Boys Named Sue
October 25, 2006 08:39 AM
I finally had a chance to read this paper by David Figlio, which finds that boys with female-sounding names are more likely to misbehave in school, beginning in sixth grade, as compared to other boys. It's a clever way to look at student misbehavior--unlike other observable student characteristics, boys with female-sounding names are randomly distributed between classrooms. Most interesting, Figlio shows that disruptive students cause a decline in their peers' math scores. But Figlio's suggestion that boys with female-sounding names be remediated before they become disruptive strikes me as a bit silly.
