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Gender Gap in Graduation

"Do Mars and Venus ride the school bus?" That question was posed in a September 2005 Newsweek magazine story about the gender gap in academic outcomes and how to address them. Some researchers contend that males and females are fundamentally different and require separate educational strategies such as single-sex schooling. Others, however, argue that the question is not about whether Mars and Venus ride the school bus—or whether males and females are inherently different—but about the quality of education they receive once they arrive at school. Citing lower high school graduation and college enrollment rates for males than for females, the Newsweek story highlights growing concern over the educational status of males in America.

Educational attainment levels, in particular high school graduation rates, are a key part of the gender gap debate. In fact, according to the EPE Research Center's nationwide analysis of graduation rates for the 2003-04 school year , 66 percent of all male students earned a standard high school diploma that year compared to almost 74 percent of female students. This disparity in graduation rates exists across all racial/ethnic groups, with the largest gender gap seen among black students. Forty-six percent of black male students earned a standard diploma compared to nearly 60 percent of black females.

Some researchers, such as Robert Balfanz and Nettie Legters of Johns Hopkins University, suggest that middle school achievement is an important factor in whether students graduate from high school , with less prepared students having greater difficulty making the transition from 8th grade to 9th grade . Research from Diplomas Count 2007 shows that nationally, more than one-third of the students lost from the high school pipeline fail to make the transition from 9th...