The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What it Means for American Schools

5. Social and Behavioral Skills and School-Related Attitudes

101 chapter 5 Social and Behavioral Skills and School-Related attitudes i n this chapter, we discuss three primary reasons for girls’ tendency to do better in school than their test scores would predict. First, girls have an advantage relative to boys in terms of the social and behavioral skills that are valuable in producing higher levels of academic performance . Second, on average girls put forth greater effort than boys, and therefore girls gain greater average returns to their abilities than boys do, as measured by grades in school. Third, girls show greater levels of attachment to school, which may produce stronger gratification from school performance and therefore stronger immediate incentives to do well in school. These advantages reinforce each other as children become adolescents. Students who are more interested in school will work harder. Students whose behavior conforms more closely to school norms and expectations will get more out of school. effort, interest, and conformity generally translate into higher levels of cognitive growth, as measured by test scores. Students who work harder and conform to school norms will also get higher grades, and the combination of grades and test scores is a strong predictor that a student will succeed in college and complete college. social and Behavioral skills Social and behavioral skills have assumed a central role in explaining persistent differences in school performance by socioeconomic status, race, and gender (Bowles and Gintis 1976; Farkas 2003; Rosenbaum 2001; lareau 2003). Much research reports that boys have higher rates of aggression , antisocial behavior, attention disorders, learning disabilities, mental retardation, stuttering, delayed speech, and other related disabilities (halpern 1997; Muter 2003; Rutter et al. 2004; Ready et al. 2005; hyde 2005). as early as kindergarten, boys are more disruptive in class 102 The Rise of women and are less positively oriented toward learning. For example, according to parent and teacher reports, twice as many boys as girls have difficulty paying attention in kindergarten, and girls more often demonstrate persistence in completing tasks and an eagerness to learn (Zill and west 2001). Several studies have demonstrated boys’ stronger tendencies toward externalizing behavior (entwisle, alexander, and olson 2005; Raffaelli , crockett, and Shen 2005). walter Gilliam (2005) reports that boys are five times as likely as girls to be expelled from prekindergarten. These gender differences persist into middle and high school. Boys are more likely to be disciplined in middle school and high school (diprete, Muller, and Shaeffer 1982; arum and Roksa 2011). adolescent males engage in more risky behaviors, such as smoking, drinking, drug use, and fighting (Byrnes, Miller, and Schafer 1999; Bachman 2002). our own calculations from National education longitudinal Study (NelS) data show that high school senior males are more likely than females to skip school, to get in fights, or to get into self-reported “trouble” in school. Table 5.1 shows differences in social and behavioral skills by gender, race, and social class during early elementary school, as reported by Thomas diprete and Jennifer Jennings (2012) using data from the early child longitudinal Study, Kindergarten class of 1998–99 (eclS-K). Teachers were asked to rate student social and behavioral skills at several time points from the beginning of kindergarten through the end of fifth grade, and these ratings were grouped into several behavioral dimensions . using factor analysis, diprete and Jennings (2012) combined three scales measuring approaches to learning, self-control, and interpersonal skills into a single “social and behavioral skills factor” that provides a more parsimonious description of gender differences.1 Girls lead boys in their social and behavioral skills by nearly 0.4 standard deviations at the start of kindergarten. From kindergarten to the end of fifth grade, boys fall further behind girls, lagging by 0.53 standard deviations by the end of fifth grade. as table 5.1 demonstrates, the gap in social and behavioral skills between boys and girls is considerably larger than the gap between children from poor families and nonpoor families or the gap between black and white children.2 Numerous studies find links between social and behavioral skills and educational outcomes. Kali Trzesniewski and her colleagues (2006) demonstrate that antisocial behavior and reading difficulties go hand in hand for boys; antisocial behavior leads to poor reading skills and vice versa.3 John coie and Gina Krehbiel (1984) found that low-achieving, socially rejected fourth-graders who were assigned to an intensive social and academic skills training intervention gained in reading, but not in math; similar results were obtained by the MTa-cooperative...