subject: Why Girls Get Higher Grades In Elementary School? [print this page] In United States, there is a common situation that girls in elementary school usually get higher grades than boys. Research from the University of Georgia and Columbia University provides us a kind of explanation that girls classroom behavior may lead teachers to assign girls higher grades.
As one of the important elements to evaluate a students grade is approaches toward learning which includes 6 items: the child's attentiveness, task persistence, eagerness to learn, learning independence, flexibility and organization. From that, we can clearly know that approaches toward learning can be regarded as a childs attitude toward school. Teachers and even parents can tell you that girls are really more of all that.
The analyzed data from 5,800 elementary schools shows that gender disparities in teacher grades start early and uniformly favor girls. As it linked students performance on standardized tests in 3 categories: reading, math and science and also teachers assessments of their students progress, both academically and more broadly. In every subject area, boys are represented in grade distributions below where their test scores would predict. This misalignment is attributed to non-cognitive skills, that is how well each child was engaged in the classroom, how often the child externalized or internalized problems, how often the child lost control and how well the child developed interpersonal skills.
This difference can have long-reaching effects. A teacher's assessment of childrens performance, their grades affect their ability to enter into advanced classes and other kinds of academic opportunities, even post-secondary opportunities. So if grade disparities emerge this early on, it's not surprising that by the time these children are ready to go to college, girls will be better positioned. Therefore, many people began to alert that the future is girls and men are defeated. They are trying to force government make some policies to avoid this situation.
But how about saying the gender discrimination in the old ages when girls even have no opportunity to go to school. In my opinion, girls didn't all of a sudden become more engaged and boys didn't suddenly become more rambunctious. Their attitudes toward learning were always this way. But it didn't show up in educational attainment like it does today because of all the factors that previously discouraged women's participation in the labor force, such as a lack of access to reliable birth control.
What remains unclear, however, is how to combat this discrepancy. I think we may need more data find the exact reasons to lead to the current situation.
