Testing Tilts the Playing Field Testing can also shortchange girls. Researchers know girls tend to do better on essay tests while boys tend to do better on objective, multiple choice tests. Furthermore, independent of the skills being tested, the content of test items can influence the scores of the average girl or boy Some tests, such as the Stanford Binet and the California Achievement test, were specially designed to favor neither boys nor girls as a group. But other tests, especially the SAT math section, yield higher scores for boys. A second result is that when scholarships are given based on these tests, boys are more apt to get the scholarships than equally qualified or slightly better qualified girls.
Girls have their ambitions and dreams curtailed.
When you find young girls who are doing very well in math and science not even considering pursuing those subjects and young boys assuming they will, something is happening that is good for neither the individuals nor the nation. Although there has been progress since Title IX prohibited discrimination against girls in school in 1972, Bailey's team found no examples of school systems that had eliminated bias against girls completely. A 1989 national study of commonly assigned books in high school English in public, independent, and Catholic schools noted that among the top ten books only one was written by a woman and none by authors of color. And these choices matter enormously. In the case of textbooks, most publishers now have gender neutral guidelines for authors but not all require writers to use them.