Teachers in Irving, Texas, are working to close the gender gap in STEM that widened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
New analysis shows that in the years before the pandemic, the gender gap in math was nearly closed, The Associated Press reported. However, within a few years, girls lost much of the progress they had made in math scores over the previous decade. Adjustments made for remote learning during the pandemic likely disrupted this progress, allowing old biases and practices to resurface and renew the decline in young girls’ interest in math.
“Let’s just call it what it is,” said Michelle Stie, a vice president at the National Math and Science Initiative. “When society is disrupted, you fall back into bad patterns.”
A look into the average math test scores for third- through eighth-graders across 33 states found that in the 2008–2009 school year, boys generally outperformed girls. By 2019, girls had not only caught up but were ahead, with slightly more than half of districts reporting higher average math scores for girls.
However, within a few years of the pandemic, this progress reversed. In 2023–2024, boys outscored girls in math in nearly nine out of ten districts. A separate study found that gaps between boys and girls in science and math, which were nearly nonexistent in 2019, shifted by 2022 to favor boys.
Researchers attribute the decline to girls reporting higher levels of anxiety and depression during the pandemic, as well as taking on more caretaking responsibilities than boys. In addition, many programs designed to engage
girls in STEM were disrupted when schools shifted to virtual learning. Experts also noted that Zoom-based instruction often relies on rote learning, which may favor boys, rather than teaching problem-solving approaches that can benefit girls.“It wasn’t something like COVID happened and girls just fell apart,” said Megan Kuhfeld, one of the authors of the NWEA study.
To address the decline, schools like De Zavala Middle School in Irving, Texas, have invested in additional teacher training and launched a new science curriculum from LEGO Education that uses LEGO blocks to teach students about kinetic energy and genetics, among other STEM subjects.
“It is just rebuilding the culture of, we want to build critical thinkers and problem solvers,” said Erin O’Connor, a STEM and innovation specialist at de Zavala.
Teacher Tenisha Willis recently guided second graders at Irving’s Townley Elementary School in building a machine to push blocks
into a container. When three girls struggled with the task, Willis knelt down to offer extra patience and support, which worked.“Sometimes we can’t give up,” Willis said. “Sometimes we already have a solution. We just have to adjust it a little bit.”
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