Boarding Schools for Girls

According to an Aug. 16 article by Kelli Gauthier of the Chattanooga Times Free Press, female students in Tennessee and Georgia are outperforming their male counterparts at almost every level:

Academically, girls are outperforming boys in subjects from kindergarten through high school, a four-year review of test scores shows. In some subjects, girls have the boys beat by at least 10 percentage points. ...

The achievement gap continues through high school as Hamilton County recorded a 76.9 percent graduation rate for girls, and a 68.4 percent rate for boys in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available. ...

The gender-achievement gap is apparent in Georgia, too, where girls are scoring higher than boys in Dade, Walker, Whitfield and Catoosa counties, in many academic subjects, test data show.

Though the Times Free Press article focuses on the academic superiority of girls in two southern states, at least one education expert says that the performance disparity is not merely a regional phenomenon.

"Tennessee and Georgia are not alone in this. This is very much a national phenomenon," said Alan Richard, spokesman for the Southern Regional Education Board, told the Times Free Press. "It may just now be reaching schools and school boards at the local levels. Gender should now be a part of local schools' discussions about improving student achievement."

Labels: school, academic performance

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In honor of the 37th anniversary of Title IX (which expanded female students' access to educational services and activities), the U.S. Department of Education announced the awarding of $2.4 million in grants to help girls in math and science.

According to a June 23 DoE press release, the grants were awarded to 13 organizations that are dedicated to raising math and science proficiency among female high school students:

The four-year grants were made under the Women's Educational Equity Act Program within the Department of Education. The program provides financial assistance to enable educational agencies to meet the requirements of Title IX.

The grantees were selected from 63 eligible applicants. Grantees received additional points if their projects included activities to help at-risk students meet challenging state academic standards and graduate. All of the awardees will serve females at the secondary level.

One of the grant recipients is the Pittsburgh Public Schools, which will receive $163,559 to track 348 female students for four years (grades nine to 12) as they complete courses of study that are focused on math and technical education.

Labels: math, science, academic performance

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After analyzing the academic progress and personalities of 52 teens, researchers with Israel's Haifa University have determined that "agreeable" girls are most likely to do well during lessons and on exams.

A June 7 article by Graeme Parton of the British news website Telegraph.co.uk provided the following information from the Haifa study:

Academics said there was little difference between their learning habits, but found girls were much more likely to cooperate in lessons.

"Agreeableness relates to interpersonal relations," said the study. "Students scoring higher on agreeableness would thrive better and achieve higher than others in cooperative settings, which may explain girls' gain over boys."

Trefor Lloyd, director of the education charity Working With Men, told the Telegraph that the results of the Haifa study may be attributable to the willingness of female students to ask questions and otherwise take a more active role in their education

"Girls are much better at negotiating with teachers," Lloyd said. "They will ask more questions. They start from a position of now knowing enough. Boys don't like to be seen as not knowing something, and only ask questions reluctantly."

The Haifa study is the second recent research effort to evaluate the academic progress of female students. Earlier this year, Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission explored the ways in which fear of failure leads to academic problems for female students.

Labels: school, girls, academic performance, grades

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Teen sexual behavior has been associated with a wide range of problems -- but a new study indicates that all sexual activity doesn't have equal impact on teens' abilities to do well in school.

Professors Bill McCarthy and Eric Grodsky of the University of California and the University of Minnesota reviewed surveys and school transcripts from a decade-long study begun in 1994 of high school students.

• Teenagers who have sex within serious, romantic relationships have academic achievements similar to those who remain virgins, the researchers discovered.
• Teens having sex within serious relationships were not statistically different from virgins on measures such as grade point averages, college acceptances, problems at school, and attachment to their school.
• However, teens who engage in casual sex have lower grades and are at higher risk for suspension and expulsion from school, and they are less likely to go to college.

"Compared to abstinence, sexual intercourse in committed romantic relationships is often academically harmless, whereas in other types of relationships it is more detrimental," according to Drs. McCarthy and Grodsky. "Females and males who have sex only with romantic partners are generally similar to abstainers on most of the education measures we examined."

This study was presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
 

Labels: relationships, sex, academic performance

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