In a bustling classroom at de Zavala Middle School in Irving, Texas, a group of sixth graders huddled around a table, their faces illuminated by both anticipation and the soft glow of a Lego machine’s sensor. On September 5, 2025, the students—half of them girls by design—were deep in the throes of discovery. Their initial attempt to activate the contraption with a purple card fizzled, but when they flashed an orange card, the machine whirred to life. “Oh! Oh, it reacts differently to different colors,” exclaimed Sofia Cruz, her voice echoing the thrill of hands-on learning.
This moment was more than a simple classroom experiment; it was a testament to a renewed push for gender equity in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education. De Zavala Middle School, in its first year as a choice school focused on STEM, had intentionally recruited a sixth-grade class split evenly between girls and boys. The hope: that girls would not only engage with STEM subjects early but also stick with them as they advanced through school.
Unfortunately, the optimism at de Zavala stands in sharp contrast to national trends. According to an Associated Press analysis and data compiled by Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project, the gender gap in math scores—once nearly closed—has reemerged and widened since the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, girls had not only caught up to boys in math but actually surpassed them in more than half of U.S. school districts. Yet within a few short years, that hard-won parity evaporated. By the 2023-2024 school year, boys outperformed girls in math in nearly 90% of districts nationwide.
“Let’s just call it what it is,” said Michelle Stie, vice president at the National Math and Science Initiative, as quoted by the Associated Press. “When society is disrupted, you fall back into bad patterns.” The pandemic’s upheaval forced schools to pivot rapidly to remote learning. Special programs that had been designed to engage girls in STEM—often emphasizing collaborative, hands-on projects—were among the first to be sidelined. In their place, rote memorization and repetitive drills took center stage, a shift that some experts believe may have inadvertently favored boys over girls.
Research highlighted by the AP and Stanford’s project reveals the starkness of the reversal. In the 2008-2009 school year, boys generally led in math scores. But over the next decade, girls steadily closed the gap, benefiting from educational reforms that emphasized conceptual understanding and flexible problem-solving. These approaches, backed by research, were particularly effective for girls, who often thrive when learning is connected to real-life examples rather than speed or competition.
Then came COVID-19. As classrooms shuttered and Zoom school became the norm, many of the innovative teaching practices that had propelled girls forward were abandoned—at least temporarily. “What teachers told me during COVID is the first thing to go were all of these sense-making processes,” explained Janine Remillard, a math education professor at the University of Pennsylvania, to the Associated Press. The result: girls’ math scores dropped more than boys’ in nearly every district, a trend echoed in North Carolina and across the country, as reported by local media and corroborated by Stanford’s data.
The academic decline for girls was especially pronounced in STEM subjects. While girls continued to outperform boys in reading both before and after the pandemic, their progress in math and science stalled and then reversed. Studies by the education research company NWEA found that the gender gap in science and math, nearly nonexistent in 2019, had flipped to favor boys by 2022. Social pressures compounded the problem. Girls reported higher levels of anxiety and depression during the pandemic, as well as increased caretaking burdens at home—factors that likely contributed to their academic setbacks.
Bias, both subtle and overt, remains a stubborn obstacle. Teachers and administrators note that girls often internalize negative messages about their STEM abilities from a young age. Raphael Bonhomme, a third-grade teacher in Washington, D.C., described how few girls in his class identified as “math people.” “I’m like, you’re 8 years old,” he told the Associated Press. “What are you talking about, ‘I’m not a math person?’”
Yet amid these challenges, some school districts are making headway. The Grandview C-4 District outside Kansas City, for instance, observed a notable uptick in girls’ engagement when they restructured introductory STEM courses to ensure balanced gender representation and shifted hands-on curriculum to earlier grades. Superintendent Kenny Rodrequez explained that when boys dominated classroom discussions, girls’ interest waned. But with intentional changes, participation and enthusiasm among girls rebounded.
Back in Irving, de Zavala Middle School is doubling down on its commitment to inclusivity and innovation. The district has invested heavily in teacher training and piloted a new science curriculum from Lego Education, which bridges theoretical concepts with tangible, real-world projects. In one lesson, fifth graders explored genetics by building Lego dinosaurs and tracing inherited traits. Erin O’Connor, a STEM and innovation specialist, summed up the school’s mission: “It is just rebuilding the culture of, we want to build critical thinkers and problem solvers.”
Teachers like Tenisha Willis are on the front lines of this cultural shift. At Townley Elementary, she recently guided a trio of second-grade girls through the process of building a machine to push blocks into a container. When frustration mounted, Willis encouraged persistence over perfection. “Sometimes we can’t give up,” she told her students. “Sometimes we already have a solution. We just have to adjust it a little bit.”
These stories of resilience and adaptation underscore a larger truth: closing the gender gap in STEM is not a one-time fix but an ongoing journey. The setbacks of the pandemic have made the task harder, but they’ve also clarified what’s at stake. As schools like de Zavala and Grandview C-4 continue to experiment with curriculum, teacher training, and classroom culture, they offer a glimmer of hope that the next generation of girls won’t just catch up—they’ll lead the way.
The path forward may be challenging, but the determination on display in classrooms across the country suggests that progress, though hard-won, is within reach.
