MORE GIRLS = MORE LEARNING.A new study flagged by Tyler Cowen finds the more girls that are in a classroom, the better everyone performs, regardless of gender. The causal factor is simply that girls behave better. According to the abstract "a higher proportion of female peers lowers the level of classroom disruption and violence, improves inter-student and student-teacher relationships as well as students' overall satisfaction in school, and lessens teachers' fatigue."
This has the interesting effect of explaining why all-girls schools, which have become quite popular in recent years, consistently produce better educational outcomes than other gender balances. It also suggests that they are somewhat unfair to boys who already are less likely to attend college or graduate from high school. Also, unless the school system is completely rigidly separated, the more girls schools there are he worse the girls who don't go to them will do since the proportion of girls in mixed-gender schools will go down (unless there are as many all-boys schools as all-girls schools). --Sam Boyd
