The Brits and Aussies are about seven years ahead of the U.S. in investigating the boy troubles, mostly because feminist groups here have made the boy problems into a “controversy” considered untouchable by researchers. Their fears, that helping the boys will set back girls, appear unfounded to me, but for now all we can do is watch what unfolds from those countries.

This article from England adds numbers to the consensus reached in both countries, that boys are in trouble because they are not hardwired to handle the aggressive curriculum pushed down into the early grades — the same reason boys are in trouble in this country. Actually, reading experts tell me boys can handle those verbal challenges, or at least catch up by fifth grade. That’s not happening, however, because schools didn’t adjust their teaching techniques to help boys:

Boys ‘dramatically lagging behind girls’ by age of five
Boys are lagging way behind girls by the age of five and as they start school, sparking fears many are being pushed too hard in their early years.

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor
Last Updated: 11:09PM GMT 20 Nov 2008
Official figures show girls dramatically outperform boys in every area of early development - including basic literacy, communication and imaginative play.
Some 58 per cent of girls were competent in all areas, new figures have revealed, compared to only 41 per cent of boys.
The gap in reading and writing has stretched over the last three years.
The disclosure is made in a Government analysis of 556,000 children aged four and five at the end of the foundation stage - before infants move into Year One.
It suggests the majority of boys start compulsory school not fully prepared for lessons.
The gender gap persists as children move through primary and secondary school.
At the age of 16, almost seven in 10 girls gain five good GCSEs - compared to only 60 per cent of boys.
It is claimed a more tailored education in the early years would lead to a dramatic narrowing of the gap among teenagers.
Experts maintain boys are naturally late starters but are being further held back by the Government’s “nappy curriculum”.
Ministers says the so-called Early Years Foundation Stage - which sets out new targets for children from birth to five - will ensure all youngsters receive a decent early education. But critics suggest it is too prescriptive, pushing some children too hard and forcing childminders out of business.
The curriculum was first launched in 2000 but, in a controversial move, it became compulsory in all pre-schools, playgroups and nurseries in September this year.
Sue Palmer, a writer and former headteacher, warned that the gap was evidence many young boys were being failed.
“This gap is the product of nature, nurture and culture,” she said. “The boys are developmentally slightly behind from the beginning. If they don’t get the opportunities they need for active engagement in the early years they are going to fall further back. This is precisely what is happening.”
She added: “Boys are a little behind from the moment they are born. They need much more play and outdoor activities to develop their physical control and naturally learn by themselves how to sit still. If you have a system, like ours, which starts imposing formal work at such an early age they are going to find it hard.
“Children have to meet these goals, such as learning to write, by the time they are five, which means people will try to get them to hold a pencil and start writing at the age of three or four, which is far too young.”
All children are assessed by teachers at the end of the foundation stage.
The Government expects children to hit key targets in six areas of early development, including personal skills, communication and language, basic numeracy, physical development and creativity.
According to figures, some 70 per cent of girls had decent writing skills compared to 52 per cent of boys. In reading, 76 per cent of girls achieved the standard expected of their age against 65 per cent of boys.
In a separate development, official data also suggests that white British pupils are struggling in the first two years of school.
At the age of five, some 52 per cent hit targets in all areas - one of the highest-rated ethnic groups. But by the age of seven they slipped behind pupils from Chinese and Pakistani families.

 Apparently not, according to this very creative public transit ad campaign running in Dallas by The Family Place, which assures us that the ads are not a sign of male bashing. Very reassuring. Thank you for that. All the dads trying to do their best to raise their children are most appreciative.

 I still recall the year I took off to be Mr. Mom, when our daughters were 3 and 5. I had the hardest time getting play dates. I mean, what’s this guy doing staying home with his kids! That has to be really weird. Well, maybe it was, but our daughters managed to survive the ordeal, including the time I musculed maybe 50 hairpins into our oldest daughter’s hair to keep it manageable during a ballet recital, and it still unraveled. For the record, I would like to state, once again, that I was so not at fault on that one.

Hey, a blog can’t be serious all the time, right? Wisdom of an uncertain heritage served up on the World Wide Web:

NINE WORDS WOMEN USE

(1) Fine: This is the word women use to end an argument
when they are right and you need to shut up.

