Decomposing Gender Gaps in Literacy Summative Assessment Scores: Boys, Writing, and Next Steps to Close Gaps

• In Event: Topics in Contemporary Program Implementation, Evaluation, and Measurement

Abstract

State reporting of PARCC assessment data has noted girls performed significantly higher in literacy than boys, but failed to provide estimates of how large the differences were. This study found females outperform males on tasks of literacy assessment with small effect size in reading and medium effect size in writing. We also found male variability on the gender ratios at the lower left (poor readers/writers) and upper right (advanced readers/writers) tails of the ability distribution. It is notable that a high percentage of males received the bottom score in writing, which resulted in significant gender gaps in writing. Given the findings in this study, next steps to ameliorate significant gender gaps in literacy, especially male disadvantage in writing, were discussed.

Authors

• Sira Park, U.S. Department of Defense

• Shanea Ruh, Department of Defense Education Activity