(AEI) By Mark J. Perry —
Following up on the recent discussion about the gender differences on the SAT math test, the two tables above provide some additional food for thought based on gender differences on the ACT test.
The top table above shows the national test results by gender for the four ACT subject areas (English, reading, math and science reasoning) and the overall composite scores in 5-year intervals from 1995 to 2015 based on data from the Department of Education. Here are some details:
1. At the national level, high school girls have scored consistently higher on the English test over the last 20 years by 0.80 points on average and on the reading test by 0.40 points.
2. High school boys have scored consistently higher on the math test by an average of 1.1 points and on the science test by 0.9 points.
The bottom table shows ACT test scores for high school students for years 2011 to 2015 in the state of Illinois, where all students are required to take the ACT in their junior year. Since that requirement results in an equal number of boys and girls taking the test in most years, that pretty much eliminates the “sampling artifact” explanation (more girls than boys taking the test) of gender differences in test scores. For Illinois:
1. High school girls in Illinois have scored consistently higher on the English test over the last 5 years by 0.80 points on average (same as the national results) and on the reading test by 0.60 points (slightly higher than the national results).
2. High school boys in Illinois score consistently higher on the math test by an average of 0.70 points and on the science test by 0.50 points.
Bottom Line: Let’s suppose that these gender differences in test scores on the ACT provide empirical evidence that high school girls display slightly greater innate and natural cognitive abilities than boys in the areas of language and reading on average, while high school boys display slightly greater innate and natural cognitive abilities than girls in math and science on average. Would those findings be in any way objectionable, offensive, or unacceptable to an objective observer? If so, why?
