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Not Enough Girls Are Getting Into The City's Specialized High Schools
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Mar 23, 2013
Modified Apr 4, 2013
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By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Mar 23, 2013
Modified Apr 4, 2013
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The standardized exam that determines entry to New York's specialized city high schools has recently gotten flack for racial discrimination, but it's not just minority students who are having trouble gaining entry to schools like Stuyvesant High School and Bronx High School of Science. It turns out that boy students outnumber girl students by a significant percentage at all eight specialized high schools, even though studies show that at that age females tend to perform better in school than males.
Nearly 60 percent of the students Stuyvesant, for instance, are male, and boys make up a whopping 67 percent of the student body at the High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineering at City College. And since these schools tend to put a heavy emphasis on math and science, which are subjects girls tend to drop off in once they get to college, academics are worried this will have an impact on getting females into careers like engineering. "“It is very suspect that you don’t have as many girls as boys in New York City’s specialized schools," Janet Hyde, a psychology professor at University of Wisconsin, told the Times. "In a global economy we need to identify the best scientists and mathematicians."
Some researchers say the test isn't purposefully trying to discriminate against girls. "I think you’re looking at habit, culture, perceptions, tradition and curricular emphasis," Chester Finn, Jr., president of education policy group the Thomas B. Fordham Institute said. And that's not surprising, considering how toy companies market products for girls—even science-ey toys like chemistry sets are sometimes sold as perfumery or cosmetic kits, for instance, and let's not forget about that awful new "tablet for women," the ePad Femme. But it's notable that city schools that don't rely on the standardized test as the only factor determining entry often have more female students than male, like Bard High School Early College and Fiorello H. La Guardia High School. And schools like Stuyvesant say that girls are still performing well in male-dominated science and math classes, but the ghost of Teen Talk Barbie, who proudly declared that "Math class is tough!" before getting pulled from store shelves in 1992, still lingers.
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