Helping Boys in Reading Without Starting a Gender War
Over the last several decades, concerns about differences in academic performance between boys and girls have typically focused on the performance of girls in mathematics and why they lagged behind their male peers. In particular, studies indicated that high school girls trailed boys in math achievement and took less rigorous courses. The debates that followed those findings led to heated conversations about the role genetic differences, culture, child-rearing practices, and teachers’ actions play in fostering an academic gender gap.
A new report by the Center on Education Policy, which I head, shows just how the times have changed. ( “Boys Trail Girls in Reading Across States,” March 31, 2010.) Released last month, the report finds that as of 2008, girls had reached rough parity with boys in math achievement on state tests and consistently do better than boys in reading. Instead of the crisis for girls that was the rallying call for years and produced much-needed attention to the academic plight of females, we now have a “boy crisis.” The data from our study make it clear that something happening in schools is holding boys back in reading. Yet, in spite of increasingly abundant data such as ours, education has not yet acknowledged the extent of the problem, much less sketched out strategies to address it.
First, the good news for girls. The historic gap that had been the big concern between boys and girls no longer exists, at least not on state assessments. In fact, there was no consistent gender gap in math at the elementary, middle, or high school levels in terms of the percentages of boys and girls reaching the “proficient” level of performance on state tests in 2008. In grade 4 math, where we analyzed performance by the basic, proficient, and advanced achievement levels, the median percentages of boys and girls reaching those levels were quite similar. Overall, states tended to have greater shares of girls reaching the basic level, roughly equal percentages of girls reaching the proficient level, and greater shares of boys reaching the advanced level, though these differences were very...
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