Education system often leaves boys behind
By Craig Smith
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, February 13, 2006
Call it the dirty little secret of public education: Boys are falling behind girls from elementary school to college and have been for years.
"Boys are struggling from kindergarten on ... in the whole institutionalized school system," said Kathy Stevens, director of training at the Gurian Institute in Spokane, Wash., and co-author of the book "The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life."
"We take a 5-year-old boy who is used to being physically active, exploring his world, and we expect him to sit quiet and read and write," she said.
They end up feeling uncomfortable and stupid, Stevens said.
Girls are reading and writing better than boys. Boys receive up to 70 percent of the D's and F's given to students, cause 90 percent of classroom discipline problems and are a year or more behind girls in reading and writing skills, according to Stevens and co-author Michael Gurian.
Educators now are beginning to address the gender gap after decades of thinking boys would take care of themselves.
Lisa McGinty's daughter, Katy, 15, is doing well in the accelerated program at West Mifflin Area High School. Her sons, Matt, 9, and Dylan, 13, have different interests. Although Matt wants to do well with his schoolwork, McGinty said, Dylan would prefer to hang out with friends and play video games.
"I always have to remind myself not to compare my sons with my daughter," said McGinty, 43, who works with an elementary reading program in West Mifflin.
Keeping the score
Eighty percent of high school dropouts are boys, Stevens and Gurian said. And college officials say girls are applying in record numbers while the number of male applicants is dropping.
"It's a complete reversal of the 1960s" when men outnumbered women on college campuses, said Paul-James Cukanna, director of admissions at Duquesne University.
Test scores reflect the gap between boys and girls.
Math scores of both sexes in the Gateway School District, for example, are close but girls are outperforming boys in reading, said district spokesman Matthew Cummings.
The gap is widest in grade 11, where 81 percent of girls are reading at the proficient or advanced level, compared with 65 percent of boys, he said.
Jeff Healy, a stay-at-home dad who serves as president of the PTA at Elroy Elementary in the Brentwood School District, thinks educators put too much emphasis on testing.
"They took away art because the (Pennsylvania System of School Assessment test) doesn't test for art," said Healy, who gave up his career to be at home for his daughters, Lauren, 13, Victoria, 10, and Olivia, 9. His wife, Karen, returned to work as a pharmacist. "Other parents I've talked to are nervous about their children's scores."
Testing is an important measure of how districts and their students are doing, said Steven Pasquinelli, school psychologist in the Deer Lakes School District.
The pressure is on both students and teachers.
"These are some high-pressure tests they're taking," Pasquinelli said.
Lower scores for boys are nothing new. Girls 9 to 17 years old have been outperforming boys since 1971, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, one of three centers of the Institute of Education Sciences, which is responsible for collecting, analyzing and reporting education information and statistics on the condition and progress of education.
Girls got a helping hand from the government in 1972 under Title IX, the first comprehensive federal law to prohibit sex discrimination against students and employees of educational institutions.
"The thinking was that boys can take care of themselves, (that) they'll always end up on the top of the pile," Stevens said.
But boys have been losing ground.
Boys and girls learn differently, some psychologists and school administrators said. But teachers leaving college haven't spent much time on that.
"This is the kind of thing that happens when you have a system where policy is handed down by nonteachers. Congress is not full of teachers, it's full of lawyers," Stevens said. The Gurian Institute has trained more than 15,000 teachers on how boys and girls learn.
U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair, a practicing psychologist for more than 20 years, said the learning styles of boys and girls are different because boys' brains mature much later than girls'.
"We have to respect that and admire that," he said. "We have to appreciate the differences and teach to those differences."
That's what's happening at Verner Elementary School in the Riverview School District, where Principal Patty Friday said reading programs offer more choices for boys.
"We've found in the past that boys don't like to read because of the subject matter," she said. So teachers have "strategically bought books for guys."
The reading material includes realistic fiction and adventure stories such as "X-Zone," "Spy X," and "Hank Zipzer," which was written by television actor Henry Winkler.
T.J. Sweeney, 10, a Verner student, likes reading the "X-Zone" books because they "teach you about cool, fun facts."
Kevin Campbell, 12, prefers realistic fiction.
"When they are funny, it makes the story interesting. It feels like a real life adventure," he said.
Higher education, lower numbers
Colleges are seeing the number of male applicants declining.
Cukanna said females applying to Duquesne University have outpaced males in recent years. In 2001, women accounted for 58 percent of the 1,176 freshmen who enrolled at Duquesne, he said. Last year, 61 percent of the university's 1,326 new freshmen were women.
Women outnumber men on college campuses across the country by 58 percent to 42 percent, the U.S. Department of Education said.
At the University of Pittsburgh, female freshman applicants have outnumbered males for several years. In fall 2004, Pitt had 5,365 women applicants, compared with 4,566 men. In 2000, there were 5,571 female freshman applicants to 4,443 males.
Women earn an average of 57 percent of all bachelor of arts degrees and 58 percent of all master's degrees in the United States, according to "Achieving Gender Equality in Public Education," a report by the Caroline and Sigmund Schott Foundation.
With fewer men coming into the college system, retention rates are falling. Fewer men are graduating, Cukanna said.
But not all the news is bad for the boys.
"When we look at the academic credentials of applicants, men have higher SAT scores than females. The women have higher grade-point averages," Cukanna said.
Will men ask for help?
"I think we're seeing that now," said John Reynolds, associate professor of sociology at Florida State University.
But he doesn't think there is any sentiment on Capitol Hill for another federal mandate.
