They are called on for answers less frequently and rewarded more often for compliance than for critical thinking, especially in math and science classes. When they shout out a response, girls tend to be reprimanded, while boys unsolicited ideas are likely to be expanded on by their teachers. These patterns continue right up through graduate school. Classroom structures that play to the quickest response time and the loudest voice, combined with curricula that still make women an afterthought, teach students a persistent subtext. Boys learn that they are central in our culture, that they can ignore and belittle girls.
Girls learn to defer, to pull back, to feel less important.
By age thirteen, girls' academic achievement begins to drop relative to boys'. Your predecessors didn't much care. During the Reagan-Bush years, no agency searched out violators of Title IX, which was supposed to stop discrimination against girls in education. In his final budget proposal to Congress, President Bush tried to eliminate the WEEA altogether. If you want to make good on your promise to be the Education President, you must demand change in the way we educate girls.