"Crowded around a workshop table, four girls at de Zavala Middle School puzzled over a Lego machine they had built. As they flashed a purple card in front of a light sensor, nothing happened. The teacher at the Dallas-area school had emphasized that in the building process, there is no such thing as mistakes. Only iterations. So the girls dug back into the box of blocks and pulled out an orange card. They held it over the sensor and the machine kicked into motion."
"In the years leading up to the pandemic, the gender gap nearly closed. But within a few years, girls lost all the ground they had gained in math test scores over the previous decade, according to an Associated Press analysis. While boys' scores also suffered during COVID, they have recovered faster than girls, widening the gender gap. As learning went online, special programs to engage girls lapsed - and schools were slow to restart them."
At de Zavala Middle School, sixth-grade girls built a Lego machine and discovered that different colored cards produced different sensor responses, reinforcing iterative problem-solving. The newly designated STEM choice school recruited a sixth-grade class that's half girls while older grades often have only one girl in elective STEM classes. Nationwide, girls lost the math test-score gains of the previous decade during the COVID-19 pandemic, and boys have recovered faster, widening the gender gap. Remote learning caused lapse of programs that engaged girls and emphasized rote approaches that may favor boys. Schools are restarting efforts to reengage girls in STEM.
Read at Fortune
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]