Boys

MANIFESTO

For years, boys have been seen as a great "problem" in education to the point where it's been suggested that gender-specific schools be established, so boys can identify with positive role models and take classes geared to their way of thinking.

In the last few years, The Atlantic Monthly, for example, has featured a couple of articles on the subject, having to do with "The Other Gender Gap" and "The War Against Boys."

Now it turns out

that a "boys crisis" in U.S. schools is a myth and that both sexes have stayed the same or improved on standardized tests in the past decade.

The report by the nonprofit American Association of University Women, which promotes education and equity for women, reviewed nearly 40 years of data on achievement from fourth grade to college and for the first time analyzed gender differences within economic and ethnic categories.

The most important conclusion of "Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity in Education" is that academic success is more closely associated with family income than with gender, its authors said.

I don't find this conclusion particularly surprising. If the primary indicator of success on the SATs is family income, it stands to reason that this criterion could affect success in students' education overall.

I'm sure that many contemporary educators will dismiss these data, but ask virtually any middle school assistant principal who her biggest problems are, and she won't think of those with the Y chromosome.