VOORHEESVILLE — Growing up, Teresa Thayer Snyder never thought there was anything she couldn’t do.

Until recently, it was commonplace for young girls in the United States to be told they could only accomplish so much, and that certain jobs and professions were better suited to boys. For decades, girls were overshadowed by boys, in careers as well as in school.

Now, as the superintendent of Voorheesville Central School District, Thayer Snyder is seeing female students excel higher and achieve more than male students.

According to the recently released data detailing the Common Core scores from the 2013-14 school year for students in grades three through eight, a higher percentage of girls than boys attained proficient scores in math and English language arts overall, in Voorheesville and across the state.

A proficient score is a 3 or a 4 on the Common Core exam, which is scored as a 1, 2, 3, or 4.

Boys at Voorheesville did better than girls in third-grade math, with 78 percent of girls with proficient scores, and 83 percent of boys, as well as in eighth-grade math, where 39 percent of girls and 41 percent of boys were proficient.

In each grade tested, a higher percentage of girls than boys had proficient scores in English language arts.

“There’s been a real awakening of consciousness about female achievement,” Thayer Snyder said, referring to the nationwide trend of girls’ academic success, “which means boys have been forgotten about a bit.”

Much attention has been drawn to this issue as an effect of the spread of feminist thought encouraging girls to work harder in school, as well as the popularization of females in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) jobs.

In September 2013, an article by Christina Hoff Sommers in The Atlantic detailed the decline in academic achievement for males alongside the increase in achievement for females.

“American boys across the ability spectrum are struggling in the nation’s schools, with teachers and administrators failing to engage their specific interests and needs,” Sommers wrote.

While other districts may not have been addressing the issue when Sommers wrote her article, Voorheesville has been putting in work to ensure all its students are excelling, Thayer Snyder said.

She is open about not being a big fan of the Common Core standards, but she said she is pleased that the curriculum adds more nonfiction.

“In my experience,” she said, “boys have done better with nonfiction reading.”

Additionally, Thayer Snyder makes sure the teachers in Voorheesville are conscious of their questioning strategies in the classroom. There are different types of questions, she said, ones that are merely information recall, and ones that require students to engage with the material and think critically.

Sometimes, teachers don’t realize they are asking only one type of question to a particular gender, Thayer Snyder said, so she encourages them to be more mindful of their teaching strategies and engage all students in the same way.

James Franchini, principal of Voorheesville Middle School, said of the gender gap, “it is something we pay attention to.”

He said the school has engaged in professional development with the goal of getting boys more engaged in English classes.

However, the middle school is most concerned with getting all students’ scores up, not just one gender over the other, he said. Implementing the Common Core standards properly is a high priority, Franchini said.

“The Common Core is definitely looking for us to go deeper,” he said, adding that the standards include more challenging assignments.

Thomas Reardon, principal of Voorheesville Elementary School, said the school is aware of the differences between boys and girls in many ways, especially at young ages. Male and female students in the same grade can differ greatly in maturity, concentration, and mental stamina, he said.

“We are aware of gender differences,” he continued, “but we teach to each learner.”

The group of third- through fifth-grade learners at the elementary school earned Voorheesville the top spot out of 80 Capital Region and North Country elementary schools tested for math; they were second in English in the same group.

Over 72 percent of the Voorheesville elementary students tested were proficient in math, and over 53 percent achieved the same for English.

Regarding differences in classroom performance based on gender, Reardon pointed out that some grades have a higher number of one gender than the other, which may skew data.

For example, the fifth grade class had 52 girls and 39 boys, while the eighth grade class had the same number of male and female students, 41, and the fourth grade class had 47 boys and 34 girls.

While classroom numbers may have an effect on the data for individual districts or schools, a larger study, taking in data across decades and over 25 countries, still shows that females are currently, and have been, outperforming male students.

In April of this year, researchers from the University of New Brunswick in Canada published a meta-analysis of data gathered from over 350 studies done throughout the last century — the earliest study the authors look at is from 1914 — about differences in academic performance in relation to gender.

In their study, Daniel Voyer and Susan D. Voyer looked at grades earned in individual courses, such as math, language, and social sciences, rather than standardized achievement tests.

They found “a small but significant female advantage,” overall, and added that, “the female advantage was the largest for language courses… and smallest for math courses.”

Their conclusion for the study said that, while the difference between male and female achievement was small, the consistency of it suggests it “should not be ignored.”

Thayer Snyder emphasized that Voorheesville teachers and administrators have been doing a lot of reading on the topic of male students falling behind, and have also engaged in professional-development sessions on the topic.

“It’s something we talk about a lot,” she said.

While the classroom shows females excelling more than males, Thayer Snyder said extracurricular activities are more balanced, with participation by girls and boys about even, as well as leadership roles.

“We want to give students as many opportunities to shine as we can,” she said. “That’s our goal.”