Although girls are taking more Advanced Placement courses and getting better grades than boys, their scores on those exams still tend to be lower. On large-scale exams, such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the top scorers in math and science still tend to be boys. But boys face inequities in school, too, the report acknowledges. Girls predominate, for example, in advanced English courses and in foreign-language and arts classes. In middle and elementary school, they also outscore boys by wide margins on NAEP tests in reading and writing.
Girls have weaknesses and strengths, and boys have weaknesses and strengths, too.
The fact that it is not alarmist should not obscure the importance of calling attention to these issues. The authors said they could find no new data on that subject. But the changes did not appease some of the organization's critics, who said the association's emphasis on girls was unwarranted. 1998 Editorial Projects in Education Vol.