 (2) Five Minutes: If she is getting dressed, this means a
half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have
just been given five more minutes to watch the game before
helping around the house.

 (3) Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This means
something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that
begin with nothing usually end in fine.

(4) Go Ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Don’t Do
It!

(5) Loud Sigh: This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal
statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she
thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her
time standing here and arguing with you about nothing.
(Refer back to # 3 for the meaning of nothing.)

(6) That’s Okay: This is one of the most dangerous
statements a women can make to a man. That’s okay means
she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and
when you will pay for your mistake.

(7) Thanks: A woman is thanking you, do not question, or
faint. Just say you’re welcome. (I want to add in a
clause here - This is true, unless she says ‘Thanks a
lot’ - that is PURE sarcasm and she is not thanking you
at all. DO NOT say ‘you’re welcome’ . that will
bring on a ‘whatever’).

(8) Whatever: Is a woman’s way of saying F– YOU!

(9) Don’t worry about it, I got it: Another dangerous
statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a
man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This
will later result in a man asking ‘What’s
wrong?’ For the woman’s response refer to # 3.

Oddly, the impact on boys was not mentioned in this article about the release of fresh gaming material from World of Warcraft. (Notice the dateline? Look at what the game did to Iceland!). I’m not one to blame video games for the academic slide of boys, but I’m somewhat of an outlier on the issue. I have discovered during my research that if boys do disappear into gaming, this is the biggie. From the article:

The game has become an obsession for some players.
Dr Richard Graham, a child psychiatrist at the UK’s Tavistock Center, was reported as warning last week that some young people were damaging their social and mental development by playing the game for up to 16 hours at a time.
“The problem with World of Warcraft is the degree it can impact and create a socially withdrawn figure who may be connecting with people in the game and is largely dropping out of education, social opportunities,” he told The Telegraph.

I wrote Sax, founder of the National Association for the Advance of Single Sex Public Schools (yes, he still speaks to me, in spite of the fact I called him out in Eduwonk for being a bit overbearing during seminars)  to ask his views of the recently released (and long-delayed) DOE report on single-sex schools. Sax’s response:

1. The publication was delayed for several YEARS. The survey was based on observations made in the fall of 2003, i.e. five YEARS ago. Of course, in the fall of 2003, nobody really knew much about what worked in American public single-sex classrooms compared with private schools. Essentially everything presented at our NASSPE workshops and conferences has been learned in the five years since the survey was conducted.

T2. he survey focused on selective public schools such as the Philadelphia High School for Girls and Western High School, both established in the 1840’s, as well as the Young Women’s Leadership School in New York and the Young Women’s Leadership Charter School in Chicago. These schools are very successful; however, as the authors point out, the success of these schools may be due in part to the fact that they enroll highly-motivated girls who very much want to attend an all-girls school. Likewise, the Brighter Choice Schools in Albany are selective charter schools with long waiting lists. That’s not a criticism; on the contrary, it’s a testimony to the success of these schools. However, selective magnet schools and charter schools comprise only a small fraction of the total number of American public schools offering single-sex classrooms. It would have been helpful to include regular neighborhood schools (non-selective, non-charter schools) which have adopted the single-sex format. The people appointed by the Bush Administration to do this study chose to ignore all such schools; every one of the ten schools in their survey appears to be a selective school, i.e. a school of choice (either a charter school or a magnet school), not a regular neighborhood school.

3.It’s not clear why the people appointed by the Bush Administration to do this survey ignored all public schools with single-sex classrooms. As the document itself states, repeatedly, it’s impossible to draw any conclusions from the schools they surveyed because the students at those schools were not a random sample of the population. Curiously, this 160-page document never even mentions any of the public schools in the United States where students who have been assigned to single-sex classrooms might reasonably be compared to students from the same school who have been assigned to coed classrooms.

4. The executive summary for this latest Bush Administration document mingles findings from the previous Bush Administration document, even though the previous document overemphasized unpublished findings involving small numbers of students (if those findings were negative regarding single-sex education), and underemphasized published studies involving large numbers of students (if those findings were positive regarding single-sex education). Hence, the “quantitative” conclusions of the previous Bush Administration document were misleading. I made these points previously, in a letter to the authors, posted at http://www.singlesexschools.org/EdDeptStudy.htm.

