A lot of folks have warned about this over the years. Today, columnist Kristen Blair writes about the consequences of decades of concentration, via public policy, on opportunity for girls. The impact on boys is startling. (emphasis is mine)
Long vaunted as academically advantaged, boys are now the face of inequity. National comparisons of boy-girl trends in reading and math, compiled in a newly released Center on Education Policy report, reveal “good news for girls but troubling news for boys.” Nationwide, girls have closed the male-female math gap. But boys lag behind girls in reading achievement in every state.
New numbers from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, released days after CEP’s report, confirm the extent of our boys’ reading crisis. On these most recent NAEP tests, boys trail girls in reading in both fourth and eighth grades nationally; this gap widens as kids get older.
In North Carolina, NAEP tests reveal a 7-point reading gap in fourth grade: 36 percent of girls score “proficient” or better, compared to 29 percent of boys. By eighth grade, this gender gap doubles to 14 points: 36 percent of girls score “proficient” or better, compared to 22 percent of boys.
The consequences of this intense public policy focus on girls has manifested itself in college and the workforce, as I detail in this piece. Woman are doing well — good news, yes — but men are being marginalized.
Since the 1980s, women have dominated higher education, earning the majority of bachelor’s and master’s degrees. In 2005-06, women earned 57.5 percent of all bachelor’s degrees and half of the bachelor’s degrees in business. During the same period, women earned 60 percent of master’s degrees and nearly half of doctoral degrees in all disciplines. At Harvard, Princeton, Penn, and Brown, women run the show.
