Skewed stats

The argument

The apparent gender gap in educational performance may be an artefact of who gets counted rather than a change in how boys are doing. In the past, many male students who would have fared poorly in exams, or who were disengaged from school, would have dropped out before sitting them. Their results were therefore never included in national statistics, and their absence flattered the figures for male academic performance — not because the boys who left were doing well, but because the ones doing worst had removed themselves from the sample. That is no longer the case. These disengaged and poorly performing males are now included in the results pool, which means current statistics are measuring a fuller population than the ones they are being compared against. A like-for-like comparison would require the earlier figures to include the students they omitted, and they cannot. The phenomenon of the gender educational performance gap was therefore likely always present, and simply not visible until the students who constitute it began to be counted. What follows matters for where the blame is directed. If the gap is not a modern phenomenon, then explanations that depend on recent change cannot account for it. It clearly is not linked to a decrease in competitiveness in the school environment, nor to a shift towards more explorative learning styles, since the gap predates both and persisted through school systems that had neither feature. Dispelling those myths leaves the causes to be sought elsewhere: more likely in a societal issue or a cognitive one, which would have been operating all along and which no reform of the classroom would have produced or removed.

Context

Education is much less selective than it used to be. Students are not removed from the school system in the same numbers as they used to be; there are also legal mechanisms in place to prevent children from not completing secondary education. This has led to more disengaged male students taking exams and lowering male performance figures. Males academic performance has not deteriorated in recent years. It is just that the sample size has been broadened to include every male in the school system instead of only those that were engaged.

Premises

Counter-arguments

While it may be true that more disengaged male learners are now being included in national statistics, it doesn't explain away all of the issues associated with the gender education gap. Male enrollment in higher education, an indicator of academic performance, is alarmingly low. At some universities, female students now outnumber male students by six to one. Gender proportions on college campuses across the US are now weighted 56-44 in favour of female students. This still points to deep-rooted issues in the modern school system that make it difficult for males to excel and get ahead. The whole phenomenon of deteriorating male academic performance cannot be explained away by statistical anomalies. There is still evidence of an underlying bias against male learners.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] University admission show that male academic performance is deteriorating.