Well, I'm glad THAT'S settled.

Under the "Is this news?" category, here's a little love for all you math teachers out there. Especially since almost all of the ones I know are, um, female.

WASHINGTON - Sixteen years after Barbie dolls declared, "Math class is tough!" girls are proving that when it comes to math they are just as tough as boys. In the largest study of its kind, girls measured up to boys in every grade, from second through 11th. The research was released Thursday in the journal Science.

Parents and teachers persist in thinking boys are simply better at math, said Janet Hyde, the University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who led the study. And girls who grow up believing it wind up avoiding harder math classes.

"It keeps girls and women out of a lot of careers, particularly high-prestige, lucrative careers in science and technology," Hyde said.

That's changing, though slowly.

Women are now earning 48 percent of undergraduate college degrees in math; they still lag far behind in physics and engineering.

But in primary and secondary school, girls have caught up, with researchers attributing that advance to increasing numbers of girls taking advanced math classes such as calculus.

Hyde and her colleagues looked at annual math tests required by the No Child Left Behind education law in 2002. Ten states provided enough statistical information to review test scores by gender, allowing researchers to compare the performances of more than 7 million children.

The researchers found no difference in the scores of boys versus girls — not even in high school. Studies 20 years ago showed girls and boys did equally well on math in elementary school, but girls fell behind in high school.

"Girls have now achieved gender parity in performance on standardized math tests," Hyde said.

The stereotype that boys are better at math has been fueled, at least in part, by suggestions of biological differences in the way little boys and little girls learn. This idea is hotly disputed; Lawrence Summers, then the president of Harvard, was castigated in 2005 when he questioned the "intrinsic aptitude" of women for top-level math and science.

Joy Lee, a rising senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., says she always felt confident about math, but remembers how it felt to walk into a science class full of boys. "Maybe I was a little bit apprehensive about being the only girl, but that didn't last for very long," said Lee, president of a school club that tries to get young girls interested in science and technology, along with engineering and math.

"I definitely do encourage other girls to pursue those interests and to not be scared to take those courses just because there are not very many girls or because they think they're not good enough to do it," Lee said.

Still, while there are fewer women in science and technology, there are more women in college overall. To Hyde and her colleagues, that helps explain why girls consistently score lower on average on the SAT: More of them take the test, which is needed to get into college. The highest-performing students of both genders take the test, but more girls lower on the achievement scale take it, skewing the average.

For the class of 2007, the latest figures available, boys scored an average of 533 on the math section of the SAT, compared with 499 for girls.

On the ACT, another test on which girls lag slightly, the gender gap disappeared in Colorado and Illinois once state officials required all students to take the test.

As Hyde and her colleagues looked across the data for states' testing, they found something they didn't expect: In most states they reviewed, and at most grade levels, there weren't any questions that involved complex problem-solving, an ability needed to succeed in high levels of science and math. If tests don't assess these reasoning skills, they may not be taught, putting American students at a disadvantage to students in other countries with more challenging tests, the researchers said.

That might be a glaring omission, said Stephen Camarata, a Vanderbilt University professor who has researched the issue but was not involved in the study.

"We need to know that, if our measures aren't capturing some aspect of math that's important," Camarata said. "Then we can decide whether there's an actual male or female advantage."

A panel of experts convened by the Education Department recommended that state tests be updated to emphasize critical thinking.

While some states already have fairly rigorous tests, "we can do a better job," said Kerri Briggs, the department's assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education.

"If we're going to be globally competitive, we need students who are able to do higher-level math skills," she said.

Back in 1992, Barbie stopped saying math was hard after Mattel received complaints from, among others, the American Association of University Women.

So far, while her current career choices include baby doctor and veterinarian — and Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, too — Barbie has not branched out into technology or engineering.

I loathe Barbies anyway, so that "Math is tough," quote particularly made my blood boil. But perception is the name of the game here. As long as girls believe that they are bad at math, this problem will persist. And where do they get this idea that they're bad at math? It is subtly and sometimes not so subtly reinforced in society, in their families, and sometimes in the schools. Can't be good at math and be beautiful? Tell that to actress Danica McKellar. And to be honest, our society has a problem with encouraging interest in mathematics in our young people in general, whether male or female. But that's another rant.

2007 Blog Against Sexism Day

She kept coming to school with bruises, a black eye, scratches on her arms. She was sixteen years old-- and she was being beaten by her boyfriend. Her seventeen year old boyfriend.

