Take that Hermione Granger!
Long the Star Pupils, Girls Are Losing Ground to Boys
Girls have suffered greater test-score declines than boys
By Matt Barnum, WSJ
Jan. 5, 2025 5:30 am ET
Girls have lost ground in reading, math and science at a troubling rate, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of student test scores across the country.
Since 2019, girls’ test scores have dropped sharply, often to the lowest point in decades. Boys’ scores have also fallen during that time, but the decline among girls has been more severe. Boys now consistently outperform girls in math, after being roughly even or slightly ahead in the years before 2020. Girls still tend to perform better in reading, but their scores have dropped closer to boys.
The findings suggest that pandemic learning loss hit girls particularly hard in ways that haven’t been addressed by schools. The most recent test scores show that girls haven’t yet recovered. This comes following longstanding gains for girls and women in educational attainment.
Teachers, parents and education researchers aren’t sure what is driving the gender gap in learning loss, but some suspect the rise in behavior problems during the pandemic years prompted teachers to pay more attention to boys, who tend to act out more in class. Another factor may be the caregiving and household responsibilities many girls took on during and after the pandemic, sapping their time and energy for school.
Educators and researchers have recently focused more on the plight of boys, who lag behind on other metrics including high-school graduation and college enrollment. Girls still have an edge there, but the recent decline in test scores might have long-term consequences for women’s educational success and job prospects, as well as the overall health of the American economy.
“This not only will hurt girls now—it will change college enrollment, it will change the talent pool that we have,” said Harry Patrinos, chair in education policy at the University of Arkansas. Patrinos is co-author of a new study showing the pattern of girls’ learning loss is occurring across dozens of other countries, too.
‘Dramatically behind’
For Ashara Baker of Rochester, N.Y., the pandemic disrupted her daughter’s education in ways that still linger. After her daughter wasn’t able to get a pre-K spot in fall of 2020, she spent much of the year at home watching videos and trying to entertain herself while Baker worked virtually.
Ashara Baker’s third-grade daughter writes on a worksheet.
Ashara Baker’s third-grade daughter writes on a worksheet. Photo: Lauren Myer
When in-person learning began for kindergarten, her daughter’s class was beset with student misbehavior, Baker said. “There are specific students, who are generally boys, who absorbed a lot of energy,” she said. The head of the school said it worked to address Baker’s daughter’s needs and that “no school or community was spared” from learning loss.
The early grade experience “laid the foundation of her just being dramatically behind,” said Baker, who is the New York state director of the National Parents Union, a parent advocacy group.
Now in third grade, Baker’s daughter still struggles with reading. Baker estimates that over the course of a few years she has spent more than $10,000 of her own money for private tutoring.
The Journal reviewed data from 15 nationally representative exams given to students before and after the pandemic. In all cases, the tests—which spanned grades and subjects—indicated that girls logged steeper drops than boys. On some exams, the difference was small, even trivial, but in other instances the gap was substantial.
On one round of international tests of eighth-grade math and science, girls in the U.S. had been roughly at parity with boys in 2019, but by 2023 had fallen below them in both subjects.
The same pattern has emerged on state exams, which were compiled by Zelma State Assessment Data Repository. Across the 23 states where data was available, the share of girls proficient in math fell at a faster rate than boys. In all those states, the gap between girls and boys remained larger in 2024 than in 2019. Girls’ scores also tended to fall more sharply in reading.
What’s driving it
Ramona Fittipaldi, who teaches high-school math at the all-girls Young Women’s Leadership School of Manhattan, said she has observed the change in her classroom.
“They’re still struggling,” she said, particularly her ninth-grade and 10th-grade geometry students. “They’re really relying on tricks more than fully understanding the way they would have done prepandemic.” She wonders whether girls were more affected when they couldn’t socialize with one another during the pandemic.
Shutting down schools might have hurt girls more because they tend to do better in school generally, said David Figlio, a professor of economics and education at the University of Rochester who has studied gender gaps in education. “Girls have a comparative advantage in school and you take schools away, they’ll suffer more,” he added.
Another hypothesis is that girls took on more household duties during the pandemic—including taking care of younger siblings—so were less able to focus on school.
On some tests, this gender gap in learning loss was larger in later grades and in math, the Journal’s analysis found.
Erica Thomas, a mom of three boys and one girl in Charles County, Md., said her third-grade daughter suffered the worst learning loss of her four children. Thomas’s daughter, her youngest child, missed pre-K and lost out on early socializing. She also said her daughter is well behaved, making her easier for teachers to overlook when she isn’t learning.
“If my child was wild and throwing desks around the room, somebody would pay attention to them,” Thomas said.
Comments