Knowing of my interest in this topic, Holly Higgins from Pre-K Now sent along this article from ScienceNews:

According to a new study, preschool boys perform better on tests that measure learning and other important skills when they are in classes that have more girls than boys. The pattern doesn’t seem to hold for girls, though. For preschool girls, the presence or absence of boys did not affect learning.

The study raises questions about having all-boy or all-girl classes for preschool , says psychologist Arlen Moller, of Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, who led the study. Other studies have shown that high-school girls may perform better in all-girl schools. In middle school, however, the effects of same-sex schooling are unclear, and even less is known for very young kids.

Interesting, and it raises this fundamental question: Do boys show up for kindergarten less prepared for school work than girls? For the answer, I went to one of the nation’s top experts, Steven Barnett, executive director of the National Institute for Early Education at Rutgers University. His response (and be sure to read the last line, which gets at the heart of the issue): 

You have a complicated question, how many boys relative to girls show up not ready for school. Readiness for school is multi-faceted–knowledge about language, literacy, math, etc. plus executive function and social-emotional skills and even health. Also, your question asks who is at the bottom rather than for group averages. Readiness also depends on what schools require, that is what they do to make themselves ready for children. So here is my best take. There are only small differences in cognitive skills or achievement at the start of kindergarten between boys and girls. In reading, girls are a bit ahead, and in math boys have a small advantage at the top of the distribution while girls have a small advantage at the bottom of the distribution (the average is about the same but there are more boys at the extremes. It may be more important that boys are less well-behaved than girls. For example, as they move through school, boys are placed in lower reading groups more often than they should be based on their actual achievement, in part because of teacher perceptions of their behavior. Another way to approach your question is to look at the percentage of children who are below the modal grade for their age, at ages 6-8. From 2000-2006 this averaged 21.5% for boys and 17.3% for girls, indicating that in the earliest years of school boys are being held back at a 25% higher rate than girls (by either their parents or the schools). 

It would seem that boys may come to school somewhat less ready for school, but that schools also are less ready for boys.

Tags: preschool

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