Conclusion
While most researchers agree that a problem with gender inequalities exists in America's classrooms, there are those who disagree. For instance, Christina Hoff Sommers, associate professor of philosophy at Clark University and author of Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women (1994), argues that gender biases do not exist in the classroom. She argues that girls like school better, drop out less, and go on to college at higher rates. She states that 55% of today's college students are female. She also states that by 1989 women received 52% of both B.A. and M.A. degrees. According to Sommers, "on the National Assessment of Education Progress Tests(NEAP), given to seventeen-year-olds in 1990, males outperformed females by three points in math and eleven points in science, [but] girls outperformed boys by thirteen points in reading and twenty-four points in writing" (p 160) She also states that while boys outperform girls in math and science on standardized tests, girls get better grades in math and science classes. Sommers also points out that girls outnumber boys in the majority of extracurricular activities. She argues that these statistics suggest that no biases exist that harm female students. On the contrary, she suggests that problems may exist with male students that are being completely ignored by the AAUW, which is interested only in discovering biases against females.
Sommers takes issue with the research of the Sadkers and the AAUW. She states that presently "there is little agreement about how to define [self-esteem] and far less agreement on how to measure it" (Sommers, 1994, p.142). She argues that because the AAUW relied heavily upon self-reports, their "'survey instrument' was seriously inadequate, and that [it may] have been measuring something different from self-esteem or self-confidence (e.g., maturity)" (Sommers 1994, p. 148) Sommers suggests that both the AAUW and the Sadkers found what they wanted to find in their research, that they inflated the smallest possible indicators of gender bias to further their cause. For instance, Sommers argues that the Sadkers' claim that boys receive more attention than girls is not really an indication of discrimination. She argues that boys receive more attention simply because "[they] tend to be rowdier in the classrooms and to require more supervision" (Sommers 1994, p. 162). Sommers argues that if "education leaders [had done] a proper job of checking sources, looking at the original data, and seeking dissenting opinions from scholars, ...the alarming findings [of the Sadkers and the AAUW] on self-esteem, gender bias in the classroom, and harassment in the hallways would not [have been] automatically credited" (186). Sommers believes that the real dilemma facing the American educational system is not gender gaps, but the gaps that exist between the performances of American students and their foreign counterparts.
Currently, most research suggests that problems with gender equity in America's classrooms do indeed exist. But skeptics such as Sommers have begun to take aim at the findings of the AAUW and the Sadkers. The debate over whether or not gender biases exist in America's schools is relatively new, and it promises to be a hot issue in the world of education for quite some time.
While this site provides an overview of the problem of gender bias in the classroom, it does not touch on all of the issues surrounding gender equality in the classroom. Other issues to keep in mind are gender biases, and the lack of women in the curriculum, such as in history, and the gender biases, and the lack of women role models in textbooks.
Government 375: Educational Reform and Ideology