Episode 65: Exploring the Gender Gap in K-12 Education — Boys Falling Behind

Did you know boys are expelled from preschool at nearly five times the rate of girls, and their academic performance wanes as they transition from elementary to high school? I'm here to shake up your understanding of the gender gap in K-12 education achievement. This episode uncovers the startling statistics of boys falling behind girls in learning, irrespective of socioeconomic status, points to the systemic inequality in education, and engages in a lively discussion on the potential reasons behind this trend. I won't just stop at identifying the problem, I'll venture into actionable solutions that you can take to address this disconcerting trend.

Buckle up as we traverse through various studies, like one from Stanford University that found no average gender gap in math and another that sheds light on how differences in sleep cycles between boys and girls might be affecting academic performance. I'll also delve into the revolutionary potential of digital technologies in narrowing the gender gap in literacy skills and share the innovative strategies that schools are putting into place to address boys' slower acquisition of these skills. This conversation should equip you with fresh insights about the gender gap in K-12 education achievement and hopefully, stimulate meaningful dialogues on how to better support our boys on their educational journey. Join me for this critically important conversation about our boys and their future.

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Chapters

• 0:55 Gender Gap in K-12 Education Achievement
• 16:26 Gender Gaps in Academic Achievement

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:56

Welcome to another episode of K-12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr Kim Fields, former corporate manager turned educational researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as experiencing the micro discriminations that I faced. As an African American mom raising my two kids, who were in the public school system, I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. Once I gained the information and the insights that I needed, I was then equipped to be able to successfully support my children in their educational progress. If you're looking to find out more about current information and issues in education that could affect you or your children, then you're in the right place. Thanks for tuning in today. I know that staying informed about K-12 education trends and topics is important to you, so keep listening.

Speaker 1: 2:08

On today's episode, I'll be discussing why boys seem to be falling behind girls in educational attainment. In deteriorating public schools, in poor neighborhoods, in elite schools that serve very rich, and in many middle class suburban schools around the country, boys are doing less well than girls. Don't get me wrong there are some high-performing boys that are doing as well as, and, in many cases, even better than, the smartest and most accomplished girls, but in general, boys, for a number of reasons, are not keeping pace with girls when it comes to learning. I explore this trend and some of the reasons behind why this trend continues, as well as actions you can take on this episode. Let's get started. Boys seem to be falling out of love with learning. Boys get expelled from preschool at nearly five times the rate for girls. In elementary school, they're often diagnosed as having attention problems or learning disorders or times as much as girls and are twice as likely to be retained. Boys continue to lag badly behind girls in reading and writing, and this gap is growing and getting bigger, not smaller, as boys move from elementary school through high school. Boys tend to have grades that are worse than girls, and boys drop out of school more often than girls. What's interesting to note is that boys and girls start off about the same overall. After around the fourth grade, girls start to pull ahead and by the sixth grade, many boys have fallen behind in reading, writing and sometimes math, but rather than overcoming the challenge, a lot of boys just seem to tune out. In high schools, more girls take advanced placement courses and they make up the majority of the names on the honor roll.

Speaker 1: 4:27

All differences can be noted in how teachers approach boys, even in preschool. Little boys have high energy and love activity in moving around, but many preschool teachers don't seem to understand these behaviors. Sitting still at circle time may be a challenge for a young boy, and crafts involved in the use of scissors and glue may be difficult. A lack of teacher understanding turns these incidences into complaints, because this type of quote-unquote boy behavior doesn't seem to fit an ideal behavior pattern for what should be presented in preschool. It's almost as if there's a one-size-fit-all model that every male student should fit into, and the teachers seem as though they're trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. The negative attention that a young boy receives is met with thinly bailed impatience and can start a cascade of negative perspectives toward boys. Throughout their elementary school years, more boys than girls are identified as having learning disabilities and are then relegated to special education classes. This disparity occurs nationwide. Boys represent the overwhelming majority of behavioral problems and they are most often prescribed medication for attention-related disorders at twice the rate of girls.

