Girls Do as Well as Boys in Math

NPR on line has an article that indicates that girls are doing as well as boys on math assessment tests. That is fine to know. What is troubling is that the achievement of girls in math isn't translating into having them well-represented in math-intensive techology an science fields. I'm not surprised.

One reason I'm not surprised takes me back 37 years. I was dating a girl in college who was majoring in math. She informed me that she was having a problem with the math chairperson, who thought that females wasn't good enough to receive a degree in math. At the time I couldn't understand why the math chairperson, who was also one of her professors, had that view. I had no notion of that type of discrimination at the point in life.

Lately, however, I been thinking that females maybe turned away from math at very early levels. If few females are graduating with degrees in math and even fewer females with math degrees are teaching at the primary school level, then females don't have role models toward a career in math early on. There is also the point that fewer males, who may have degrees in math, are teaching at the early education level.

I might be stretching the point, but I think the question has never been whether girls can do math as much as them having the encouragement and role models in math.