Using Quantile Regression to Understand the Progression of the Gender Achievement Gap in Mathematics

• In Event: Gender and STEM Education

Abstract

Using data from a cohort of 8th graders, we employed quantile regression to investigate the gender gap in 8th-grade mathematics and ACT Math. We answer two research questions: Does the gender achievement gap in mathematics change from middle to high school? How does this gap vary across the achievement distribution? In other words, do high-achieving students have larger or smaller achievement gaps than lower-achieving students or vice versa? Our data included 9,520 students having both ACT math scores and 8th-grade math scores. Our findings indicated that the unadjusted gender achievement gap in mathematics increased from 8th grade to 11th grade by almost threefold, and the gender achievement gap did not appear at the lower percentiles of the achievement distribution.

Authors

• Haigen Huang, Round Rock Independent School District

• Malkeet Singh, Facebook