The College Board released data today on SAT scores for college-bound seniors in 2010, and here are some highlights of the results for the 2010 SAT mathematics test:
1. Continuing a trend that has persisted for many decades, high school boys scored significantly higher on the 2010 SAT math test, by 34 points this year, than their female counterparts: the average male score was 534 versus the average female score of 500 (see chart below). The male advantage in the SAT math test has ranged narrowly between 33 and 36 points in every year since 1994.
2. The gender differences in SAT math test scores prevailed for all ethnic groups in 2010, with the following male-female point differences: American Indian (29 points), Asian (28 points), black (14 points), Mexican-American (35 points), Puerto Rican (30 points), and white (36 points).
3. For perfect scores of 800 points on the SAT math test, there were 8,072 males and 3,887 females achieving at the highest possible level, for a male-female ratio of 2.08:1. However, there were almost 15 percent more female high school students (827,197) taking the SAT in 2010 than male students (720,793), and to account for those differences in the number of test takers, we can calculate that 1.12 percent of all male test takers scored perfect 800 scores, versus only 0.47 percent of all female test takers, for a male-female ratio 2.38:1, which is even higher than the unadjusted male-female ratio. By either calculation, there were more than twice as many male high school students as female students getting perfect scores on the SAT math test in 2010.
4. In contrast to male high school students’ superior performance on the SAT math test, female high school students are generally better students overall, and better prepared for the SAT math test than their male classmates. For example:
a. Females far outnumbered males ranking in the top 10 percent of their 2010 high school classes—there were 127 female students for every 100 males student in the top 10 percent of graduating classes across the country.
b. Nationwide, there were 144 female high school students with the highest GPA of A+ for every 100 males (59 percent female versus 41 percent male).
c. On average, female high school students had a higher GPA of 3.40 than the average GPA of 3.26 for male students.
d. More than half (51 percent) of female high students took more than 4 years of high school mathematics, compared to 49 percent of male students.
e. There were 117 female high school seniors who took AP or Honors math for every 100 male students enrolled in those courses (54 percent female versus 46 percent male).
Bottom Line: Female high school students are academically superior overall compared to male high school students, and they are better prepared than their male classmates for the SAT mathematics test, based on the number and level of math classes taken in high school. And yet, male high school students score significantly higher on the SAT math test than female students, and the statistically significant male-female test score gap of more than 30 points has persisted for many decades.
Based on the statistical evidence from the SAT mathematics test, there seems to one obvious conclusion: Male American high school students are simply better on average at mathematics than their female counterparts.
And yet, we frequently hear statements like these from University of Wisconsin Professor Janet Hyde (known for developing the “Gender Similarities Hypothesis”): “There just aren’t gender differences anymore in math performance. So parents and teachers need to revise their thoughts about this. Stereotypes are very, very resistant to change, but as a scientist I have to challenge them with data.”
Given the huge and persistent gender differences in SAT math test scores that persist over many generations, and which are found among all ethnic groups in the United States, the scientific data about statistically significant gender differences in math performance seem to be clearly rejecting Professor Hyde’s “gender similarities hypothesis.”
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