...on standardized intelligence tests, more males than females get off-the-chart test scores—in both directions. The greater variance of males on intelligence tests is one of the best-established findings in psychometric literature. More males are mentally deficient, and more are freakishly brilliant. The difference in variation isn't huge, but it is large enough and consistent enough that a fair selection process should produce more boys than girls in a gifted and talented program.

The Bloomberg administration imposed a uniform and transparent admission process so that all applicants (about 15,000 four- and five-year-olds) now take the same two standardized tests. Only children who score in the 90th percentile or above can enter the programs. This approach leaves little room for parental lobbying.

The reformers believed this open and consistent procedure would yield a more ethnically diverse group of students. So far it has not. It has yielded more girls than boys. As the Times reports (and disgruntled mothers of boys say on websites like UrbanBaby ), the test is “more verbal than other tests” and it plays to girls’ strengths. Boys are especially disadvantaged by the necessity to sit quietly for one hour and focus exclusively on the test. Pre-kindergarten boys with mental abilities three or four standard deviations above the mean have astonishing talents. But as Terry Neu, an expert on gifted boys, told me, sitting still for an extended period of time is not one of them. The capacity to remain seated for a long test does not reliably measure brilliance, but requiring pre-K children to do it is a sure way of securing more places for girls than boys in a gifted program.

The developing gender gap in the gifted programs of New York City does not signal that girls are smarter than boys. Rather, it exemplifies how well-intentioned government officials and educators can disregard boys’ needs and abilities and unwittingly adopt policies detrimental to boys’ well-being. It is a small part of the long story of how American boys across the ability spectrum and in all age groups have become second-class citizens in the nation’s schools.

The chart above is based on extensive research of a type that is no longer allowed by the PC Thought Police. It reveals that males make up the majority of both geniuses and imbeciles. The higher on the IQ chart you go, the more male geniuses there are, compared to female geniuses. This is important, since most of the transformative sciences and technologies which distinguish the advanced world from the more primitive third world, are based upon work by males (and a few females) at the higher end of the IQ curve.From Christina Hoff Sommers at American.com There you have it. To artificially create more girl geniuses than boys, start with a pre-pubertal population. Then slant the cognitive tests to favour the strengths of the girls -- more verval skills, better able to sit still for testing, etc. Before you know it, you have a population of gifted students on the fast track to success -- with a lot more girls included than boys.Such a strategy spread across the curriculum has been successful in bringing the proportion of female college graduates in the US close to 60% for Bachelor's and Master's degrees -- over 60% for Associate's degrees.Just make school as unpleasant as possible for males , until many of them -- and some of the smartest -- give up in disgust. You waste a lot of male talent that way, but you can get an awful lot of females through college and into the work force. A radical feminist's dream of gender payback.Society pays a huge price for the politically and sociologically designed destruction of human capital. But the policies which assure the continuation of this destruction are well entrenched, and not likely to be changed before the US government itself collapses. Of course, at the rate Obama Pelosi is going, that may not take much longer.

Labels: gender