Due to the miracles of No Child Left Behind, our students take standardized test and the students and school districts are graded. Tenth grade students are graded in five subjects: Reading, Writing, Math, Science, and Social Studies. Most students are required to pass all five of the test to graduate from high school.
I am not here to argue the merits of standardized testing. I want to discuss the results and ask for a few suggestions as to solutions. The results of the five test all fall along gender lines. The differences in passage rates were 7% or higher between male and females, and were more significant on levels of achievement. Here are the results by which group passed in higher numbers
Reading: Female
Writing: Female
Math: Male
Science: Male
Social Studies: Male
The social studies results were what was troubling. Social studies is composed of reading and writing. There is not math and science involved. It would seem that if females do better on reading and writing, they would also do better in social studies, unless something was actually happening within the classroom that somehow was biased against females. I proposed this theory in a social studies department meeting and was met with hostility.
A little background on the department:
There are 13 teachers, 11 of which are male. The male teachers, of which I am one, often focus on minutia of battles and death throughout history, which I stopped doing a few years ago. I suggested the female students might not enjoy this type of history (using massive amounts of anecdotal evidence), and anger erupted again. I further suggested that we should do a survey to determine what aspects of history/social studies that male and female students enjoy and adjust some of what we do to reflect that.
My question to those who read this: What aspects of history and social did you enjoy or hate in high school? Do you believe that the teaching of social studies had a gender bias?
Thanks for any replies.