Early schooling: The handicap of being poor and male

In trying to understand the origin of gender differences favoring girls in reading skills, analysts have examined mainly the performance of students who are in the same grade, with samples pooled across socioeconomic status (SES). Using a longitudinal sample in Baltimore, where all students in a randomly selected panel are the same age and are followed from the beginning of the first grade, the authors found that the early reading skills of boys who are receiving meal subsidies - those who are disadvantaged -are lower than those of girls. Among children who are not on meal subsidies, boys do about the same as girls. This gender gap that emerges over the elementary school years is explained in terms of the higher retention rate of disadvantaged boys, which traces back to teachers' low ratings of classroom behavior and reading skills for boys on meal subsidies and to their parents' lower expectations for boys' school performance. The longitudinal design of this study, the early point from which children are followed (age 6), and the attention given to SES differences in how parents and teachers treat boys are key differences between this research and other studies of gender differences in reading comprehension. The discussion points up the critical nature of the first-grade transition in relation to the gender gap and some of its long-term implications.