Speaker 1: 6:06

Boys learn less than girls in school, and the data to support this have come from the US Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics, or NCES, both of whom provide reports on how schools and students around the country are doing. For example, the NCES data on reading, which is the Lynch-Pin skill for academic success, shows boys lagging behind. By the time they're in high school, boys are actually doing words in reading than they were in elementary school. Also, boys often are behind in writing and never seem to catch up. Boys seem to stumble badly in school. In the earliest grades they typically read less well than girls and they read less as they get older. They study less too. There are other measures that are used to describe and determine why boys are lagging. These measures are less quantifiable but equally important aspects of learning. They include engagement, ambition, enthusiasm and persistence. Boys seem to be lagging in all of these areas and measures.

Speaker 1: 7:39

The pipeline that carries girls from kindergarten to college graduation is full of bright, vibrant and ambitious young women. The pipeline that carries boys is badly leaking. It turns out that boys and girls start on the same biological footing when it comes to math. According to the findings from a neuroimaging study of math, gender differences and children. There are about 100 boys and girls ages 3 to 10 in this study that was conducted in 2019. Statistical analyses show no differences in the ways boys and girls process math in the brain, and they were developing at the same rate. Career studies had shown a wider variety in boys' performance on standardized tests, with more scoring at both the higher and lower ends of the bell curve, than girls did.

Speaker 1: 8:37

Gender is one of those systematic sources of inequality in education. Girls at one point fell behind boys in academic achievement, especially in subjects like math and science. However, recent data indicate that girls are outperforming boys in education. Around the world, a considerable number of studies have been carried out that conclude that boys are under achieving in education and girls are achieving at higher levels in education. This is particularly noticeable in secondary education. It is now an established fact that boys not only fall behind in terms of educational achievement at school level, but also at colleges and universities. It appears that girls outperform boys in education, and the gap between boys and girls' educational attainment rises with every level and grade. This trend is being seen here in the United States, as well as in Japan, australia, the United Kingdom, germany and France.

Speaker 1: 9:47

Girls' educational achievement is an important contributing factor for their female children's education, meaning that girls whose parents are educated do well in education. One explanation for boys under achievement in education is due to the authoritarian approach from which they are being taught, as well as their anti-school and non-series behavior. Other researches posit that a lack of male teachers, gender stereotyping by teachers and boys rejecting authority are a contributing factor to boys' underperformance in schools. In many cases, children in the age group of 7 to 11 years old have never had a male teacher. This may affect a boy's motivation and attitude toward learning.

Speaker 1: 11:36

It's been stated that there are wide gender gaps in education in the United States. In every state in the US, young women are more likely than young men to have a bachelor's degree, but the gender gap emerges well before college. Girls are more likely to graduate high school on time and perform substantially better on standardized reading tests and boys. In 1970, only 12% of young women had a bachelor's degree compared to 20% of men. Fast forward to 2020, and 41% of women had a bachelor's degree compared to 32% for men. Both the gender gap and total educational attainment vary across the states. Young adults in Mississippi, for example, are less likely to have a bachelor's than young adults in any other state. In contrast, about half the men, or about 49%, had bachelor's degrees in Massachusetts, and just as young women are more likely than young men to have a bachelor's degree, girls are more likely than boys to graduate high school across the country, but even before high school, boys are falling behind. Girls outperform boys in reading by more than 40% of the grade level in every state. In math, by contrast, boys have a slight advantage in some states, although the gender gap in either direction is less than a quarter of a grade level in most states.

Speaker 1: 13:16

Understanding the dynamics of the gender gaps in education, especially for less advantaged boys and men, is essential to providing policy solutions. There are some things that can be done to instigate change in addressing the gender gap, but there are three myths that are roadblocks that are part of this country's culture about boys. The first myth is that boys will be boys and school achievement doesn't matter, and this is clearly false. The second myth revolves around the idea that boys who struggle early on will eventually catch up. Well, for middle class and poor boys who struggle, they will never catch up. The third myth is that schools quote unquote have always done it this way. The fact is that schools are social institutions and they constantly change and reflect the prevailing wisdom and research of the day. Gender stereotypes persist because they are shorthand for the often incredibly complicated factors that go into how children learn. It's important to dig into the data to determine why student A struggles while student B excels.

