Achievement 215poorer school performance compared to
females (Cokley & Moore, 2007).
Despite the wealth of research on gender
biases in the classroom, it is disheartening to
learn that the issue is not addressed in the train-
ing of teachers. A review of 23 teacher educa-
tion textbooks showed that only 3% of the space
is devoted to gender-related issues (Sadker &
Zittleman, 2007). The infusion of technology in
the classroom was thought to reduce gender bias
but has only served to perpetuate it (Plumm,
2008). Boys have more positive attitudes toward
computers and technology and receive greater
encouragement to use computers and technol-
ogy. Boys’ greater experience is undoubtedly re-
lated to their more positive attitudes. Computer
texts and software also are created to be more
appealing to boys and often contain stereo-
typical content, depicting males and females in
traditional roles. Some propose single-sex edu-
cation as a solution to the different experiences
that girls and boys have in the classroom. As dis-
cussed in Sidebar 6.3, there is no clear evidence
that single-sex education provides a solution to
the problems discussed in this chapter.from fifth to sixth grades. In other words, a
student’s math achievement improved be-
tween fifth and sixth grade when teachers
started out believing the student had high
math ability—which was the case for boys
more than girls.
Teachers also have different expecta-
tions for the performance of different racial
groups, which may influence performance.
Teachers have especially low expectations for
Black males’ performance (Simms, Knight,
& Dawes, 1993). This is a problem because
teachers’ expectancies predict students’ aca-
demic behavior. Thus, one reason Black
males have a negative view of school is that
teachers’ low expectations have been com-
municated to them. Black males receive more
negative feedback and more mixed (positive
and negative) feedback than Black females or
White students. Although teachers attribute
failure to external causes for White males,
they attribute failure to internal causes for
Black males (Simms et al., 1993). Black males
are more likely than Black females to devalue
academic success, which accounts for theirSIDEBAR 6.3:The Single-Sex Classroom Debate
Title IX prohibits sex discrimination of federally funded programs. For this reason, public single-
sex education was not permitted when Title IX went into effect. However, in 2006, the Depart-
ment of Education made several amendments to Title IX to permit greater flexibility in single-sex
education. These amendments included the permission of single-sex education for extracurricu-
lar activities and single-sex schools if equal opportunities are provided to the other sex in another
school. Whereas there are about 12 schools that offered single-sex education in 2002, in 2010
there were about 91 single-sex public schools in which all activities were single sex (National
Association for Single-Sex Public Education, 2010).
There are several reasons for choosing single-sex education. Some choose single-sex educa-
tion based on culture or religious reasons (Shah & Conchar, 2009). However, others believe that
one sex suffers from being combined with the other sex. For years, people have been concerned
with the gender biases in the classroom reviewed in this chapter and thought single-sex educa-
tion would benefit girls. More recently, there has been a concern that boys also suffer from co-
education. Boys are 50% more likely than girls to repeat a grade in school, over twice as likely asM06_HELG0185_04_SE_C06.indd 215 6/21/11 8:10 AM