That’s celebrated children’s author Jon Scieszka, recently appointed national reading ambassador. Scieszka, who’s deliberately looking goofy here for a book promotion, created Guys Read. But he would have a good reason to look frazzled, because the problem is guys don’t … read, that is. Here’s my take on Jon’s quest.

Looking at NAEP it’s easy to see that girls’ advantages in literacy are large, compared to the tiny boys’ advantages in math. Since I started following this issue a couple of years ago I”ve seen nothing to shake my early conclusion: the world is getting more verbal, and boys aren’t. They’re falling behind because they can’t compete in the new college readiness academic tracks designed by well intentioned school reformers. Here’s the first time I wrote that, in a New Republic piece. Also below is the NAEP data. Given that literacy skills are the currency of any post-high school study, it seems clear where this is headed. Included below are links the NAEP data, my New Republic piece on the literacy issue and a Chronicle article on future college enrollment trends.

naep-data-on-gender-gaps1

newrepublicboyspiece4

chroniclepredictions

Tags: Literacy

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 14th, 2008 at 11:41 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.