There is a bias against boys in schools—when teachers don't know who took a test the boys score much better. To combat this, tests should be anonymized as much as possible.
Grade inflation is another issue that must be addressed by educators. Not everyone deserves to get top grades, and telling students they're “special” tends to backfire, especially in the long run. Psychologists have found that poor-performing students who were given self-esteem boosts in an effort to help improve their grades actually ended up performing much worse, though they remained confident and self-assured.6 Students need to be taught how to study more effectively, how to deal with procrastination, how to manage their time efficiently, how to study and work well with others, and, finally, they need to see that focused, hard work pays off. Bring in inspirational speakers who can share their story and more importantly the path they took to complete their goals as well as how they overcame failure along the way.
Schools have their work cut out for them, but they cannot accomplish everything they need to do without the support of policy-makers, administrators, parents, and students. Parents especially can do their part by supporting teachers who are fair, and by doing their part to ensure their children are better prepared for their lives as adults. More on that next . . .
While the authors limit their suggestion to just testing, there's no reason why the same wouldn't help in other graded work such as homework assignments from standardized worksheets. I think it's a very smart proposal, and is about the best thing that can be done, short of getting more male teachers into the early grades to be role models. Re-segregating education by sex would also help a great deal, given the differences in development and learning approaches between girls and boys, but that's far outside of current widely held beliefs and expectations, sadly.
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Man, Interrupted: Why Young Men are Struggling What We Can Do About It gave the novel suggestion that grading should be anonymized to deal with grading bias:
While the authors limit their suggestion to just testing, there's no reason why the same wouldn't help in other graded work such as homework assignments from standardized worksheets. I think it's a very smart proposal, and is about the best thing that can be done, short of getting more male teachers into the early grades to be role models. Re-segregating education by sex would also help a great deal, given the differences in development and learning approaches between girls and boys, but that's far outside of current widely held beliefs and expectations, sadly.
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