by Kristina Gupta, Policy Fellow
National Women’s Law Center
In recent years, some commentators have argued that boys are in “crisis,” falling behind girls on a wide variety of educational indicators. According to many of these commentators, improvements in education for girls over the past 30 years have come only at the expense of boys.
A report released today by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) argues that this simply isn’t the case. In fact, both girls and boys have been doing better than ever before on a number of measures of educational achievement, including standardized tests such as the NAEP, SAT, and ACT. As the report points out, educational achievement is not a zero-sum game – gains for girls have not come at the expense of boys.
The report also concludes that gender differences in educational achievement vary by family income level and by race/ethnicity, with boys and girls from middle- and upper-income families and white boys and girls generally outperforming boys and girls from low-income families and African American and Hispanic boys and girls.
Overall, what the report suggests is that the picture of the so-called boys’ crisis painted by some commentators is far too simplistic. These commentators have proposed a range of “solutions” to the boys’ crisis, including single-sex education and teaching strategies targeted to boys. Based as they are on a simplistic picture of our education system, these “solutions” are unlikely to succeed – and may actually harm the educational prospects of students of both genders. What we need instead are evidence-based, culturally sensitive, and targeted improvements in the education system in order to improve learning for all children, both girls and boys.
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