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Math disparities the result of unconscious teacher biases

EG

So, here’s a report from Israel via NPR demonstrating pretty conclusively that disparities in math achievement in school between girls and boys are an artifact of sexism, not any innate differences between the sexes. Turns out that if teachers who know the students grade sixth-grade math exams, girls do worse than boys. But when those same exams are graded by outside teachers who don’t know the genders of the students, the girls in fact do better than the boys. However, the lower scores seem to discourage girls from pursuing mathematics at higher levels.

It’s always good to have hard data bearing out feminist analysis.

Another thing to note: as an English teacher, I’m often told by students that my grading is “subjective,” not like the “objective” grading of math and science, where an answer is either right or wrong (in English essays, it’s either well-supported and well-written or not). But this data seems to show pretty conclusively that math grading, even on the elementary-school level, is subjective as well.

14 thoughts on Math disparities the result of unconscious teacher biases

  1. Such an inconscious bias has been brought up by a French study as well, years ago.
    They gave the same set of exam papers to grade to various group of teachers, and it turned out that when the paper beared a female first name, the grades were compressed towards the middle: bad papers were graded less severely, and good papers were graded less generously. Unfortunately, I can’t source that study, I only read about it in a book a long time ago.

  2. UGH, yes, thank you for that last bit. Objective my butt! Have you met my friend, Partial Credit? (aka wronging in style)

  3. Honest question: what does this suggest about the reasons that girls in the US outperform boys academically in nearly every subject, at nearly every level?

    Sorry for the potentially MRA-reminiscent argument, but as someone with a couple young nephews/nieces in elementary school, I’ve certainly started to notice the ways in which their behavior is pathologized in ways that the same actions on the part of girls aren’t (i.e. boisterousness on their part is much more likely to be considered disruptive/unacceptable/dangerous by the 95% female staff then girls who are running just as fast/are just as unhappy about being forced to wear an itchy uniform and sit still for 6 hours in a row). My sister and her husband had a huge fight with the school last year because one of the teachers insisted that their six-year-old needed to be put on Adderall before being allowed back into class. The fact that they’re POC connects to this too, of course, but I do think there’s a gendered element.

    If bias is responsible for lower math grades on the part of girls, that suggests bias is likely responsible for lower grades in everything else for boys, right?

    1. I’d like to see a citation on that, because what I remember of the reports is that that gender discrepancy is almost entirely about race, that the boys who are being outperformed are boys of color, not white boys. If that memory is correct, I suspect the culprit here the pathologization and criminalization of boys of color, not some kind of aberrant reverse-sexism.

      1. I’d like to see a citation on that, because what I remember of the reports is that that gender discrepancy is almost entirely about race, that the boys who are being outperformed are boys of color, not white boys.

        The only way this would make sense, mathematically, is if boys of color are being outperformed to a greater degree than girls of color are, so I’m not sure what your point is. I mean, we’re not supposed to only be talking about white people, right?

        However, even setting that aside, the research is actually pretty clear that men are outperformed as a group even more than black people are as a group; black women are about seven percent more likely to attend college than white men, and Hispanic women are almost fifteen percent more likely to attend college.

        If that memory is correct, I suspect the culprit here the pathologization and criminalization of boys of color, not some kind of aberrant reverse-sexism.

        …so you don’t see any gender-related issue with the fact that boys of color are being outperformed by girls of color as well as white people? You’re really losing me here.

      2. aberrant reverse-sexism

        I mean, reverse-sexism is kinda a loaded concept, since I don’t really believe such a thing exists. Women don’t hold social power over men as a class. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t specific areas, like education, where women are better off- potentially because the vast majority of people working in education are women.

      3. I don’t think measuring rates of college enrollment is the same as measuring grading bias in middle and high school.

        I also think your anecdote about your nieces and nephews doesn’t hold much weight. How can you know what the administration and teachers have said to other parents about their childrens’ behavior?

        Remember your initial questions:
        “what does this suggest about the reasons that girls in the US outperform boys academically in nearly every subject, at nearly every level?”

        We need evidence for the premises in this question. It’s a broad premise, so we need lots of evidence.

      4. You’re reading an awful lot into what I wrote. Everything I remember shows that in the US, the disparity is not between girls and boys but between boys of color and white kids (whether or not girls of color too, I can’t remember). Therefore, what is needed is an intersectional analysis about white perceptions of nonwhite masculinity and intellectual aptitude, and this study doesn’t tell us jack shit about it.

        I agree that college attendance is a far cry from grades–lots of things affect attendance. One of them, for instance, is that there are still significantly more blue-collar union jobs that don’t require a college degree traditionally welcoming to men than there are for women, so a college degree becomes slightly less necessary.

        If the data is clear, give me a citation to a study I can read. Otherwise we’re just working with hot air–your claims as opposed to my memory.

      5. There are concrete efforts being made to address the enrollment/graduation disparities among college students of color, by the way, such as the Center for Male Engagement on the public college campus my friend teaches at, and the government’s My Brother’s Keeper program.

      6. Also, if you’re measuring the rate that high school graduates go to college, then you are ignoring the factor of high school dropout.

      7. Hey so I left a pretty lengthy comment buy it was somehow eaten by the website- it doesn’t look like it’s in moderation or anything. Would you mind checking the filter before I write it all again?

        Sorry for being a lazy bum.

    2. My sister and her husband had a huge fight with the school last year because one of the teachers insisted that their six-year-old needed to be put on Adderall before being allowed back into class.

      To me, that sounds like an intersection of racism and disablism. That kind of talk is disproportionately directed at kids with mental disabilities (or kids who are perceived as having them). I hear that kind of pro-psychiatric drug narrative often directed at kids who demonstrate stigmatized signs of mental disability, like an autistic kid who habitually makes verbal noises or regularly speaks without being aware of how loud they are to others. And for non-white disabled kids, that form of discrimination is of course intensified and intertwined with racist behavior-policing.

    3. I think it’s totally possible that boys aren’t graded objectively in other subjects–and yeah, there are studies about black boys being disproportionately in special ed classes.

      I think another thing to consider too is that that women have to higher educational attainment to even get on par with male workers. There was a study about high female math achievement in Iceland (?) that concluded that the high female math achievement was because getting a job at a bank was the best way to leave the island.

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