[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-586111-105":59,"doc-detail-586111-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","boys-regain-the-advantage-in-middle-school-stem-skills-post-covid-trends-in-gender-achievement-gaps-brief","Boys regain the advantage in middle school STEM skills - Post-COVID trends in gender achievement gaps - Brief","","Boys’ historic advantage in middle school math and science returned after being erased by 2019, while reading gaps continued to favor girls. Post-COVID data show substantially larger declines in girls’ math and science, reopening STEM inequities within a few years. Analysis across TIMSS, NAEP, and NWEA MAP Growth tracks when gaps widened, including differences by student achievement levels and algebra course enrollment trends by gender.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/boys-regain-the-advantage-in-middle-school-stem-skills-post-covid-trends-in-gender-achievement-gaps-brief/586111/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/boys-regain-the-advantage-in-middle-school-stem-skills-post-covid-trends-in-gender-achievement-gaps-brief/586111.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Taylor Morgan","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-03","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":39},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What changed in boys’ and girls’ performance in STEM after COVID-19?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"Boys’ advantage in math and science returned during the post-COVID period, while reading continued to favor girls. Girls experienced larger declines in math and science during the pandemic.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How did the gender gap in algebra enrollment differ by gender?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"Between 2019 and 2024, the share of girls enrolled in algebra in eighth grade fell from 26.4% to 24.5%, while the share of boys stayed level at about 24%.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"Which assessments were used to estimate trends in eighth-grade gender gaps?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"The study used five years of data from three national assessments: TIMSS, NAEP, and NWEA MAP Growth to estimate how gender gaps evolved over and after the pandemic.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},586111,1792069391,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":39,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":39,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":46,"preview_page_count":4},1099523885336,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c","BRIEF  \nBoys regain the advantage in middle school STEM skills: Post-COVID trends in gender achievement gaps  \nMegan Kuhfeld, Karyn Lewis, and Gus Robinson  \nMay 2025  \nKEY FINDINGS  \n• Boys’ historic advantage in math and science, which had been eliminated by 2019, markedly returned during the post-COVID period. Similar patterns were not observed in reading, where girls continue to outperform boys.  \n• High-achieving boys significantly outperformed high-achievingagirls in math and science, but lowachieving boys underperformed low-achieving girls.  \n• The share of girls enrolled in algebra in eighth grade dropped by two percentage points between 2019 and 2024 (from 26.4 to 24.5 percent), while the share of boys remained level at 24 percent.  \nIn the last two decades, the US has made remarkable strides in closing long-standing gender inequities in academic achievement in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields. By 2019, data from an international math and science assessment, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), showed that the historic advantage eighth-grade boys held in math and science achievement had largely disappeared (see Figure 1) .  \nHowever, new data suggest these hard-won gains may be unraveling. During the COVID-19 pandemic, girls showed substantially larger declines in math and science (both in the US and globally) . The STEM gender gaps that took a decade or more to close were reopened in just a few years.  \nFigure 1. Eighth-grade math and science US achievement trends by gender on the TIMSS assessment  \n(A) Eighth-grade math (B) Eighth-grade science  \nNote. Years where the scores have an asterisk next to them indicate a statistically significant gender gap.  \nWhile the TIMSS results provide an important signal, they raise additional questions. Relying on a single assessment given every four years obscures when these setbacks began, whether this pattern holds equally among low-and high-achieving students, and whether similar trends play out across other key indicators of STEM education (e. g. , course enrollments) . To better understand how STEM gender gaps have evolved during and after the pandemic, we first used five years of data from three national assessments (TIMSS, the National Assessment of Educational Progress [ NAEP], and the MAP® Growth™ assessment from NWEA®) to estimate trends in gender gaps in eighth grade over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.1 Second, we used  \n1 We focused on eighth-graders in this study for two reasons . First, data are available for eighth grade across multiple largescale assessments, making it easier to verify trends observed on a single test. Second, what happens in eighth grade can set the course for students’ STEM pathways in both high school and college.  \nNWEA Boys regain the advantage in middle school STEM skills: Post-COVID trends in gender achievement gaps | 2  \nMAP Growth data from approximately two million students to examine whether gender gaps also widened among low-and high-achieving students. Finally, given the importance of enrolling in algebra by eighth grade for students’ post-secondary enrollment, we examined whether enrollment in algebra in eighth grade differed by gender over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic within a sample of 1,300 schools. Together, these analyses paint a more complete picture of how the pandemic has reshaped the gender landscape in STEM education and where recovery efforts may need to focus.  \nWidening gender gaps in STEM achievement favoring boys  \nTo understand whether the widening gender gaps in STEM reflect a broader pattern in student performance or something more specific to math and science, we began by examining trends in reading achievement. If similar shifts were evident in reading, it might suggest a general postpandemic academic pattern. To test this, we analyzed data from two national assessments with reading results (NAEP and NWEA’s MAP Growth) and compared them to math and","cbCaitANQ565WFDy","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaitANQ565WFDy","pdf",2377965,"English","# Key Findings\n## Boys’ return to advantage in math and science\n## Reading vs. STEM: different gap trajectories\n## Methods and data sources (TIMSS, NAEP, NWEA MAP Growth)\n## Algebra enrollment in eighth grade","[{\"question\":\"What changed in boys’ and girls’ performance in STEM after COVID-19?\",\"answer\":\"Boys’ advantage in math and science returned during the post-COVID period, while reading continued to favor girls. Girls experienced larger declines in math and science during the pandemic.\"},{\"question\":\"How did the gender gap in algebra enrollment differ by gender?\",\"answer\":\"Between 2019 and 2024, the share of girls enrolled in algebra in eighth grade fell from 26.4% to 24.5%, while the share of boys stayed level at about 24%.\"},{\"question\":\"Which assessments were used to estimate trends in eighth-grade gender gaps?\",\"answer\":\"The study used five years of data from three national assessments: TIMSS, NAEP, and NWEA MAP Growth to estimate how gender gaps evolved over and after the pandemic.\"}]","Boys regain the advantage in middle school STEM skills - Post-COVID trends in gender achievement gaps - Brief | PDF",1792057000]