ABSTRACT
It is easy to overlook the content areas of mathematics, science, and social studies when our attention is focused on patterns of performance by boys and girls as readers and writers. Content area scores from various state and national assessments, for example, rarely cause a “caution light” to go on, because it appears by most measures that boys and girls are not performing at significantly different levels of proficiency in these areas. The similarity between boys’ and girls’ overall performance in mathematics, science, and social studies, however, masks important differences in their ability to respond to particular kinds of questions. Text-dependent activities, those that require that students wear their readers’ and writers’ hats as well as those of a given content area, often reveal the same gap in performance that we see in traditional English language arts activities.
