Numbers say gender doesn’t determine math success

The study also undermined the assumption — infamously espoused by former Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers in 2005 — that boys are more likely than girls to be math geniuses. Girls scored in the top 5 per cent almost as often as boys, the data showed.

“Both parents and teachers continue to hold the stereotype that boys are better than girls” at math, said psychologist Janet Hyde of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who led the study. “That’s just not accurate.”

Hyde and her colleagues examined detailed data from math tests administered between 2005 and 2007 as part of the No Child Left Behind initiative.

Comparing the average scores of girls and boys in California and nine other states, the researchers found that neither gender consistently outpaced the other in any state or at any grade level.

Even on test questions from the National Assessment of Education Progress that were designed to measure complex reasoning skills, the gender differences were minuscule, according to the study.

“There’s nothing in any of these data that would suggest that girls can’t do math or aren’t doing well in math,” said Diane Halpern, a professor of psychology at Claremont McKenna College who was not involved in the study.

However, she noted that girls generally scored better on tests closely aligned with the classroom curriculum, including the standardized tests used for No Child Left Behind.

Boys typically score higher than girls on the math portion of the SAT, a fact often cited as evidence of greater math ability.

Studies in the 1990s found that boys and girls in elementary school scored equally well on math tests but that by the time students reached high school, boys outscored girls on tests involving complex problem-solving.