Student Performance and Instructor Gender

Slate has an article summarizing the research of UC Davis Professors Scott Carrell and Marianne Page on the effects of instructor gender on student performance. Using data from science and math classes at the Air Force Academy, they find that replacing a male instructor with a female instructor nearly erases the gender gap in performance (and completely erases it among a select set of "high ability" students). Certain methodological difficulties which arise in such comparison studies, such as accounting for differences in syllabi and exam content between male and female teachers, are mitigated by the fact that course materials are uniform across Air Force Academy classes. The authors are also able to account for student ability, as they have access to the student's SAT scores.

Fascinating!