As a psychologist in private practice and a consultant to girls’ schools, I’ve been awed in recent years by the rising tide of “test anxiety” that threatens to drown many girls. Whether they panic in private or as part of a group ritual, even our brightest female students seem to fear tests despite overwhelming evidence that they are no less capable than boys when it comes to taking them. The recently released SAT results reflect this, in fact. Female students were on pace with male students in critical reading and writing, and only slightly behind in math. And standardized measures of math test performance other than the SAT find that girls now score just as well as boys.
More resources
