"Just before the pandemic struck, girls had overtaken boys' scores in math and finally closed the long-standing gender gap in a subject that is a gateway to the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. Math scores dipped across the board in the wake of the pandemic, but girls' scores dropped far more precipitously and have continued to remain lower than boys'."
"The Associated Press analyzed data from the Stanford Education Data Archive and found that in the decade before the pandemic, girls had not only improved math scores nationwide, but they were also outscoring boys. But then by 2023-24, boys on average outscored girls in math in nearly 9 out of 10 districts. The data, which looked at scores across 15 years in over 5,000 school districts, was based on average test scores for third through eighth graders in 33 states."
"National experts in math have not definitively pinpointed which factors have contributed to this widening gap, but school closures at the height of the pandemic do not seem to explain it, according to Megan Kuhfeld, director of growth modeling and data analytics for the education research company NWEA. "It wasn't something like COVID happened and girls just fell apart," Kuhfeld said."
Girls overtook boys in math during the decade before the pandemic, closing a long-standing gender gap. Nationwide math scores fell after COVID, with girls' scores declining much more sharply and remaining below boys' averages. By 2023–24, boys outscored girls in math in nearly nine of ten districts. The analysis used 15 years of scores from more than 5,000 school districts and average test results for grades three through eight across 33 states. Experts have not identified definitive causes; school closures do not appear to fully explain the widening gap. Local districts show large, uneven shifts in performance.
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