I have two boys. They are both so intelligent, it boggles my mind. I did not have a good experience in school, but attributed that to having a few learning disabilities and growing up in the 90s (haha). I figured this would not be the case for my boys. Then when my older one started school, though well liked by his teachers, he would come home saying he was messing up and then was eventually moved down a level in his reading class and almost moved down in his math class. Initially I didn’t think this was bad because he was being challenged. But then I realized that all the students being moved down to lower levels were boys. I’d heard, for various reasons, that boys do worse at school (I think a lot of the “reasons” are bs, but whatever). But today I learned about research that showed that boys are graded lower for the same level of work when compared to girls. This stunned me! Not, “the environment isn’t good for boys” or “boys mature more slowly,” but all else equal boys are graded lower. I started looking into the publications, I haven’t read through all of them completely and some I couldn’t get a link to and only read a summary, but is this real? I have never heard anything like this, no one has ever talked about it that I know of, and it really worries me: I worry about how my boys will be treated, how they will view themselves, etc. I’ve tried to put what I found below. I also hope this meets the post rules, I did my best, just really looking for some perspective in this. Lievore & Triventi (2023) - Italy, 39,000 students https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01425692.2022.2122942 Girls graded 0.4 points higher in math, 0.3 in language for same competence level. Voyer & Voyer (2014) - Meta-analysis, 502 studies, 1.1M students http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-a0036620.pdf https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24773502/ Girls receive higher grades than boys across all subjects despite same test scores. Lavy (2008) - Israel, blind vs non-blind grading https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/vlavy/lavy_j.public.e_10.2008_gender_steriotypes.pdf Boys discriminated against in literacy, math, and science grading. Finnish Study (2024) - PISA scores vs grades https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sociology/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2024.1448488/full https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11521978/ Boys’ grades lower than test scores would predict; bias ranges 0.2-0.5 SD. Chilean Study (2023) - 2011-2018 administrative data https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09645292.2023.2252620 Boys receive lower grades than national test scores in Spanish and math. Terrier (France) - IZA Discussion Paper https://docs.iza.org/dp10343.pdf Extensive gender bias in teacher evaluations; affects course selection long-term. Protivínský & Münich (2018) - Literature review 11 of 13 studies found grading bias against boys. Cornwell et al. (2013) - United States Teacher grades vs anonymous test scores show bias against boys. Falch & Naper (2013) - Norway Boys graded lower than test performance indicates. Lindahl (2007) - Sweden Evidence of anti-male bias in teacher assessments. submitted by /u/Davenporten
Originally posted by u/Davenporten on r/AskMen