Here’s an Anchorage Daily News article about the high dropout rate in that state:

Among the grim statistics:

• Alaska’s dropout rate, at 8 percent, was double the national average in the 2005-2006 school year, according to the latest figures available from the U.S. Department of Education.

• 38 percent of today’s ninth-graders will have no high school diploma 10 years from now, according to the Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education.

• Alaska ranks 50th, or last, in the number of ninth-graders who will likely have a bachelor’s degree in 10 years, according to the commission.

 Here’s a case where I have to comment on the inadequate reporting. If you have a problem this severe, and yet somehow never include in the reporting that the problem is driven by males, haven’t you left something out? Here’s the real deal on Alaska’s education problems.

Here’s an interesting Boston Globe article about the decline of male teachers in Massachusetts (Photo courtesy of the Globe):

  In Massachusetts, only 24 percent of teachers last year were men compared with 32 percent 15 years ago, according to the most recent state data. Nationally, a quarter of teachers are men, a 40-year low.

Even school administration offices - an arena where men once dominated - are more likely to be in the hands of women in the Bay State, with the exception of school superintendents. But that, too, could change, with the number of women expected to climb as silver-haired male superintendents retire.

At a time of increased emphasis on improving student achievement, especially in inner-city schools, education specialists are raising serious concerns that male flight from classrooms could be hindering boys’ ability to learn.

A study by an associate professor of economics at Swarthmore College, which has been gaining national attention in the debate over single-gender classes, found that boys learned better in reading - a subject in which they typically struggle - when teamed with a male teacher. Similarly, girls did better in math and science with a female teacher.

Even more eyebrow-raising, the research questioned whether a predominantly female teaching force is causing more boys to be labeled as behavior problems because women may struggle in handling the sometimes rambunctious nature of boys. It also questioned whether boys may respond better to a coachlike sternness found in some male teachers.

But in an interview, the study’s author, Thomas S. Dee, cautioned against a knee-jerk reaction of simply recruiting more male teachers.

“The more appropriate avenue to explore is how do we make teachers more productive for all students,” Dee said. “I’d rather have my son with a great teacher who is female than a mediocre teacher who is male. Teacher quality often gets lost in this debate.”

The growing imbalance between male and female educators highlights some of the challenges the state faces as it attempts to form a teaching force that better reflects the children they teach. Education specialists say that low pay and a lack of respect for teachers are primary reasons men stay away, and those issues emerge as well in efforts to recruit more minorities.

Yet the shrinking number of men can be chalked up to another reason: Some men worry that overly protective parents might falsely accuse them of being pedophiles because teaching, especially in the lower grades, is still largely perceived as a woman’s job, requiring a nurturing personality that supposedly is not common among men. In other words, something must be wrong with the guy who likes working with children.

“If a woman can drive a tank in Baghdad, why can’t a guy change a diaper at an early childhood education center?” said Kitt Cox, coordinator at the Birth to Three Family Center in Ipswich and one of the few men in the early education field. “We should be showing kids there are different things they can be when they grow up, and it shouldn’t be defined by gender.”

Three articles worth a read here on this topic, starting with this NYTimes article about the new documentary, Nursery University. This is mostly for fun, especially for any parent in a Type A city who tried to find a preschool for their child. Hey, it’s weird out there.

Next comes this Associated Press article (photo courtesy of AP) about the importance of teaching socialization skills rather than academic skills. It goes unmentioned in the article, but that’s particularly important for boys, many of whom aren’t wired for early literacy skills. Nor are they wired for that whole sitting-still thing, which may explain why more than four times as many boys as girls get expelled from preschool.

Now, here’s Peg Tyre’s interview with Pre-K Now about boys and preschool:

I recently had the opportunity to read Peg Tyre’s new book, “The Trouble With Boys”. It inspired me so much I asked the author if she would participate in our Inside Pre-K 5 Qs interview series. She happily agreed and offers some very interesting and thoughtful answers to five questions that relate her work to pre-k education.

In a conversation with another parent, what would you say are the benefits and risks of preschool for boys?

I think the value of preschool for all children is pretty well documented — it can lay down the building blocks for school success and enhancing lifelong learning. The problem really comes in when preschools run programs that are developmentally inappropriate for little children, especially little boys. In particular, programs that are highly academic, that consist of hours of uninterrupted teacher-directed activity, that prize quiet time over physical movement. Often, when boys are enrolled in these kinds of pre-schools, they flounder. They attract an intense amount of negative attention from teachers and that is very sad. Unfortunately, it can be the first blot that turns in into a pattern of academic failure.

