Teachers underrate girls' math skills.

• Position: Gender Gap - Brief article

Staring in early elementary school, boys outperform girls in math--especially among the highest achievers--continuing a pattern found In the late 1990s, maintains an analysis by New York University's School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. The study also shows that teachers give lower ratings to girls' math skills when girls and boys have similar achievement and behavior. In addition, using two national datasets gathered more than a decade apart, this study contends that teachers' lower ratings of girls likely are contributing to the growth in the gender gap in math.

"Despite changes in the educational landscape, our findings suggest that the gender gaps observed among children who entered kindergarten in 2010 are strikingly similar to what we saw In children who entered kindergarten In 1998," says lead author Joseph Cimpian, associate professor of...