For too many boys, school isn’t working.
The gender disparities on a range of academic and social-emotional benchmarks start as early as preschool and continue through middle school, high school, and into college. They span several key areas, including discipline rates (especially among Black boys), special education placement, on-time high school graduation rates, and post-secondary degree attainment.
Even in subjects like math, in which boys tend to outscore girls on assessments that measure aptitude, some studies show that girls’ course grades are higher than boys'—suggesting a generally lower level of motivation among boys. Similarly, in 2024, men outscored women on the SAT by 18 points in the math portion of the test, yet women were projected to continue to outpace men in undergraduate college enrollment.
So why are boys’ educational outcomes, on the whole, worse than girls'—and why don’t they seem to match their ability?
To consider this question at length, Education Week sought insights and answers from more than a dozen sources: educational experts, mental health professionals, social scientists, teachers and male students from all grade levels, a robust body of research, and the results of an October EdWeek Research Center survey of a nationally representative sample of 611 K-12 teachers.
From the survey, we learned that teachers see boys, overall, as having more trouble sitting still, less focused and engaged in class, less willing to take on leadership roles, and generally less motivated to perform well academically. The survey results provide important clues about why boys are lagging behind their female counterparts throughout their K-12 education.
They also help inform a broad Education Week enterprise project, School Isn’t Working for Boys. Solutions Are in Reach, that closely examines this disturbing trend, dives into compelling research on what child development tells us about how boys learn best, and explores schools that have committed to making deliberate changes to the school day in order to increase motivation and engagement among all their students—tactics that have proved particularly successful with boys.
Boys have a harder time sitting still
One early norm—and measure of a child’s success in school—is whether he or she can sit still, pay attention to the teacher, and follow simple classroom rules. These are often the things that kindergarten teachers highlight and discuss in conferences with parents. And quite often, boys fall short.
“Biologists say that in kindergarten, boys are, on the whole, more likely to be more physically active and have a harder time inhibiting themselves,” said Susan Engel, a psychologist and founding director of Williams College’s Program in Teaching. The October EdWeek Research Center survey bears this out.
Fifty-one percent of teachers who responded to the survey reported that boys in their class “often or always” struggle to sit still; just 18 percent of teachers surveyed reported the same about girls in their class.
These responses align with research on children’s development, which shows that boys on average are more active than girls, especially when they are younger—a factor that can be problematic for male students in the classroom which, historically, has been a setting where children often are expected to sit quietly and listen to a teacher’s instructions.
“When somebody is expecting you to sit still and you’re losing the ability to focus and pay attention, you’re going to start to feel dysregulated, and all of a sudden you’re rolling around on the floor, and then the teacher is redirecting you,” said kindergarten teacher Jessica Arrow. “Then all of a sudden, you feel like you’ve gotten in trouble, but you don’t know what you’ve done wrong, because you’re really just doing what your body needs to do.”
In her early days of teaching, “I was feeling frustrated because I was constantly reprimanding and redirecting children, who seemed disengaged and unhappy,” said Arrow, now in her 18th year teaching at Symonds Elementary School in Keene, N.H. “The expectation was that children were listening, sitting still, attending, and hopefully absorbing everything I was saying.”
Arrow attributes her earlier frustration largely to the way she taught—the “direct instruction” method that she learned in her undergraduate teacher preparation program, where the teacher talks and the students sit and listen. That style of instruction wasn’t working well for her or her young students—most notably some of the boys in her class.
Informed by the latest research on early childhood development, Arrow now runs her classroom much differently than she used to, incorporating music, movement, guided play, and choice time into the curriculum—while still meeting state learning standards.
Now, Arrow said, her students are much more engaged in their learning, and she spends less time redirecting fidgety students, because movement is naturally incorporated into learning throughout the school day.
“Especially with boys, the pattern I see is that those who struggle to sit still in the classroom thrive during choice time, or playing outdoors,” she said.
Boys appear less focused in class
The demand for teachers to increase academic rigor, even at the earliest grade levels, has trended upwards in recent years, largely in response to the standards-based reform movement, which was intended to create certain core academic standards but in many districts has led to increasingly one-size-fits-all curricula and assessment-driven environments.
