Schools Badly Shortchange Girls, Researchers Report : Education: Assn. of University Women’s study finds teachers give boys more attention, use biased materials.

From the way courses are designed to the methods teachers use to bestow attention on students, America’s public schools are badly shortchanging girls, furthering inequities that hinder the choices they make as adults, the American Assn. of University Women contends in a landmark report to be released today.

The report pulls together two decades of research to provide the most comprehensive look to date at the bias girls face from preschool through high school. Among its findings:

* Teachers give girls significantly less attention than boys.

* Although the gender gap in math is declining, girls still are not pursuing math-related careers in the same proportion as boys are, and a large, and perhaps growing, gender gap persists in science.

* Curricula often ignore females or reinforce stereotypes.

* Most standardized tests are biased against girls.

In addition, the study found indications that African-American girls fare even worse than white girls in classroom interaction. Although black girls try to initiate more teacher contact than any other group, they are frequently rebuffed and usually receive less teacher reinforcement.

Further, the report found that sexual harassment of girls by boys is on the rise, in part, the authors say, because school authorities tend to dismiss the incidents as “harmless instances of ‘boys being boys.’ ”

The study concludes with 40 recommendations aimed at increasing all students’ chances of receiving equitable treatment.

Noting that the majority of workers entering the job market by the turn of the century will be women or minorities, AAUW officials said the inequities evidenced in the study must be reversed if the United States is to be competitive in global markets.

“Construction of the glass ceiling begins not in the executive suite but in the classroom,” Alice McKee, president of the AAUW Educational Foundation, said of women’s difficulties in rising to key leadership positions in business, the professions and academia.

“It starts in preschool, when girls get less teacher attention, and lessons focus on the developmental needs of boys,” McKee added. “By the time girls reach high school, they have been systematically tracked toward traditional, sex-segregated jobs and away from areas of study that lead to high-paying jobs in science, technology and engineering. America cannot afford to squander half its talent.”

The report was scheduled for discussion today by prominent educators at the AAUW’s National Education Summit on Girls, being held in Washington. It also will be the subject of an AAUW-sponsored seminar for California education, business and government leaders Feb. 28 in San Francisco.

It follows an AAUW-commissioned poll last year which found that girls, unlike boys, do not generally emerge from school with the same degree of confidence and self-esteem with which most began their education.

AAUW President Sharon Schuster said the organization commissioned the study because of concerns that “girls are invisible” in the years-long national debate over how to improve American schools. A review of 35 major reports over two decades found only four that made any substantive references to girls’ problems in the educational system, she said.

Among the group’s recommendations were strengthening enforcement of a 1972 law banning sex discrimination in federally funded education programs; better training of teachers, counselors and administrators to avoid gender bias; revamping courses to expand opportunities for girls, and the elimination of gender stereotyping in matters ranging from discipline to textbooks.

As for standardized tests, researchers found that when scholarships are given based on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the most widely used college entrance exam, boys are more apt to receive them than girls who get equal or slightly better high school grades. Further, of boys and girls with the same math SAT scores, the girls do better in college.

One of the reasons boys get more attention in the classroom--a consistent finding in research spanning 20 years--is that they demand more. For example, researchers Myra and David Sadker of American University in Washington found that boys called out answers to teachers’ questions eight times more frequently than girls did. Further, the Sadkers found, teachers responded differently to such behavior, rewarding boys who called out by giving them attention but chastising the girls by reminding them to raise their hands before speaking.

Schuster said she found a bright spot in the “full support of the education Establishment. . . . Once their consciousness is raised, they want very much to make a change.”

One of those already making a change is Betsy Adams, a math teacher at William Logan Stephens Middle School in Long Beach.

Adams, a 20-year veteran, said she became aware of gender issues during a 1990 summer workshop at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts and began experimenting with ways to encourage girls to develop their talents in mathematics.

She switched to a cooperative learning approach, in which students work together in small groups to solve problems, and she began taking more time before selecting a student to call on. She also began having students keep track of the number of times she called on girls and how many times she chose boys--with some interesting results.

“When I called on girls and boys an equal number of times, all the students perceived I was favoring girls--they were that used to girls being in the background,” Adams said.

But she makes it clear that she is not interested in only helping girls.

“I’m not neglecting my male students by any means,” Adams said. “What works for girls also works for boys, and no one gets left out.”

Student Career Planning (Southland Edition, A19)

One measure of the gender gap in education comes from a comparison of the career plans of male and female high school students. Results are based on response to questions put to takers of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the most widely used entrance exam in the U.S.

Source: National Science Foundation