DESTREHAN, La. — During a recent group project in her eighth-grade engineering class, Charlotte Buccola took charge. Standing between the two boys on her team, she silently arranged sticky notes on a wall as the group tried, without speaking, to design a system for making hot chocolate.
As the students at Harry Hurst Middle School practiced the engineering design process and the critical skill of collaboration, the girls seemed to excel. They worked efficiently and cooperatively, offering their peers support.
“Your drawings are really good,” Charlotte told another girl when they were comparing designs. “Well done.”
Charlotte Buccola, center, and her 8th-grade classmates in an "Engineering Essentials" class at Harry M. Hurst Middle School in Destrehan on Wednesday, September 10, 2025. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Efforts to close the gap between boys and girls in STEM classes are picking up after losing steam nationwide during the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools have extensive work ahead of them to make up the ground girls lost, in both interest and performance.
In the years leading up to the pandemic, the gender gap had nearly closed. But within a few years, girls lost all the ground they had gained in math test scores over the previous decade, according to an Associated Press analysis. While boys' scores also suffered during COVID, they have recovered faster than girls, widening the gender gap.
In h, girls now slightly trail boys in math, after outperforming them prior to the pandemic.
As learning went online, special programs to engage girls lapsed — and schools were slow to restart them. Zoom school also emphasized rote learning, a technique based on repetition that some experts believe may favor boys, instead of teaching students to solve problems in different ways, which may benefit girls.
Lindsay Maxie, who teaches the engineering class at Hurst Middle School in a suburb outside New Orleans, said that small-group, hands-on projects allow her female students to shine.
“Being able to collaborate with other students really impacts their learning,” she said. “And that was something that kind of went away during COVID.”
Teacher Lindsay Maxie, left, watches her 8th-grade students, from left to right, Kamryn Patterson, Charlotte Buccola, and Kourtnee Hart, work on a logic problem in an "Engineering Essentials" class at Harry M. Hurst Middle School in Destrehan on Wednesday, September 10, 2025. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Progress toward closing the gender gap is disrupted
In most school districts in the 2008-09 school year, boys had higher average math scores on standardized tests than girls, according to AP's analysis, which looked at scores across 15 years in over 5,000 school districts. It was based on average test scores for third through eighth graders in 33 states, compiled by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University.
A decade later, girls had not only caught up, they were ahead: Slightly more than half of districts had higher math averages for girls.
Within a few years of the pandemic, the parity disappeared. In 2023-24, boys on average outscored girls in math in nearly nine out of 10 districts.
Charlotte Buccola, left, and her 8th-grade classmates work out a math problem in an "Engineering Essentials" class at Harry M. Hurst Middle School in Destrehan on Wednesday, September 10, 2025. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
In h, girls’ math scores dropped the equivalent of 17% of a grade level during the pandemic, while boys improved 15% of a grade level. By 2024, h boys were leading in math — the first time they outscored girls in over a decade.
, an education research company, found gaps between boys and girls in science and math on national assessments went from being practically non-existent in 2019 to favoring boys around 2022.
Studies have indicated girls reported higher levels of anxiety and depression during the pandemic, plus more caretaking burdens than boys, but the dip in academic performance did not appear outside STEM. Girls outperformed boys in reading in nearly every district nationwide before the pandemic and continued to do so afterward.
“It wasn’t something like COVID happened and girls just fell apart,” said Megan Kuhfeld, one of the authors of the NWEA study.
Efforts to boost girls' confidence in STEM lost traction
In the years leading up to the pandemic, teaching practices shifted to deemphasize speed, competition and rote memorization. Through new curriculum standards, schools moved toward research-backed methods that emphasized how to think flexibly to solve problems and how to tackle numeric problems conceptually.
Educators also promoted participation in STEM subjects and programs that boosted girls’ confidence, including extracurriculars that emphasized hands-on learning and connected abstract concepts to real-life applications.
Eighth graders work on their computers in an "Engineering Essentials" class at Harry M. Hurst Middle School in Destrehan on Wednesday, September 10, 2025. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Girls who were recruited for STEM classes and competitions often excelled, said Latrenda Knighten, a former math specialist in the East Baton Rouge school system.
“When the conditions are there, they step up to the plate,” said Knighten, who now is president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
But lately, Knighten senses less of an appetite and funding for programs that target historically underrepresented groups in STEM, including girls and students of color. She also noticed some teachers abandon the newer, conceptual math practices during the upheaval of the pandemic.
“Once they got away from it,” she said, “it was hard to get some people to come back to what we know works.”
Bias against girls in STEM persists
Despite shifts in societal perceptions, a bias against girls persists in science and math subjects, according to teachers, administrators and advocates. It becomes a message girls can internalize about their own abilities, they say, even at a very young age.
Ronny Seal, a curriculum specialist in career education, said that even students who choose to take STEM classes often pursue different pathways according to their gender: Girls are more likely to study health careers, while boys explore engineering.
“I’m still seeing those traditional roles kind of play out,” said Seal, who works in St. Charles Parish Public Schools, which includes Harry Hurst Middle School. “We're still fighting that.”
Girls also may have been more sensitive to changes in instructional methods spurred by the pandemic, said Janine Remillard, a math education professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Research has found girls tend to prefer learning things that are connected to real-life examples, while boys generally do better in a competitive environment.
“What teachers told me during COVID is the first thing to go were all of these sense-making processes,” she said.
A school district renews its commitment
Like h as a whole, St. Charles Parish experienced a STEM gender reversal during the pandemic — one that has attracted little public notice.
In 2019, its girls were ahead of boys by about a quarter of a grade level in math, according to the Stanford data. By 2024, its boys led the girls by a similar amount.
Now the district is taking steps that officials believe will spur STEM interest and achievement among all students, including girls. One new program brings in employees from local energy companies, including Entergy and Valero, to teach science lessons.
Last school year, engineers from IMTT, a New Orleans-based liquid storage company, demonstrated how to heat up vegetable oil so it flows through copper tubing. The three engineers — including one who is a woman — had once been students at Albert Cammon Middle School, where they gave the lesson.
“They were able to come back and say, ‘We did it, y'all can do it too,’” said Seal, the career education specialist.
Belle Cassagne, right, joins her 8th-grade classmates in an "Engineering Essentials" class lecture at Harry M. Hurst Middle School in Destrehan on Wednesday, September 10, 2025. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Meanwhile, STEM classes such as Lindsay Maxie’s “Engineering Essentials” are centered on collaboration and problem-solving, which appeals to students like eighth-grader Kamryn Patterson.
“It's not boring,” she said the other day as students designed systems for making hot chocolate. “You always have something to do.”
Her classmate, Belle Cassagne, said team projects like that foster learning.
“If we have questions,” she said, “we ask each other.”
Lurye reported from Philadelphia. Todd Feathers contributed reporting from New York.
