Drat that Too, Too Persistent Gender Gap!

... persistent male-female SAT math test gap over time. The 35-point gap in math test scores in 2009 (average score of 534 for boys and 499 for girls) is basically unchanged from the 36-point test score gaps in 1973 (525 vs. 489) and 1974 (524 vs. 488). In other words, the male-female SAT math score gap has persisted for decades for a large sample size of more than 30 million American high school students who have taken the SAT since 1972. _CarpeDiem

MJPerry
The gender gap at the upper levels of math and science testing just will not go away, no matter how much money the forces of politically correct faux egalitarianism throw down the drain.

A study that examined 30 years of standardized test data from the very highest-scoring seventh graders has found that performance differences between boys and girls have narrowed considerably, but boys still outnumber girls by more than about 3-to-1 at extremely high levels of math ability and scientific reasoning.

At the same time, girls slightly outnumber boys at extremely high levels of verbal reasoning and writing ability

....The findings come from a study performed by Duke University's Talent Identification Program, which relies on SAT and ACT tests administered to the top 5 percent of 7th graders to identify gifted students and nurture their intellectual talents. There were more than 1.6 million such students in this study.

Researchers Jonathan Wai, Megan Cacchio, Martha Putallaz and Matthew C. Makel focused in particular on gifted seventh graders who scored 700 or above on the SAT's math or verbal tests, which is higher than most high school juniors score.

Among these students at the very top of the performance curve, the differences in verbal and mathematical performance have maintained a persistent gender gap over the last 15 years, said Jonathan Wai, a post-doctoral research associate at Duke TIP, and lead author on a paper appearing in the July/August issue of the journal Intelligence. _SD

Gender difference deniers use a combination of not-so-subtle tricks in an attempt to whitewash the persistent score gap. They will often look at pre-pubertal (or early pubertal) scores, which do not reflect the significant transition that occurs in brains of young men and women going through puberty. They also look at mid-levels of performance in math and science -- such as scores in routine math or physics course, or numbers of math teachers by gender -- which fail to examine the issue in question: top level math and science performance.

As opportunities for women in science, math, and engineering have multiplied -- and as billions of dollars have been spent to try to force young women into technical and scientific fields -- the performance of women at the highest levels of math and science as measured by top level awards of achievement, have not significantly changed.

The brains of human males and females tend to develop differently in response to hormonal stimulation at various stages of development. During puberty, the differences become particularly evident, both to brain scanning and to cognitive testing. You could even say that humans before puberty exist in a type of "larval stage." Any comparisons of male and female abilities during the larval stage are somewhat academic -- yet the minions of faux egalitarianism persist in arguing from such comparisons, and others that are similarly invalid.

This would not be nearly as much of a problem if not for the destructive effect of public policy which attempt to force a faux egalitarian outcome on a society made up of individuals and population groups which are simply not technically or practically equal. What we have, in effect, is a War Against Boys, in an expensive and heavy-handed social engineering project to destroy natural differences using bureaucratic means.

The result is a society that is falling behind in engineering and the math-intensive sciences -- if not for a massive importation of young men from other countries to fill the engineering and math-intensive science slots, which native-born American males have been push out of by educational malpractise in the early and middle years.

The longer these fools are left in charge, the greater the overall destruction to society.