"… Researchers from Griffith University in Australia say the results are clear after reviewing the scores of more than 3.9 million American students from a 27-year span. Data was gathered from the the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which collected standardized test scores from students in the fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades.
The authors found that girls fared markedly better in both reading and writing in the fourth grade, only to see the gap widen in eighth and twelfth grades, especially when it came to writing." …
As the parent of a son who was precocious and who has always had outstanding talent in reading and writing and language skills in general, I got VERY tired of people confidently telling me that “boys were behind girls” in school readiness (when I was concerned that my very much K-ready kid missed the ironclad cutoff date in our new state by 6 weeks) and that “girls are better at language skills than boys” and so forth. I’m sure the parents of mathy girls tire of it also.
These generalizations are NOT NEWS. Nor are they, IMHO, particularly valuable, since they are usually used as an excuse to ignore an individual child’s needs.
Tired of all of this. It’s the sort of stuff that leads to “boys will be boys” and expecting less of our kids as a result. Every individual has his or her own strengths and weaknesses, interests and dislikes … and these are influenced by society, family, peers, teachers, etc.