Speaker 1: 14:35

The Brookings Institution's Brown Center on Education Policy's annual report on American education makes a good start on digging into the gender gap between boys and girls in reading. Girls have outscored boys in reading at ages 9, 13, and 17 on the NAIC on the National Assessment of Educational Progress report every year since it was first administered in 1971. In fact, the reading gap favoring girls appears more consistent across different countries than the math gap favoring boys. Although this gap has narrowed significantly, boys seem to be falling further and further behind in reading, and that reading gap occurs because girls simply enjoy reading more than most boys do. The gap has narrowed since the 1970s, though. In 1971, nine-year-old girls as a whole outscored boys by 13 points on a 500-point scale, but only by 5 points in 2012. The gender gaps tend to be more extensive among students in the lowest percentile of performance and those at the top of 10 percent. The gaps between boys and girls in reading were significantly larger among students performing below average on the nape. In general, socioeconomic status also seems to make a difference in reading score gaps for children who were in poverty versus those not in poverty, and this was determined if they were grouped by whether or not they qualified for free or reduced-price meals.

Speaker 1: 16:27

Gender gaps in reading and math follow different paths as American students move from their school years into adulthood. According to federal data in 2018, by late adolescence, the earlier reading gaps favoring girls no longer exist, but in numeracy skills, girls trail boys at every age group, from 16 through 65. That's quite different from the gender gaps in the K-12 grades. A recent Stanford University study that compared gender gaps in the nape across nearly 10,000 districts nationwide found no average gender gap in math. The Stanford study found gaps favoring boys that were more common in wealthier districts and communities where there were big gaps in income between men and women. Generally, in low-income communities, girls tended to outperform boys in both reading and math.

Speaker 1: 17:34

Two researchers at the University of California-Davis proposed that differences in sleep cycles between boys and girls may help explain the gender's performance gap. The researchers believe that there's a connection between later school start times and improved academic performance for boys relative to girls. The researchers' work builds on the notion that girls deal with sleep deprivation more successfully than boys and are more likely to be early risers, while boys' circadian rhythms make them more likely to stay up later and wake later in the morning. Although there may be other forces at play, these findings do give school districts something to consider. In fact, several school districts have implemented later start times in response to a recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics that schools should start no earlier than 8.30 am in order to better align with the natural body rhythms of adolescents. An interesting study in 2019 on this topic proposed that digital technologies may offer new solutions to address the slower acquisition of literacy skills by boys compared to girls. Electronic books might serve to close the gender gap because it's believed that boys are generally less motivated to read, but they are more engaged by technology. However, the interactive features in electronic books could further challenge boys' weak self-regulation skills and therefore could impede their literacy achievement.

Speaker 1: 19:24

Underachievement of boys relative to girls in the domain of literacy is a long-standing phenomenon. For at least a decade, girls have consistently obtained an average score that was significantly advanced over that obtained by boys, the gap being equivalent to one year of schooling. This gap in literacy performance seems to be resistant even to successful efforts to improve students' performance overall. I've described some of the reasons why this gap exists, but many of the explanations for the gender gap and literacy achievement are as broad-based as the nature of the gap itself. The hypotheses behind the reasoning fall into two general categories. The first is related to boys' overall preparedness to learn literacy skills in the first formal entry of school, and the second is related to the boys' experience of learning environments subsequent to school entry. Boys seem to develop the cognitive link with the precursors to literacy acquisition more slowly than girls. Boys slower trajectory for the acquisition of expressive vocabulary when compared to girls during the toddler stage may be a reason for later difficulties with acquisition of literacy skills in school. The learning environment for boys and girls may differ, especially in relationship to literacy learning. A teacher may exhibit gender stereotypes that indicate that girls are more competent in language arts than boys. A gender stereotype of this nature by teachers has been shown to impact self-concept and achievement in the literacy domain, but only for the teacher's male students.

