While it is an accepted truth that females face more inequality than males ever will, the American education system overwhelmingly favors girls over boys.
Boys, especially boys from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, are far more likely to have attendance and behavioral problems throughout elementary and middle school, perform badly on standardized tests and drop out of high school than girls from all socioeconomic backgrounds, according to a study published by Northwestern University last October.
Elementary school behavioral policies play a big role in this gap: they place girls’ behavior at the highest pedestal while common boyish restlessness and playfulness are met with little to no patience by educators. Boys are four times more likely to be suspended from pre-kindergarten than girls. Many times such punishments are given for relatively minor incidents. A 5-year-old boy can get suspended for getting upset, kicking off his shoes and crying. A student who receives suspensions early on is less likely to graduate high school, and in high school expulsions shove at-risk students (who are often from financially troubled and uneducated backgrounds) into the school-to-prison pipeline. The removal of nap time and shorter recesses in recent years contributes to the issue because children are deprived of the rest, exercise and socialization that helps the “blow off steam” and focus on their daily lessons.
Even though neither gender has a higher average IQ than the other, boys struggle more at school from the start. For the most disadvantaged boys, the Northwestern report confirms an 8.5 percent gap between them and girls of a similar background when it comes to kindergarten readiness. If boys are unprepared for the beginning of their academic careers, they are less likely to attend college. Women surpass men in high school graduation and college attendance rates, and the gap is only increasing.
The significant gap between boys of low socioeconomic backgrounds and everyone else exists across all types of schools. The Northwestern paper explains that boys are more affected by living in disadvantaged circumstances—poverty, bad neighborhoods, or lack of family support— than girls are. For example, low-income households are more likely to be headed by single mothers who tend to spend more time with their daughters than their sons and whose sons often lack a male role model. And the heads of low socioeconomic families may not have the time, energy or education to spend the little time they have with their kids on homework and behavior.
Race plays another role in the gap. Black students, regardless of gender, are still subject to the underlying racism that gets them kicked out of school in larger numbers: they account for 17 percent of preschoolers but 48 percent of preschoolers who get suspended on multiple occasions. Because these numbers are so large, the gender gap between black boys and black girls is substantially wider than the gap between white boys and white girls.
SOAR High School, a rigorous early college and AVID college readiness program in Lancaster, California, targets determined students who would benefit the most from free college credits and college preparation provided by the ever-growing AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) program. This includes but is not limited to students who come from low socioeconomic backgrounds, minorities in higher education and first generation college-going youth. But female students in the Antelope Valley area of the Los Angeles County (where the school is located) show overwhelmingly more interest than male students. According to Staci Jefferson, the school's AVID coordinator, fifty-nine percent of SOAR High School applicants for the 2016-17 school year are female, and 41 percent are male. The fact that the school does not have a sports program can be a reason, but the obstacles that boys face in elementary and middle school school also explain this statistic. Even though the program helps socioeconomically disadvantaged students, it struggles with attracting and recruiting African Americans. There is also a gender gap here: out of 384 students, 61 are African American— 25 males and 36 females.
Although there are other gender gaps in the system, most notably the low number of female STEM majors in comparison to male STEM majors, this gender gap is more urgent. American education is favoring girls over boys, and more school districts need to address this problem. In an economy that increasingly demands a college degree, it is important to America’s society that boys are just as mobilized and encouraged to do well in school as girls are. By understanding the differences between the educational experiences of boys and girls, schools should be able to enable policies that will reverse these trends.
