Achievement Gap in STEM Widens Between Girls and Boys in Hawaiʻi Schools

At ʻIlima Intermediate, teacher Sarah Milianta-Laffin sees a stark difference between the boys and girls in her STEM and computer science classes. Boys are often more assertive and ready to lead labs and group projects, she said, while girls tend to shy away from taking charge.

Even as young teens, Milianta-Laffin said, her students are aware of gender stereotypes dictating that girls aren’t as strong in math and science as their male peers. And these assumptions have only worsened since the Covid-19 pandemic, she said.

“We’re going backward,” she said.

Before the pandemic, girls in Hawaiʻi were bucking longstanding national trends and leading the way in math. In 2018, 43% of Hawaiʻi girls achieved proficiency in math on state standardized tests taken by students in grades three through eight and eleven — a few percentage points higher than their male peers. But the trend flipped after the pandemic, with more boys than girls scoring as proficient on the state math tests starting in 2020.

In the 2023-24 school year, 41% of boys were proficient in math, compared to 39% of girls. The two genders were more closely matched in their science scores, with roughly 40% of boys and girls reaching the proficient level on state standardized tests.

Hawaiʻi’s data reflects a larger trend of challenges girls have faced in math coming out of the pandemic.

In the years leading up to the pandemic, the national gender gap in math scores nearly closed. Within a few years, however, girls lost all the ground they had gained in math test scores over the previous decade, according to an Associated Press analysis of 33 states. While boys’ scores also suffered during COVID, they have recovered faster than girls, widening the gender gap.

AP’s report did not include Hawaiʻi because the state did not report its 2024 standardized test scores in time for the analysis. Civil Beat was able access the 2024 scores and identify a similar trend by looking at the state’s proficiency rates over time, though our analysis includes results for 11th grade, which the AP report did not.

As learning went online, special programs to engage girls lapsed — and schools were slow to restart them. Zoom school also emphasized rote learning, a technique based on repetition that some experts believe may favor boys, instead of teaching students to solve problems in different ways, which may benefit girls.

Old practices and biases likely reemerged during the pandemic, said Michelle Stie, a vice president at the National Math and Science Initiative.

“Let’s just call it what it is,” Stie said. “When society is disrupted, you fall back into bad patterns.”

Reversing The Trend
In most school districts in the 2008-2009 school year, boys had higher average math scores on standardized tests than girls, according to AP’s analysis, which looked at scores across 15 years in over 5,000 school districts. It was based on average test scores for third through eighth graders in 33 states, compiled by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University.

A decade later, girls had not only caught up, they were ahead: Slightly more than half of districts had higher math averages for girls. Within a few years of the pandemic, that parity disappeared. In the 2023-2024 school year, boys on average outscored girls in math in nearly nine out of 10 districts.

In the years leading up to the pandemic, teaching practices shifted to deemphasize speed, competition and rote memorization. Educators also promoted participation in STEM subjects and programs that boosted girls’ confidence, including extracurriculars that emphasized hands-on learning and connected abstract concepts to real-life applications.

Michael Ida, a teacher at Kalani High School, said he saw a strong push to encourage more Hawaiʻi girls to pursue computer science leading up to the pandemic. For example, he said, the 2019 Girls Go CyberStart Initiative specifically targeted female students and provided them with important opportunities to learn more about computer science and cybersecurity.

The program paused around the pandemic, Ida said, and he hasn’t seen it revived since. Other state initiatives supporting teachers and girls in STEM have continued, he said, but some momentum has stalled.

Girls are also missing out in the push for career-based education in the state. In the 2022-23 school year, 70% of students in Campbell High School’s information technology classes were boys. The school had a similar gender gap in its architecture and science programs.

Despite shifts in societal perceptions, a bias against girls also persists in science and math subjects, according to teachers and advocates. It becomes a message girls can internalize about their own abilities, they say, even at a very young age.

Girls can start losing interest in science and math as early as elementary school, Milianta-Laffin said, and are sometimes hesitant to pursue more advanced STEM classes as they get older, even though they’re just as prepared as their male peers. Poor expectations around girls’ abilities in STEM, combined with the stress and anxiety students faced during online learning, may have contributed to the drop in girls’ math scores in recent years, she said.

Between 2017 and 2023, the proportion of Hawaiʻi girls proficient in 11th-grade math fell by 9%, compared to 5% for boys.

Girls also may have been more sensitive to changes in instructional methods spurred by the pandemic, said Janine Remillard, a math education professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Research has found girls tend to prefer learning things connected to real-life examples, while boys generally do better in a competitive environment.

“What teachers told me during COVID is the first thing to go were all of these sense-making processes,” she said.

Ida said he can still see the lingering impacts of online learning on his students, especially when it comes to lost connections girls weren’t able to make during the pandemic. Girls often learn well when working collaboratively, he said, and enjoy projects that have a hands-on, creative aspect.

“Being at home by yourself, just staring at a screen, that was rough for all kids, but especially for girls,” he said. “It’s been harder for girls, apparently, to come back from that.”

Federal directives around diversity and equity have only complicated the issue. Earlier this year, the National Science Foundation ended funding for hundreds of projects supporting girls and other underrepresented students in STEM, including one initiative at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa promoting the professional development of women in geosciences.

Moving forward, schools should make a greater push for boys and girls to participate equally in STEM classes and electives like computer science, said David Sun-Miyashiro, executive director of HawaiʻiKidsCAN. Girls participate in STEM-related career preparation programs at much lower rates than boys and comprised less than 30% participants in computer science classes in 2024.

Making certain STEM classes a requirement can take away any stigma or assumption around girls’ abilities to succeed in math, Sun-Miyashiro said.

“Making it more normalized for people of all different backgrounds to be in these programs,” he said, “I think that’s pretty important.”

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