They were both students of mine at one time or another. I had known him first-- he was a little bitty guy, a good breeze would have blown him over. In fact, at one point, the counselor had asked me to keep an eye on him for an eating disorder. His clothes were your typical dark, baggy, studded affair-- sk8r boy stuff. He liked to wisecrack, didn't like to do classwork, and was often late after making moon eyes in the hallway at this girl whom I didn't know. He was basically harmless. I would see her in the hallway and say, "Hello, reason-why-Sk8ter-Boi-is-always-late!" and she would grin and wave.

LSS, he got his F and moved on. Then, the next year, she was my student. She was very intelligent, but wasn't in any honors classes, which I found odd, but when I asked her about it, she just shrugged and said she didn't have time. At the beginning and end of class, there was Sk8r Boi. I kept wondering how he could get there so quickly, so he could escort her to class and from class. I later discovered that he did it often by skipping his class that hour, so his principal asked me to detain him one day. After he served his time in on-site suspension, I noticed that she would just hang around and chat until he got there. Then, about mid-October, he suddenly disappeared, and she told me he had dropped out.

I didn't really notice anything seriously odd until a couple of weeks later, when she came to school with a serious black eye. Luckily, I had a student teacher, so I asked him to take over the class. The second she stepped into class, I steered her right back out into the hallway, sat her down in a desk that I keep there, folded my arms, and waited. She looked everywhere but at me, and then finally, in a rush, it all came out. If she didn't do everything just as he said, he'd pull her hair, punch her repeatedly in the arm, pinch and twist her tricep. It had started out playfully, of course, and she didn't think too much about it, but soon the pokes got painful, the hair pulling actually caused dozens of strands of hair to come out. The night before, they had been in her car, although he was driving, and got into an argument. He had pulled her seatbelt tight and pummeled her head up against the window over and over again. He may have been a little runt that most adults could have broken in half, but he knew where to hit to inflict the most damage. She halfheartedly asked me not to tell anyone. It was a pro forma request, because I am not known for just sitting around and letting stuff like this happen, and she knew it.

So down we went to see the police officer stationed on campus, and got her counselor and her principal involved, as well. She had turned her cell phone off, and the cop told her to turn it on. There were eleven messages from him in voicemail, and he called while she was still in the cop's office, although she didn't answer. The messages were pleading with her to call him and saying how much he loved her, at first. The last messages proclaimed that she was an ugly, ignorant bitch and she'd better call or else, because she was NOT going to ignore him.

Her parents were called in-- of course they had had no idea. She had always been a clumsy child, so the little scuffs and bruises they had seen until then hadn't drawn attention, and they hadn't seen her go to school that morning. They were stunned, to say the least. They were urged to press charges, and agreed. The police left school and went to his house to talk to him, but he wasn't there, and his parents claimed he didn't live there any more. He was seen in her neighborhood later that night and arrested. His parents immediately bailed him out.

I'd like to say that was the end, but she forgave him, and began dating him again as the weeks went by. She kept talking to me, though, and I kept trying to make her see that she could never change him, that she wan't responsible for him, that he would never stop hurting her whil he thought he could get away with it-- and I made sure she understood that I knew what I was talking about, as my parents had had an abusive marriage. "You can only control yourself," I told her. "You can't make other people treat you right, or really love you. But you can control whether you allow yourself to be in a situation where you could be hurt-- or even killed."

Finally, he broke her cheeckbone and a couple of her ribs. This time he left town, and no one could find him. But no matter what, since he wasn't there, she was safer. He still tried to call her, and left messages saying he was in Boise, or Denver, or Seattle. I didn't care, as long as he wasn't here.

She is now trying to rebuild her life. She's struggled a bit in school, nothing serious, but has eventually gotten her feet back under her, and last semester she posted her best GPA ever. She wants to go to college at a small school in New York state where she has an aunt.

As I became more aware of this problem, I realized this is far from an isolated incident. Girls at the beginning of their dating years are most likely to be victims of this kind of abuse. I am now much more aware of suspicious absences and cuts and bruises.

It would be nice to think that teens could be innocent of this kind of abuse in their own fledgling romantic lives. But even by the age of fifteen or sixteen, some young men (and young women) have learned how to use words and physical force to try to exert complete control over another human being. We, the adults in their schools, who often see them the most in their lives, have to wake up to this potential problem.