Lately there has been a consistent push to get more females into STEM subjects, and there is some good news coming from the first Nation’s Report Card in Technology and Engineering Literacy about the effectiveness of that effort: Girls scored three points higher than their male counterparts.

For those unfamiliar, the first-ever tech and engineering report card was administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for the first time in 2014.

"In 2014, this assessment was administered to 21,500 eighth-grade students in about 840 schools across the nation. Students’ opportunities to learn about and use technology and engineering happen both inside and outside the classroom. The Technology and Engineering Literary assessment includes a survey asking about these experiences across and within the three content areas – Technology and Society, Design and Systems, and Information and Communication Technology.,” the report said.

Besides finding that girls outperform boys in technology and engineering subjects, the report revealed some other interesting findings as well.

The report found that the majority of technology or engineering-related learning came from outside the classroom. 63 percent of eighth grade students said they learned about “building things, fixing things or how things work” from their parents. Only 13 percent said they learned from teachers.

Overall, 43 percent of eighth grades performed at a “proficient” level on the TEL assessment.

Read the full results here.

Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

5/17/2016