Speaker 1: 21:20

What does this gap in achievement mean for boys and young men of color, specifically African American and Latino boys, in many of this nation's urban school districts. It means that district leaders pledged to ramp up their efforts to steer boys of color to higher achievement, better graduation rates and more successful lives. In 2014, this push was spurred by the development of President Obama's my Brother's Keeper initiative. This focus was intended to go forward, even though no new federal funds were forthcoming, nor was there any certainty that the current national focus on the well-being of minority boys would outlast the Obama administration. Still. 62 big-city school systems joined in on this initiative. Some of the strategies aimed at boosting academic success of African American, latino and Native American boys included using strategies in early and middle grades to increase the pipeline of minority boys who are on track to do well in high school. To use proven approaches to cut chronic absenteeism. To increase participation rates in advanced placement honors and gifted programs. To work with high schools to transform them, to create programs that help the chronically low graduation rates for boys of color. And to provide literacy and other engagement initiatives for parents, as well as reduce the number of minority boys in special education classes and spearhead of broader discussion about race, language and culture in school districts. There's some skepticism about the lasting impacts of these initiatives, mostly due to high turnover in urban school leadership, and too many of these strategies leave out parents. Here are some action steps that you can take regarding this topic.

Speaker 1: 23:42

Urban fluency is a product of a child's environment. Sometimes gender stereotyping influences the learning, retaining and language usage, all of which create the cognitive foundation for reading. Make sure that you offer your sons the same level of exposure to books, storytelling and reading as you do your daughters. Make sure that you take both genders to story hour at the public library and encourage boys to develop a level of reading by letting them choose the types of books that they are most interested in. Also, provide ample activities for boys to develop their writing skills by creating simple written stories. Boys tend to be kinetic, spirited, active and irrepressible. Given these factors, ensure that your boys have sufficient play time not video game time, but active movement before they start delving into academic work. Finally, appreciate the differences in genders of your children and be sensitive to each one's needs. Here are this episode's takeaways.

Speaker 1: 25:07

Being a mother of a daughter and a son, I can tell you from experience that the genders learn differently. My daughter excelled at reading and verbal communications at an early age, she tended to struggle with math. On the other hand, my son's verbal skills were slow and coming and he really got the hang of reading. When he was able to read books that he enjoyed, which most of the time were comic books or books that involved boys as the central character, he excelled at math at an early age. My daughter enjoyed the school years as she was active in sports and other extracurricular activities. My son was also engaged in some sports but grew disengaged in the classroom because his teachers failed to challenge him sufficiently academically. He became bored and was only interested in the subjects that he liked. The research and insights revealed on this episode support what I experienced as a mother of a boy and a girl.

Speaker 1: 26:16

Boys used to lead girls in the gender academic gap, where boys were overachieving and girls were underachieving. Now girls are overachieving and boys are underachieving. Will the catching up of girls continue or has the result of focused attention on girls' academic achievement more or less reached its maximum effect? The fact of the matter is that a lot of the focus was placed on the achievement of girls because women have historically been oppressed by men for centuries, but now the girls are overachieving. So should boys' underachievement be ignored. Would you want to be told that your son is not reading at grade level and is stuck in the slowest reading group in his class? All children, regardless of their race or gender, have the capacity to succeed in school. One thing to remember is that it's important to ensure that raising the academic performance of one gender group should not be at the expense of the other gender category. A mix of interventions that include modifying household, teacher and school attitudes, norms and practices should be pursued to eliminate any unfair gender biases that unjustifiably impede a child's right to a good education.

Speaker 1: 27:54

If this is the type of subject matter and discussion that resonates with you, please follow my podcast or whatever service you're listening to this. Also, I'd love to hear from you, so please leave me a rating or review or a comment on Apple or PodChaser If you like this podcast. The best way to support me and help me grow it is by leaving over here. This helps my rankings and entices other people to listen to the show and share this episode with anyone that you think would find it valuable. Be sure to tell your friends, family and community about my podcast. Additionally, you can connect with me on Instagram and Facebook with the handle, kim J Fields, or reach out to me with a specific question by sending an email to Kim at LiberationThroughEducationcom. Thanks for listening today. I hope you'll come back for more K-12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle, and be sure to stay tuned. On the next episode, I'll be discussing whether academic preschools are too much, too simple. Until next time, aim to learn something new every day.