Why aren't more boys graduating from high school?

   While it is uncertain what is prompting it, this basic fact is clear: Girls are performing far better academically than boys in New York State public schools.

   The statewide graduation rate for boys is just 63.9 percent, compared to 73.4 percent for girls. And females have higher graduation rates in all the sub-groups tracked by the state … white, Asian, African-American, Hispanic and Native American/Pacific Islander.

   Theories abound. Some people feel boys put too much emphasis on sports, video games … and girls. They have trouble sitting still in class and need more active, hands-on learning, others say.

   Girls, some argue, concentrate better, put aside distractions and have a better hold on the long-term value of an education.

   It wasn't always this way. Decades ago, boys outperformed girls, and efforts were made to help the young ladies catch up.

   The gender gap is causing increasing concern among educators. State Education Commissioner Richard P. Mills worries about high school drop-outs who will end up "on the margins of society," and is looking for answers.

   How serious is this problem? What are the causes? And what can be done to boost the academic achievement of boys?

   
   -- Peter Simon

   

Comments

[floydthebarber]

This is a surprise ? This country declared war on boys more than two decades ago. At least since the 1980's the feminists succeeded in prioritizing the educational development of girls and, while perhaps unintentional, pushed the boys to the back of the bus. The literature on this topic is voluminous. However, I always thought that the most glaring example of this was the "Bring your daughters to work day" which clearly left unsaid "and keep your snot nosed little boys at home".

[Celtic Tide]

Do the numbers correlate to how many males have fathers in their homes while growing up?

[Rust Belt Catholic]

Well, let's see. Gym class has been cut or severely curtailed in most schools, as has recess, so boys have no chance to release physical energy. "Technology"/shop classes have also been canceled, eliminating opportunities for hands-on learning. The entire education structure has been aligned with female learning characteristics; sit quietly and listen to the lecture.

Combine this with a popular culture that rewards athletes and thugs and punishes the academically gifted (when's the last time the Mathletes got a pep rally?) and of course the boys are having their urge to learn quashed.

[Lydia Bezou-Hojnacki]

Very likely one cause is the lack of male parent in the household; salaries for athletes and rappers is another. Males, in general, have a sense of entitlement--they'll make it in this world, because they're male. Ha! Did we ever fool them! Then, of course, there is the lure of video games, without a thought as to the type of education required to develop such entertainment.

During my years of high school teaching, it was usually boys who questioned the usefulness of core curriculum, English, Math, Science, and Social Studies, because they were all going to be wealthy athletes or thugs who knew all the tricks to "get theirs."

Young women, for the most part, aspire to medicine and related fields, teaching, computer science, architecture, law, and other professions. A young man with no athletic talent shrugs his shoulders and says, "Whatever." SAD, but true.

Boys get their inspiration from their Dads. Where are the Dads?

[Reading between the lines]

The story says female's have higher grad rates in all of the sub catagories . So it's not just the wannabe rappers,athletes and thugs(all code words for black's) it's all of our boys who are behind and we need to fix it.

[Rust Belt Catholic]

To go off on a tangent, I don't know that "athletes" is a code word for blacks; I know plenty of white teenagers who don't pay attention in school because they assume they'll be playing for the Sabres in a couple of years.

While I think that popular black culture is often poisonous and self-defeating, I think that popular American culture is staggeringly anti-intellectual, no matter what color you are.

[vbmom]

Floydthebarber has agood point! I've read a lot of articles on the very thing he mentioned-that boys have been pushed to the back of the priority list ever since it became popular for politicians to listen to the feminists 20+ years ago. While I think that at that time, it was necessary for girls to get more attention, the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction it is harming boys. Enuf of the "girls as victims, we must repress the boys for the good of the girls!" (and no, I am not the mom of boys!

[Davis]

Lack of fathers has no effect on their success. Look at the USA Today report this week that boys raised by a single mother have the greatest chance for success than girls. It all comes down to the ability of teachers. This problem does not happen all around the country, only here.

[Lydia Bezou-Hojnacki]

We learn something new every day. I never heard of this until "reading between the lines" stated it below.

"wannabe rappers,athletes and thugs(all code words for black's)"

Wow, "Reading between the lines," have you never met any white thugs, rappers, and athletes? They are everywhere.

