PSAT-based National Merit scholarship selection distributes awards disproportionately to boys, with girls receiving 36 percent of scholarships¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · theoretical r1 · q2
Currency · newest study 1989 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Evidence quality · No study behind this claim is a peer-reviewed article with a DOI: it rests on an ERIC document (a report, conference paper or thesis). It is kept because 2 design pages cite it; treat it as a lead to check, not an established finding.

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Girls' National Merit qualifying scores averaged 65 points lower than boys' (in SAT terms), and girls received only 36 percent of the 6,026 available scholarships while boys received 64 percent. → Sex and Race Differences on Standardized Tests: Oversight Hearings before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary 1989

Evidence¶

Sex and Race Differences on Standardized Tests: Oversight Hearings before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary 1989¶

Sex and Race Differences on Standardized Tests: Oversight Hearings before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, One Hundredth Congress, First Session. (1989). https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED312276

q2 · i? · no effect size printed; the testimony gives award shares (36% girls, 64% boys of 6,026 scholarships) and a 65-point mean score gap in SAT terms, with no SD · theoretical · r1

Rosser's testimony on the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, which awards over $23 million annually to the highest PSAT scorers. She reports the 36/64 percent split of the 6,026 scholarships and a semifinalist pool that was 34.7 percent female.

"Last year, girls' qualifying scores averaged 65 points lower than boys, in SAT terms, and they received only 36 percent of the 6,026 available scholarships, while boys received 64 percent."

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Gender — predictor: outcomes differ by group: a gap reflecting circumstances and treatment, not a cause

Related Claims¶

• Systematic racial, ethnic and gender differences in grades persist among students with the same test scores, attendance, courses and teachers — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it

• A narrative review, citing Ford (2003), attributes the underrepresentation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in gifted education to identification measures biased toward another cultural background — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it

• Congressional hearing testimony reports, citing a 1979 ETS study second-hand, that females tend to do better on test items with female or neutral figures than on items with male figures — related
• Testimony at a 1987 congressional hearing reported 1985 SAT averages in which Black women scored 43 points below Black men and 264 points below white men, which the witness called a double penalty for minority females — related
• SAT scores underpredict the academic performance of high school girls, who average lower scores than boys despite higher grades — related
• Testimony at a 1987 congressional hearing reported that the Johns Hopkins talent search, which admitted by SAT score, invited over 2,500 boys but 1,081 girls in one summer although equal numbers took the test — related
• Women admitted to MIT with lower SAT math scores perform as well as men in freshman math classes — related
• The EPIC evaluation baseline report compares student characteristics across the program's three partners and compares award-determination data with data on all students in the awarded schools — related
• Girls score lower than boys on timed standardized math and science tests at the same course level, and SAT math scores underpredict women's college math performance — related