Boy trouble: Statistics show huge academic gap between boys, girls

In school after school across the nation, boys lag behind girls in academic success.

For many boys, school is an uphill climb. Too often they are hanging from the academic ledge, in danger of dropping out of school entirely.

The statistics are staggering.

Boys are falling behind girls in elementary school. Even as they get older, they're losing out in academic skills compared to females. Girls outnumber boys on school honor rolls.

An 11th-grade boy now reads and writes at the level of an eighth-grade girl. That's in sharp contrast to three decades ago when such disparity didn't exist between boys and girls, some educators say.

Others contend the problem isn't new but has long been overlooked.

Family therapist Michael Gurian, founder of an educational training organization based in Colorado, argues that boys don't do well in traditional classrooms.

He maintains the sit-still, read-your-book method is a poor fit for boys.

"Boys have a lot of Huck Finn in them. They don't, on average, learn as well as girls by sitting still, concentrating, multi-tasking, listening to words," Gurian wrote in a December essay in the Washington Post.

The Gurian Institute's Kathy Stevens said, "Girls and boys brains are wired differently at birth."

"It is easier for girls to multi-task because more areas of their brains are engaged at any given time," said Stevens.

She and Gurian co-authored a book called "The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons from Falling Behind in School and Life."

Many boys end up frustrated in class.

"By the time they get to middle school, they have just checked out," Stevens said.

Statistics underscore that point. Boys, ages 5 to 12, are 60 percent more likely than girls to have repeated at least one grade, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Boys are 33 percent more likely than girls to drop out of high school, federal education officials say.

While school districts focus on meeting the requirements of the federal "No Child Left Behind" law, boys increasingly are being left behind in the classroom.

In Cape Girardeau, Franklin Elementary School principal Rhonda Dunham copes daily with the academic achievement gap. She regularly tutors students in her small office during noontime recess. Most of the students are boys.

Alisha Mcadams, 8, worked with math flash cards during her center time in class. Alisha and one other girl were the only two in the second-grade class who chose to work on math.

Dunham lets them stretch out on the floor to do their math homework or catch up on classroom reading.

Boys find it harder to sit still in class, she said. It's partly physical, she said. Boys typically grow faster, adding to growing pains, Dunham said.

In the Cape Girardeau public schools, 27.5 percent of third-grade girls scored proficient or advanced in communication arts in the statewide Missouri Assessment Program in 2005. That compared to 24.2 percent for third-grade boys in the school district.

Franklin School is beginning to address the gender achievement gap. The school is purchasing some books from the Gurian Institute to instruct teachers on how to keep boys better engaged in class.

"For so long the tradition has been for kids to sit at their desks, row after row," Dunham said.

But more and more studies show that model is failing students, she said. "The generic mold of teaching isn't working," said Dunham.

Still, educators locally and throughout Missouri have focused little on the growing academic gap between boys and girls.

It hasn't been an issue in the Jackson School District, said assistant superintendent Dr. Rita Fisher.

"All of us are aware of developmental differences between boys and girls," she said. But Fisher said Jackson teachers are focused on good classroom teaching for all students regardless of gender.

Paul Sharp, principal at the Scott City Middle School, said boys long have fallen short of girls in academic achievement.

"It is nothing new," said Sharp , who administers a school with 260 students.

Sharp said locally and statewide the focus is on helping low-income students to succeed.

The gender achievement gap hasn't gotten a lot of attention in local school districts, he said. "It is flying under the radar right now."

Across the nation, some schools have revived an old idea: Separate classrooms for boys and girls.

Local school administrators say they don't plan to scrap the traditional co-ed arrangement.

But Sharp said boys learn better in a room full of boys. "They are less likely to show off for girls," he said.

Sharp said all students benefit from classes where teachers get them up and moving. "I know I do better with hands-on lessons than I do sitting there," he said.

Boys, the Gurian Institute's Stevens said, simply learn differently. "Even today, little boys want to climb to the top of the pile. They are designed for competition," she said.

Boys think best when they're moving around, she said, but in many schools today, students spend more time sitting at their desks.

"We have taken away recess and daily physical education classes and minimized the amount of art and music," Stevens said.

Stevens said boys can do better in school with some changes in how subjects are taught. For example, boys do better in writing an essay if they can combine the written word with artwork, she said.

Teachers can encourage students to write about their Christmas vacations, for example, on the right side of the page while allowing students to draw images of their vacation on the left side of the page, she said.

Smaller class sizes would help too, Stevens said. "The bigger your classes, the less effective your teaching will be," she said.

"When that male brain checks out, it is hard to get it back."

mbliss@semissourian.com

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