Boys and learning differences during the pandemic

Article here. Excerpt:

'While it’s certainly true we must be vigilant regarding the outcomes of our nation’s daughters, selective narratives can give incomplete impressions. NAEP made a point of identifying declines in male and female math scores and added that “a greater score decline for female students in 2022 contributed to the widening of the gender gap” in math. While there was an average 6-point gap in math for 4th grade girls and a 2-point gap in math for 8th grade girls, there was an average 7-point gap for 4th grade boys and a 9-point gap for 8th grade boys in reading. This boy gender-gap in reading was not identified in the discussion of the report, and this speaks to the ways our institutions think and report on the outcomes of males and females.

Additionally, girls 2019 average math scores pre-pandemic were equal to or higher than boys 2022 scores post-pandemic. Conversely, this was not the case for boys in reading, where boys pre-pandemic average scores for 4th and 8th grades were lower than girls post-pandemic scores by margins greater than the gender-gap identified in NAEP’s discussion of 4th grade mathematics. In general, institutions do not use the term “gaps” when discussing outcomes of boys and men.'