Over the last year, this newspaper has editorialized about the disturbing achievement gaps between boys and girls. Starting in their early years and continuing through college, girls are outpacing boys academically.
For example, the most current state numbers show that 62 percent of the women who enrolled in public universities graduated within six years, as opposed to 52 percent of men.
Women lagged behind men in college graduation rates for decades; the increase in women graduates is good both for women and for society.
But the gap between boys and girls needs the attention of educators, legislators and, most of all, parents. How can schools, lawmakers and families lift up boys so they don’t fall behind academically and, eventually, socially and economically?
A recent Journal of Human Resources study offers provocative ways to think about this gap. The bottom line? Boys can pass tough tests, but they generally get lower grades than girls because of behavior.
They fidget more. They act out more. And they lose focus. Those behaviors contribute to teachers, intentionally or unintentionally, marking down male students. Not all teachers, certainly, but enough to suggest that changes are in order.
Christina Hoff Sommers, an American Enterprise Institute scholar, wrote last Sunday in a Points essay about ways to deal with the “behavior divide.” Among the sensible answers are these: More recess time. Reading assignments tailored to male interests. More male teachers and single-sex classes.
These ideas make sense intuitively. For example, letting boys run, shout and tumble on the playground can relieve the tedium of sitting behind desks. Likewise, working on projects that boys find interesting can develop academic interests. Hands-on learning is more tactile than processing information.
The people who run Harmony Public Schools use this strategy in their Texas charter schools. They enroll about an equal number of boys and girls on their high-performing campuses. They use project learning to especially engage male students.
Reaching boys early can be hard because of how the brain matures. Young males don’t have enough ways to process the emotions that run through their developing minds.
The J. Erik Jonsson School in Oak Cliff, a project of the Salesmanship Club, deals with this challenge through a curriculum that teaches young children to regulate their emotions. The strategies, including letting kids walk around during class and squeezing balls when they get mad, have helped boys settle down so they can focus better on math and other fundamentals.
So plenty can be done, as Sommers notes in her essay. None of this work will come easily, but channeling the behaviors of young males can lead to greater classroom success.
READ the Christina Hoff Sommers essay. dallasnews.com/opinion