Rust Belt Catholic, it is very sad, but true. I have never seen or heard of any Pep Rally or Ceremony to honor the Honor Roll students, the academic clubs--math, foreign language, science, etc. Yes, we have district-wide competitions and celebrations afterward, but do the individual schools have Pep Rallies for the students who are about to enter the finals for such activities as Public Speaking, Math League, Spelling Bee, Science Fair, NYSSMA,and other accomplishments? Has a whole school ever heard the rehearsal presentation of its entrant to the Richmond Speaking Competition? Have the students jumped to their feet in appreciation for an inspiring message from a brilliant student?

Doesn't happen. SAD. Superintendent Williams, are you reading this?

[RJF]

To the person that wrote that "this doesn't happen all around the country only here" I have to laugh. Wake up.

And when people say it all comes down to the teacher - during all my time in Asia I only experienced classes with 40 or more students and top down instruction (lectures) from the teachers. Nothing as innovative and interactive as I have seen in this country. Schools are a reflection of the values of their communities not a determiner of them.

When will Americans start blaming others and start taking responsibility for themselves??????

[RJF]

oops - stop blaming other : )

[Al]

Public school education in the U.S. has been a disaster for the last twenty years. Enough studies have shown that private schools are doing yeoman work in grades 1-12. It is the legislators, the unions, the boards of education, the superintendents, who cumulatively have ignored the principles of real education, namely attracting the highest quality people to teach. The nation of Singapore has shown how to do this. It is not a mystery.
Why the News keeps asking the same questions over and over means they keep going to the wrong sources.

[RJF]

Another false claim. Half of all private schools are now taking students thrown out of public schools. Good private schools are allowed to pick and choose their students and throw out those that do not pass. Public schools would just as well with the same policies. Unions allow teachers to give the grades students deserve without fea of retribution.

Again, quit blaming other people. It really isn't that hard to be respectful in class, participate and study for an hour or two each night. Education starts at home.

[RJF]

People in Singapore value education and there is also the fear of corporal punishment. I'll leave you with a link and a bit of a story from Singapore on education. You will see how education starts at home. Please stop blaming everyone else for your inability to raise your children.

http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_268321.html

"Parents these days are more educated and demanding, while children are more questioning and learn in different ways, and the system needs to keep up with rising expectations.

It needs to do more than simply churn out students with good grades, Education Minister Ng Eng Hen said yesterday in a speech at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy."

[RJF]

I need to add this quote just to remind everyone that education is a political football in EVERY country.

" At the top of the list: Raising the number of teachers, and getting more with higher qualifications, so that more can be done to develop students.

Getting quality people will also mean schools can be given more autonomy, a critical factor which will allow school leaders to develop individual students under their care.

To tackle students' higher aspirations, Dr Ng said, some moves need to be made. ?

[RJF]

I need to add this quote just to remind everyone that education is a political football in EVERY country.

" At the top of the list: Raising the number of teachers, and getting more with higher qualifications, so that more can be done to develop students.

Getting quality people will also mean schools can be given more autonomy, a critical factor which will allow school leaders to develop individual students under their care.

To tackle students' higher aspirations, Dr Ng said, some moves need to be made. ?

[BobbyCat]

There is a memorable line in the "Graduate" when Ben's uncle takes him aside, looks him in the eye and says very deliberately: "Plastics".

Today, that line would be: "Testostorone". Why? Because it makes every teen boy a wild,crazy, raving, mad, fighting wild animal in heat - often for the girls sitting next to him in class. Concentrate?? Are you kidding? Are you nuts? Not when those demons are supercharging your body like the little girl in the Exorcist.

Now most sober men of a certain age will scoff at this wilding notion, claiming that they cannot remember any such impulses...or... now wait a minute... maybe some vague impulses, on rare occasions, come to think of it.

They're lying because the truth is embarrassing.Or perhaps they selectively forget those urges that totally blew them away beginning at about age 13.

(It's the same fanatical urges that make teens strap on explosives and detonate bombs in public, by the way)

In sum, its:
1) testostorone
2) public education is hoplessly archaic, boring, stuffy, out of touch. And I have no time to expand on that argument again.

[pgr88]

Send boys without fathers into the chaos that is bureaucratic, union-run, politically-correct public schools, and you guarantee failure.

We already spend close to $15,000 per kid, and I am sure that the Libs in Albany will demand that more be spent to increase the failure rate.

