The Joy Luck Club’ to a classroom with about 18 boys, and that is definitely a hard sell.” But while the first semester of his class may focus on stories about women, said Aaron, the second semester incorporates texts that are more likely to appeal to a male audience.

“I am definitely aware that there is a gender difference, and you have to be on your toes and hit all the different groups and modes of learning,” he said.

Manthey, however, worries that the system is set up for girls, leaving boys in English class behind.

“I think in the last 20 years or so, schools have focused very heavily on educating girls,” said Napa County Office of Education Superintendent Barbara Nemko. “Because the focus was so much on girls, we have not been focusing on boys.”

Peters said one controversial theory in educational psychology is that boys believe “the classroom game is rigged” and that “it is taught by women and set up for girls.”

And when the state and federal governments base accountability on student subgroups like ethnicity and socioeconomics with no regard for gender, Manthey worries that educators simply don’t care.

Aaron, on the other hand, attributes the gender gap to the culture of students, not educators. It is considered taboo for a boy to walk across campus with a poetry book under his arm, he said.

“As a society I’d say that boys tend to get criticized or ostracized for reading poetry or novels and plays when they’re young teens,” he said, adding, “I don’t know if girls have that same stigma.”

“All the boys in my class are conscious of how literature is a much more emotional class, a girlie class,” said Napa High honors English student Alex Manter. “I can see that affecting people. … Napa High is very good about eliminating that social stigma, but certainly I can see a football player can be less inclined to read a book of Shakespeare’s love sonnets.”

For Manter, though, “I don’t know if it’s so much that a guy won’t be able to learn (English) as there is not a lot of motivation to try to learn,” he said. “Everybody expects girls to do a lot better.”

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