Gender Gap in Math Course Taking and Math Achievement

• Activity Number: 423
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Social Statistics Section
• Author(s): Jijun Zhang*+ and Xiaolei Wang
• Companies: American Institutes for Research and American Institutes for Research
• Keywords: gender gap ; national assessment ; national survey

Abstract

Using data from the 2009 High School Transcript Study (HSTS), this paper examines the gender gap in math coursetaking as well as NAEP achievement scores for high school graduates. In addition to providing coursetaking information of high school students through a collection of transcripts, HSTS offers the unique opportunity to study the relationship of student coursetaking patterns to achievement at grade 12 as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Results from our descriptive analyses showed that higher percentages of female than male high school graduates had taken Geometry and Algebra II/ Trigonometry, yet the NAEP math scores of female students were lower than those of male students. Taking into consideration of the complex sampling design of HSTS as well as the plausible values of the NAEP assessment, our multiple regression analysis further explored the gender gap in math achievement. Results from the final model indicate that after controlling for other relevant factors, such as the highest level of math course taken, etc, female students still lag behind males in terms of math achievement.