[MomwithDad]

Society is slowly emasculating our young men. Usually the first step is unconditionally granting a female to raise a male to be a man when the mother and father don't even bother to marry before deciding to procreate. In cases of divorce in NYS especially WNY, mothers are more often than not given custody to raise any and all male children. Then after all the "trauma" and "difficulty" of raising male children, many female moms opt for counseling probably because they are not equipped to handle males who indeed are different to raise. Next we medicate mostly male children to "get them to behave" and label more boys than girls with ADD or HADD because supposedly boys suffer more than girls. Well, dear folks it is called Attention Deficit for a reason. Perhaps not enough attention from moms who are too busy with their own host of problems to complain to us about or Dads who aren't their daily for them. Yes, dear parents...lets's make the boys sissy and have them know more about their feminine side rather than the daddy's showing them how to behave like men who used to be the protectors and guardians and hunters and not the drugged up whimpy Mama's boys that the mom's are raising today.

[Not in Buffalo]

This isn't just a local trend, it's national and worldwide, for years as women have been bridging the gap politcally and rights wise on men they are also more likely than men to go into non trade area careers. When you call for a service that requires a tradesman see what gender shows up to your door, my bet is a man.

[Art Klein]

I think the increase of female successes in academia and sports is a phenomena that has developed because of our changing culture. For one thing boys tend to watch sports than participate in them.

From the 1970’s I have traveled the many bicycle routes and especially the River Walks along the Niagara River both American and Canadian. During the 1980’s and 90’s I noted a significant increase in woman bicycling walking and running on these paths. By 2000 I would see more woman than men and nowadays I think I see about four women for every male.

These are women of every category of physical capability but they are out there moving along getting some exercise and by their numbers providing safety.

But where are the men? The male’s I do encounter are generally very athletic but unfortunately fewer in number than the women.

I walked the Riverwalk this morning and was struck that most of the men I saw were over fifty and nearly all the women were under fifty. What gives?

[Reading between the lines]

I was just making the point that it is all of our boys that are in trouble. please people don't be so quick to jump on the me I have met many white ,latino and other thugs and such in classrooms around western ny. so lets discuss the problem and possible soloutions .

[Al]

Contrary to a poster, Singapore is an acknowledge leader in public school education. The source is The Economist (October 20, 2007) in Education: How to Be On Top.
In part: "...the same countries lead the league tables again and again: Canada, Finland, Japan, Singapore, South Korea."
"McKinsey has boldly gone where educationalists have never gone: into policy recommendations based on the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) findings. Scholls, it says, need to do three things: get the best teachers; get the best out of the teachers; and step in when pupils start to lag behind."
"Begin with hiring the best. Most schools do not go all out to get the ebst. A bias happens here gainst the brightest."
"Singapore provides teachers with 100 hours of training a year and appoints senior teachers to oversee professional development in each school."
In other words, as usual here, the poster below is like a patient who self-diagnoses and self-medicates.
Do not trust anyone who doesn't do the research. McKinsey has, as has the OECD. Communities and states who ignore these principles are doomed to failure. Boys included. This is nothing different from what my own children reported to me from a "high quality" public school system here.

[Comino Reality]

Maybe the emphasis is too much on image and fancy clothes and loud cars driving the neighborhood crazy?

The foolishness of not at least going to school to get a high school diploma and more speaks volumnes about ignorance and stupidity being looked upon as a notion of high value and worthiness when instead it is what it is: DUMB.

Second teaching to the test is a George Bush theory that does not cut it for students that learn in different ways.

Third the Buffalo Public School System fails absolutely when there no longer is teeth in truancy enforcement. You can get this government to send people to war but you no longer can find a way to mandate and enforce school attendance while more people die each day in American streets than Iraq and Afghanistsan.

Legislation should be passed to hold parnets accountable for their children not attending schools and special intervention counciling should be implemented.

The City of Buffalo streets on a school night should not have children playing on them after dark and the noise levels in this city should be vastly ramped down so that people can better educate their children and not have the stupid distractions of over the top noise from losser Manual, Johnny the white drop out or Da Lo Ah Cheever Brain driving through the city streets like jet planes taking off at the Airport making pathetic bass noise and muffler sounds.

Maybe if people were better educated they would see that they are being exploited for Bass Pro, gambling, war for corporations, and having the dollar sign replace the stars and strips on the flag. This is dangerous to our freedom when we have so many dumb and undereducated young men in Buffalo and America.

[James]

How about a simple answer? They are more interested in becoming Eminem or a Gangster. That is why.