American girls read and write better than boys

Article here. Excerpt:

'As early as the fourth grade, girls perform better than boys on standardized tests in reading and writing, and as they get older that achievement gap widens even more, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

"The common thinking is that boys and girls in grade school start with the same cognitive ability, but this research suggests otherwise," said David Reilly, a doctoral student at Griffith University and lead author of the study published in American Psychologist. "Our research found that girls generally exhibit better reading and writing ability than boys as early as the fourth grade."

Reilly and his colleagues analyzed information from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a nationally representative data sample of standardized test scores from more than 3.4 million students in the fourth, eighth and 12th grades in the United States over a span of 27 years.

While the tests showed that girls, in general, scored significantly higher than boys in both reading and writing in the fourth grade, that gap widened further in eighth and 12th grades, and the difference was far more substantial for writing than it was for reading.

"It appears that the gender gap for writing tasks has been greatly underestimated, and that despite our best efforts with changes in teaching methods does not appear to be reducing over time," said Reilly.'