RALEIGH — Most would agree that boys and girls deserve an equal shot at school success. A belief in educational equity has fueled a decades-long effort to help girls catch up with boys. Feminism, federal Title IX legislation, and a steady chorus of complaints from groups such as the American Association of University Women — claiming education has “shortchanged” the female gender — all have propelled girls to the front of the class. Some educators now worry the pendulum has swung too far. We’ve pumped up girl power, but have we neglected our boys?
A raft of fresh data indicates we have. 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.
Even more worrisome is the number of boys at the bottom of the reading achievement spectrum. Thirty-six percent of North Carolina’s eighth-grade boys score at NAEP’s lowest, “below basic”” level. In fourth grade, 39 percent read at “below basic” levels.
Such lopsided underachievement merits our full attention and begs the question: How can we do for boys in reading what we have done for girls in math? We need to encourage boys to read for fun, and do it often. Frequent reading correlates strongly with reading comprehension and academic achievement, data show.
But how do we counter the fact that boys are generally less drawn to reading than girls? Compelling, exciting texts: A boy gets hooked on books featuring topics he finds personally appealing — usually sports, fantasy, science fiction, history. My 12-year-old son’s pantheon of favorite books includes Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, an autobiography by All-Star outfielder Josh Hamilton, and Code Talker, a novel about the Navajo Marines during World War II.
According to literacy professor and boys’ reading advocate Dr. William Brozo, such “engagement” is the linchpin of success in reading and learning. So powerful is reading engagement’s impact on achievement, it even trumps home factors. Brozo’s evaluation of the international PISA literacy test reveals reading engagement had a “greater influence on achievement than socioeconomic status or parental occupation.”
In addition to boosting boys’ reading engagement, we also ought to take a hard look at single-sex education. Empirical evidence suggests boys in single-sex settings perform better in reading and language arts than boys in coed environments. Nationwide, 540 public schools (a handful of them in North Carolina) offer single-sex classes, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. Obviously, single-sex education isn’t for everyone. But if it helps boys read, it’s worth considering as an option.
What’s the greatest lesson learned from past experience with gender achievement gaps? A commitment to educational equity can turn scores of girls into math whizzes. Surely now it can help boys become first-rate readers.
Kristen Blair is a North Carolina Education Alliance Fellow.