How do you see the role of pre-k in our society?

Interesting question. And a big one. There is a discourse among early educators that suggests a very democratic notion — that preschool is a great leveler — and often we talk about preschool as if it functions in the same way for all kids. But practically, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Poor kids need pre-k a great deal — to get them away from the TV, to expose them to a language rich environment, to help them develop pre-literacy skills, familiarize themselves with the mechanics of reading (left to right, which way to hold a book) to learn numbers and colors and days of the week, and social/emotional skills like self-regulation. Middle class and affluent kids are usually getting the enrichment then need at home — it’s good to have it reinforced in preschool but there needs are different - or maybe, they aren’t as great.

What did you learn about pre-k during your research for this book?

That it can be tough to be a little boy enrolled in preschool right now. And it can be tough to be his mom.

What has changed about society’s perceptions of boys over the past 10 years?

It think we have become very intolerant of what boys are like, how they think, how they play and how they express themselves.

What is the most critical issue facing boys and their parents today?

There is a pipeline that carries all children from preschool to college and I think the data shows that there are several places along that pipeline where boys are fall out. My book is really about those places were boys– for a variety of reason — disengage from education — often with disastrous results. I think it is critical for parents to address this problem in their schools and in their communities. Right now we have 2.5 million more girls than boys in college — a staggering gap. But when you ask college presidents why there are so many more college ready girls than boys, they will tell you that the problem begins in preschool. We need to address it early so all our children can get the best education possible.

I suspect visitors to a blog about boys falling behind must be puzzled why I post so many articles about the paucity of women in computer science and engineering. It’s because I worry that political correctness has shielded us from considering the full implications of the gender imbalances we’re seeing on college campuses. This Sunday’s NYTimes article does a nice job summarizing the dilemma in one area: Despite modest gains in some areas, especially medicine, women are falling behind in computer sciences.

 What’s particularly puzzling is that the explanations for under-representation of women that were assembled back in 1991 applied to all technical fields. Yet women have achieved broad parity with men in almost every other technical pursuit. When all science and engineering fields are considered, the percentage of bachelor’s degree recipients who are women has improved to 51 percent in 2004-5 from 39 percent in 1984-85, according to National Science Foundation surveys.

When one looks at computer science in particular, however, the proportion of women has been falling. In 2001-2, only 28 percent of all undergraduate degrees in computer science went to women. By 2004-5, the number had declined to only 22 percent. Data collected by the Computing Research Association showed even fewer women at research universities like M.I.T.: women accounted for only 12 percent of undergraduate degrees in computer science and engineering in the United States and Canada granted in 2006-7 by Ph.D.-granting institutions, down from 19 percent in 2001-2. Many computer science departments report that women now make up less than 10 percent of the newest undergraduates.

 If women are to dominate higher education, there’s reason to care about what they major in — and don’t major in. Our international competitiveness depends on it. And yet all we get from feminist groups are comic-book takes on the issue: Must be discrimination, they say, as if thousands of computer science department across the country were joined together in a giant cabal. Something else is playing out here, and it warrants investigation. I don’t pretend to have the answers, but the sniff of political correctness surrounding this issue makes me determined to not relinquish this bone.

In case you missed this story in the NYTimes (photo courtesy of the Times) about rugby turning around the lives of boys at an inner city DC charter school, here it is again. Nicely reported and written:

All sports can help break down racial and cultural barriers, but certain elements of rugby make it especially suited. With its raw physicality and traditional postgame bonding, rugby forces an intimacy among opponents not found in many other sports.
Because rugby players wear no equipment, Bayer said, they compete “right there, eye to eye, face to face.” Then they hang out with their competitors. Still, Hyde’s players have encountered ugliness. Bayer recalled a trip to New England, where only five families agreed to host his players. It is customary for host-team families to invite visiting players to stay with them.
“They didn’t know what to expect from this group of black kids from the inner city,” Bayer said. After watching an afternoon of touch rugby on the beach, and noticing how the Hyde players conducted themselves, he said, “all of a sudden, the parents were fighting to host a player.”