Irving, Texas (AP) – Crowded around the tables at the workshop, four girls from Dezabara Middle School were confused by the Lego machines they had made. When they flashed the purple card in front of the light sensor, nothing happened.
Teachers at Dallas Community Schools emphasized that there is no mistake in the construction process. Iteration only. So the girl went back to the box of blocks and pulled out the orange card. They held it on the sensor and the machine started to move.
“Ahhh, it reacts differently to different colors,” said sixth grade Sofia Cruz.
In De Zavala’s first year as a selective school focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the school recruited a class of sixth grade, half-girls. School leaders hope that girls will stick to the STEM field. With De Zavala’s higher grades (students participated before becoming a STEM school), only one girl is enrolled in some selective STEM classes.
Efforts to bridge the gap between STEM class boys and girls are being picked up after losing steam nationwide amidst the turmoil of the Covid-19 pandemic. The school does a wide range of work to compensate for lost ground girls, both in interest and performance.
Over the years leading up to the pandemic, the gender gap was largely closed. However, within a few years, the girls lost all the ground they had gained in their mathematics test scores over the past decade, according to an analysis by the Associated Press. The boys’ scores also suffered during Covid, but they recover faster than the girls, and the gender gap is widening.
When learning came online, there were special programs for girls to expire, and schools were slow to restart them. Zoom School also highlighted Rote Learning, a repetition-based technique that some experts believe is to support the boy, rather than teaching students to solve problems in a variety of ways that could benefit girls.
Michelle Sty, vice president of the National Mathematics Science Initiative, said it is likely that old practices and biases have reappeared during the pandemic.
“Let’s call it what that is,” Stee said. “When society is confused, you go back to a bad pattern.”
The pandemic has overthrew progress to fill gender gaps
According to an analysis by the AP, in most districts in the 2008-2009 grade, boys had higher average math scores on standardized tests than girls. This was based on average test scores for third- to eighth grade students from 33 states compiled by Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project.
Ten years later, the girl not only caught up, she was ahead.
Within a few years after the pandemic, parity disappeared. From 2023 to 2024, boys averaged almost nine out of ten districts overtaken mathematics girls.
Another study by NWEA, an education research firm, supported boys around 2022 as the gap between science boys and girls and the mathematics gap on national assessment was virtually nonexistent in 2019.
Research shows that girls report higher levels of anxiety and depression during the pandemic and are also more caring burden than boys, but lower academic performance did not appear outside the STEM. The girls were better at reading than boys in almost every district across the country before the pandemic, and have continued to do so ever since.
“It wasn’t like Covid happened, the girls just fell apart,” said Megan Koufeld, one of the authors of the NWEA study.
Initiatives to increase girls’ confidence in the lost traction of stems
In the years leading up to the pandemic, education practices shifted to emphasize speed, competition and memorization. Through new curriculum standards, schools have moved to research-encompassing methods that emphasize flexible ways of thinking to solve problems and how to conceptually address numerical problems.
Educators also emphasized practical learning and encouraged participation in STEM subjects and programs that enhanced girls’ confidence, including extracurricular activities that connected abstract concepts to real applications.
Larger male enrollment for STEM courses has led Principal Kenny Rodrequez to find the girl loses interest as she dominates classroom discussions at schools in the Grandview C-4 district outside Kansas City. After moving some of the practical stem curriculum that the district had been introduced into classes that were balanced by gender with lower grade levels, he said.
When schools were closed due to the pandemic, the district had to focus on making remote learning work. When in-person classes resumed, some teachers left and new teachers had to undergo curriculum training, Rodreques said.
“Whenever there’s a crisis, we’re back to what we knew,” Rodreques said.
The bias towards girls in STEM persists
Despite changing social perceptions, prejudice against girls persists in science and mathematics subjects, according to teachers, administrators and advocates. It becomes a message that girls can internalize about their abilities, they say, even at very young ages.
In a third-grade classroom in Washington, DC, teacher Rafael Bonhome begins the year with exercises that break down what constitutes their identity. Girls rarely describe themselves as good at math. Already, some say they are “not mathematics people.”
“I think you’re eight years old,” he said. “What are you talking about, ‘Are you not a mathematics guy?”
Janine Lemylard, a professor of mathematics education at the University of Pennsylvania, said the girls may have been sensitive to changes in teaching methods that have been spurred by the pandemic. Research has found that girls tend to prefer to learn things related to real-world examples, but boys generally do better in competitive environments.
“What teachers told me during Covid was all of these sensemaking processes,” she said.
School Districts will update their commitments
At De Zavala Middle School in Irving, the STEM program is part of a push aimed at building curiosity, resilience and problem-solving across subjects.
Irving School, which has emerged from the pandemic, has had to invest new investments in training for teachers, said Erin O’Connor, a STEM and innovation expert.
The district also piloted LEGO Education’s new science curriculum last year. For example, De Zavala’s machine-involving lessons taught students about kinetic energy. The fifth graders learned about genetics by constructing dinosaurs and their offspring with LEGO blocks and identify shared traits.
“We want to build critical thinkers and problem-solver just by restructuring our culture,” O’Connor said.
Teacher Tenisha Willis recently led the second graders at Townley Elementary School in Irving by building a machine that pushes blocks into containers. She kneeled next to the three girls she struggled with.
They tried to add a board to the wheel body of the machine, but the blocks didn’t move well. One girl was irritated, but Willis became patient. She asked if they could turn some parts over and what else they could try. The girl ran the machine again. This time it worked.
“Sometimes I can’t give up,” Willis said. “Sometimes, I already have a solution. I need to tweak a little.”
___
Lurie reported from Philadelphia. Todd Feathers contributed a report from New York.
___
Associated Press Education Compensation receives financial support from several private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP standard For charity, list of ap.org supporters and funded compensation areas.
