"The gender gap in math has been closing over time," said Francis "Skip" Fennel, an education professor at McDaniel College and a former president of the National Council of Teachers of Math. "There's been an acceptance of everybody learning math."
Still, girls are sometimes discouraged from excelling or pushing themselves in math, experts say.
"In the culture of the high school, the girls don't want to look too nerdy," said Henry Kepner, a former math teacher who is president of the National Council of Teachers of Math.
But Kepner and other experts say attitudes are changing and more girls are taking challenging math courses and testing their skills on national Advanced Placement exams in calculus and in statistics.
"Over the last 10 years or so, there has been a definite improvement in more women taking math," said Victoria Stevenson, head of the math department at Baltimore's all-girl academic magnet, Western High School.
At Western, increasing numbers of girls are signing up to take calculus in their senior year, Stevenson said. This year, 18 seniors are taking either of two calculus courses at Western - one of which wasn't even offered a few years ago, she said. She expects about 25 students to sign up for calculus next year.
"I think it's society today. There's a look toward technology as being a key and more jobs are available to women in engineering and technology," she said.
Among 2007 high school graduates nationwide, some 125,000 girls and 142,000 boys took the College Board's Advanced Placement calculus exam last year, regarded as the gold standard for students serious about careers in engineering, science and math. That's about twice the number of test takers as there were 10 years ago - and roughly the same proportions by gender. "That's important because these are the people who are stepping forward and saying, 'I'm ready for this exam,' " Kepner said.
But the average girl's math SAT score is still 35 points lower than he boy's score. That's because proportionally more girls are taking the SAT - a lower-level test than the calculus exam - creating a larger pool of test takers that pulls the average down, according to Wayne Camara, vice president of research for the College Board, which administers the test.
Among last year's seniors, 641,000 girls took the SATs, compared to only 533,000 boys. "That's a significant difference," Camara said.
