Girls outscore boys on engineering exam
And they did it despite taking fewer tech classes
Despite taking fewer related classes, they fare better on eighth grade test
Nina White, a senior at Copley High School in Ohio, took an engineering class on a whim last year, mostly because she liked the teacher and he encouraged her to sign up.
This year, she took an advanced class and helped her school team win a national engineering competition by designing a real-life product for a local company.
White’s journey into engineering mirrors the experience of many girls who aren’t naturally drawn to the subject – or who don’t think they’d be good at it.
That’s starting to change, according to the results of a national engineering exam released Tuesday.
Across the country, eighth grade girls outperformed boys, even though girls reported taking fewer engineering classes than boys, according to the results of the 2018 National Assessment of Educational Progress Technology and Engineering Literacy exam.
“The girls have done extremely well in this assessment,” said Peggy Carr, associate commissioner for assessment at the National Center for Education Statistics. “Girls are outperforming boys whether they take a class or not. And when girls take a course, they also score higher.”
NAEP, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, gives national exams that measure reading and math knowledge. It launched an engineering literacy exam in 2014 to assess how well middle school students could apply engineering concepts to life.
The exam asks them to think through problems, such as how to build a bike path or how to design a museum exhibit about Chicago’s water pollution in the 1800s.
The exam was given to a sample of 15,400 eighth grade students in 600 public and private schools. The results were scored on a 300-point scale, then grouped into “basic,” “proficient” and “advanced.”
Almost half of students – 46% – scored proficient in engineering literacy, compared with 43% in 2014. NAEP’s definition of proficient is more rigorous than what most schools define as gradelevel proficiency.
Overall, eighth grade students boosted their average score by 2 points, and more students reported taking at least one technology or engineering course in 2018.
Scores went up for white, black and Asian students, but scores for Hispanic students stayed flat, as did scores for lower-achieving students.
Students scored higher on the exam if they had taken at least one technology or engineering course. The gender breakdown illuminated a paradox: 61% of eighth grade boys reported taking at least one class compared with 53% of girls, but girls outscored the boys on the exam by a 5-point difference.
One reason: Girls are better at the communication and collaboration portions of the exam, said Carr from the National Center for Education Statistics.
“Maybe boys could do better if we help them to improve in this area,” she said.
Kirby Harder, the engineering teacher at Copley High School who urged student Nina White to sign up for his class, was not surprised by the results.
“Girls are just as good at engineering as boys,” he said. “They often take their time to think through a problem, whereas boys often rush through and make a mistake.”
White said taking Harder’s classes and participating in the Source-America High School Design Challenge helped her to become less shy and to develop her communication skills.
She learned about new career options.
After graduation, she’s headed to the University of Akron, where she intends to major in civil engineering.