Pay closer attention: Boys are struggling academically
Girls are taking the nation's colleges by storm. They're streaming to campuses in greater numbers, earning better grades and graduating more often. The same phenomenal success shows in high schools, where girls dominate honor rolls, hold more student government spots and rake in most of the academic awards.
So says a just-released report from the U.S. Department of Education.
Impressive. But the real news is tucked into the deeper, darker corners of the report. Boys are doing miserably, and nobody knows quite why. On measures ranging from writing ability to the likelihood of needing special education, boys are flat-lining — or worse.
The phenomenon is most serious in inner cities, but it's evident in even the wealthiest school districts. And it's not confined to the United States. The same trend is turning up throughout the industrialized world.
The impact could hardly be overstated. College-educated people earn twice as much as high school graduates. If boys can't get to the good-jobs starting line, which these days is a bachelor's degree, they won't get a chance to use their natural competitive skills in the marketplace.
And when fewer men earn college degrees there are fewer partners whom educated women find desirable to marry. That's a debilitating social phenomenon African-American women have struggled with for years.
The problem has already grown so severe that three out of every four private colleges (an informal estimate from admissions directors) quietly practice affirmative action for boys, favoring them over girls in admissions to get near balance.
Yet for most educators — from kindergarten on up — the problem is invisible. Any teacher looking for national research that might define classroom solutions won't find any. They don't exist.
The small group of experts who research the problem only now is beginning to trace its outlines.
It isn't so much that schools have changed in ways that hurt boys. It's that society has changed in ways that help girls.
