Facts about education

It is whitehouseboysmen again some factoids:

- 12th Graders below Basic Literacy in reading tests in 2002: MALES: 33% FEMALES: 20%.

- 12th graders with a parent who graduated from college who scored below basic writing proficiency levels in 2002: MALES: 27% FEMALES: 9%

In 2003: 70 percent of public high school students graduated

Of those,

72 percent of all female students
65 percent of all male students (-7%)
59 percent of African-American female students
48 percent of African-American male students (-11%)
58 percent for Hispanic female students
49 percent of Hispanic male students (-9%)

(Jay P. Greene and Marcus A. Winters, Manhattan Institute for Policy research civic report?No. 48 April 2006)

IN 2008

137 women have graduated college for every 100 men
130+ Women earned master’s degrees for every 100 men
(National Center for Education Statistics)

IN 2010

185 women have graduated from college for every 100 men.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

(David Brooks, NYT)

Aside from those comparative annual statistics, in general from K-12:

Boys are greatly outnumbered in every extracurricular activity outside of sports, from student government to student newspapers and academic clubs.
By 12 years of age, boys are almost twice as likely to have repeated at least one grade.
Boys comprise the majority of permanent high-school dropouts.
Boys are approximately 3 times as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD or ADD
Boys are 10 times as likely to be referred for possible ADHD/ADD as girls
Boys (ages 15-19) are 5 times as likely as girls to commit suicide.
Boys are more than twice as likely to be suspended from school.
Boys are more than three times as likely to be expelled from school.
Preschool boys (ages 3-4) are expelled at a rate about 4 ½ times that of girls.

The U.S. Department of Education concedes that no serious research is available comparing different instructional methods that might help boys. Many education researchers have been found to be reluctant regarding research aimed at exploring gender differences in learning. In short, the researchers have found that because of changes in the educational system, the average boy of 50-75 years ago is very likely to be diagnosed with ADHD today, especially if they are bored and gifted boys (Armstrong, 1996, Hartnett et al. 2004, Howard and James, 2003).

There is also a great deal of agreement on the major reasons why these horrors are occurring:

Gender roles in education, especially in elementary school, where 85% of teachers are women.
Popular books (Reviving Ophelia 1994) and groups such as the American Association of University Women alerted the public to an educational failing that helped convince educators that schools were ignoring important girls’ problems, such as the loss of self-esteem among middle school girls who had been successful in elementary school
Resistance from educators who also point to male success in the workforce as proof that advocacy for boys is unnecessary. (Even as statistics point out how men have been and will remain hardest hit by the “Great Recession” and the economic shifts in our nation.)