The amount of time students spend in electives like art or music and at recess has shrunk over the years. For countless children, especially boys, the changes have not been easy.
The combination of more stringent academic expectations and less time for unstructured play might contribute to boys’ disproportionately high disciplinary rates, which start in the youngest grades.
In the 2017-18 school year, the most recent data available, Black boys were suspended and expelled from public preschools at a rate of more than three times their total enrollment; white and Latino boys were also punished at disproportionately high rates compared to their enrollment numbers. Throughout their time in K-12 education, boys—especially Black and white boys—continue to be disproportionately disciplined.
Boys take on fewer leadership roles than girls
Teachers report that it’s less common for boys to take on leadership roles than girls—38 percent said that in the past two years, their female students have “almost always” been more likely to engage in those roles than male students, compared to 9 percent who said the opposite.
One possible reason for the gender gap: Students who experience failures in the classroom aren’t likely to feel like leaders in that setting.
Social conditioning might also play a role. “Guys know that if they sit back and relax, something will get done by somebody else,” said Marshall Stephenson, a high school senior who witnessed this behavior at the co-ed school he attended through 8th grade.
Marshall now attends Boys’ Latin School of Maryland, an all-boys private school in Baltimore, where he’s taken on a number of leadership roles, including with One Love, the school’s most popular student-led club with the goal of teaching peers about healthy relationships.
Following a rigorous application process that included one-on-one interviews with faculty members and an essay, Marshall was nominated to run the One Love club, which involves planning and running weekly meetings, holding schoolwide events, and facilitating outreach to nearby schools.
“It’s something that means a lot to me. If I can help facilitate and educate others for a cause that’s bigger than myself, I think that’s really cool,” he said.
What motivates boys vs. girls
Marshall’s decision to go “all in” as a school leader represents the sort of intrinsic motivation typical of what excites boys in school, experts say.
Girls tend to be much more motivated by extrinsic factors than boys. For instance, teachers responding to the EdWeek Research Center survey were nearly twice as likely to report that their female students were motivated “a lot” or “a fair amount” by a desire to pursue advanced coursework or higher education and test scores and grades, than their male students.
There is one motivating factor that teachers said has a similar sway over both boys and girls: competition among classmates. Sixty percent of teachers said competition motivated their male students a lot or a fair amount, and 65 percent said the same about female students.
Many educators who teach in all-boys environments say that group competition—between classes or even grades—inspires their students to both do their best work and be on their best behavior. For example, the Boys’ Latin middle school leans into a competition to see which student advisory group can accrue the most “Laker Bucks,” which represent points for positive behavior. At the end of each quarter, the group of boys that has earned the most “bucks” gets to choose a prize, such as a pizza lunch.
“It’s not any one guy who’s earning the most or the fewest,” said Henry Melcher, head of the middle school. “Each member of advisory is playing a role.”
In addition to promoting healthy competition and collaboration, Melcher said the process is a way to publicly acknowledge when a young male student shows positive behavior, like pushing his chair in before exiting class or helping a classmate solve a math problem.
Classroom lessons that link to real-world applications, especially those directly connected to boys’ personal interests, also tend to motivate male students to learn, experts say.
“If you can tap into the ‘why’ for boys,” Arrow said, “then they are buying into it.”

Data analysis for this article was provided by the EdWeek Research Center. Learn more about the center’s work.
This story is part of a special reporting project exploring why boys, overall, are doing worse in school than girls—and what can be done to reverse the trend.
Why school isn’t working for many boys: Teachers report in a new survey that boys are less motivated and focused than their female counterparts.
The data are clear: Girls, on average, find more success at school than boys. Explore key data points highlighting these disparities.
Reimagining what schools can look like: Find out how four schools get boys excited about learning.
Student-teacher relationships matter: The key to inspiring boys in the classroom is a strong student-teacher relationship, experts say. Here’s how to make it work.
Why boys don’t want to become teachers: Boys would benefit from more male role models in the classroom. Here’s what schools can do about it.
A downloadable tip sheet: Boys are relational learners, experts say. Here are eight key strategies on how to reach them.