No Congratulations are in Order

For decades boys' performance in school has lagged that of girls. Recent studies show that boys are catching up, but there's no joy in why that's so:

Girls have lost ground in reading, math and science at a troubling rate, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of student test scores across the country.

Since 2019, girls’ test scores have dropped sharply, often to the lowest point in decades. Boys’ scores have also fallen during that time, but the decline among girls has been more severe. Boys now consistently outperform girls in math, after being roughly even or slightly ahead in the years before 2020. Girls still tend to perform better in reading, but their scores have dropped closer to boys.

The findings suggest that pandemic learning loss hit girls particularly hard in ways that haven’t been addressed by schools. The most recent test scores show that girls haven’t yet recovered. This comes following longstanding gains for girls and women in educational attainment.

Theories abound why girls seemed to suffer more during the COVID lockdown:

Shutting down schools might have hurt girls more because they tend to do better in school generally, said David Figlio, a professor of economics and education at the University of Rochester who has studied gender gaps in education. “Girls have a comparative advantage in school and you take schools away, they’ll suffer more,” he added.

Another hypothesis is that girls took on more household duties during the pandemic—including taking care of younger siblings—so were less able to focus on school.

Boys can catch up to girls by bettering themselves or because girls have gotten worse. When the reason is the latter, no congratulations are in order,