Washington Post education writer Daniel de Vise does a great job detailing the admissions bias against women. There’s so much to this story that de Vise doesn’t have space to explore. While researching my book I visited American University (60% female) and talked to both [...]
Writing in the Washington Post, professor Dorothy Sue Cobble lays out a new agenda for the new economic realities, where women are becoming the majority in the workforce and more women emerge as chief [...]
As an editorial writer, I’ve played it myself, many times, and rightly so. When the highly respected federal NAEP scores come out you compare passage rates on those tests to the state tests. Inevitably, state tests show far more student progress than what is revealed on the NAEP. And the biggest [...]
…on where we stand on high school skills. She doesn’t break it out by gender here, but Sandra would the first to point to severe literacy skills deficits among males.
[...]
Okay, I apologize for the shameless self promotion, but these days when you get published by a small house you pretty much have to act as your own publicist. I just learned yesterday that Amazon has started shipping my book, Why Boys Fail, which AT [...]
DeNeen Brown writes in the Washington Post today about the marriageable mate dilemma that has faced black women for years. This peg: Helena Andrews’ new book, “Bitch is the New Black.”
What few realize is that the dilemma has already struck well-educated white women who are discovering a shortage of [...]
That’s the answer offered up in this commentary in the Chronicle by Florida State professor Michael Ruse about why vet schools are now dominated by women.
So how does the writer explain the fact that the boys’ collapse is a relatively recent phenomenon? Well, he doesn’t try, but his logic would be [...]
I saw this flashing across the screen while waiting for a plane yesterday at National Airport.
[...]In co-ed classes boys waste time trying to impress girls and girls waste time trying not to look too smart, we’re told.
[...]
…which is why Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top initiative matters so much. My commentary running today in Education Week (which I believe I’m allowed to reproduce below):
The Hole in ‘Race to the Top’
By Richard Whitmire
It seems almost peevish to criticize U.S. Secretary [...]
At this Chicago High School, single-sex home rooms are tried out as an antidote to boys’ fading academic performances.
School again tests its gender theory
Single-sex homerooms aim to conquer fears, inhibitions
By Tara Malone
Tribune reporter
December 8, 2009
A pack of teenagers jostled into the Niles West High School conference [...]
A well-written article out of Canada’s Globe & Mail posits the issue as international, which it is, and also identifies the key impact: personal relationships between men and women, the marriageable mate dilemma. I can’t recall a single piece of reporting in the U.S. about campus gender gaps that [...]
Crusty Old Academic was nice enough to send me this link to Gender Inequalities in Education, a piece referred to in today’s Chronicle commentary.
[...]
This commentary by University of Wisconsin professor Sara Goldrick-Rab properly moves the blame for the imbalances to the K-12 years but then falls short. What’s not happening in those years?
Sara: Buy my book! I’m a veteran K-12 reporter and I have a few ideas [...]
I’ve been skeptical that bringing more men into the classroom will move the dial much on the boy troubles. While it’s helpful to have male role models, the big difference will come from figuring out how to teach literacy skills to boys in the early grades, a time when they [...]
Then we’re in real trouble, because that’s pretty much the only solution being embraced out there. Here’s a telling example from Prince George’s County outside Washington, a place where middle class African Americans have been settling for years. School performance there remains troubled.
From the Gazette, a suburban Maryland paper:
Thursday, Dec. [...]
It’s not as odd as it sounds. Our youngest daughter graduated from the only Ivy that at times has been challenged by gender imbalances, and many of the women there were aware that their academic credentials appeared to exceed those of the male students. Had she come across a male [...]
From the Times of London:
From The Times December 4, 2009
Should boys and girls be taught together?
Joanna Sugden
Yes
Richard Cairns
Headmaster
Brighton College
I have worked in both single-sex and co-ed schools and have no doubt that both educationally and socially, co-educational schools are better for children. Education is not [...]
From The Times December 3, 2009″
Ivy league men attract female students to the US
The lure of meeting an Ivy League man is encouraging female school-leavers to apply to America’s top universities
Emma Watson and Spanish rock star Rafael Cebrián at a recent New York City ice [...]
Thanks to Greg Toppo’s sharp eyes, I offer you this.
[...]That’s according to the British study described in this Independent article:
Why single-sex schools are bad for your health (if you’re a boy)
Boys taught in male-only schools face divorce and depression by their early 40s, research reveals
By Richard Garner, Education Editor
Research by London’s Institute of Education appears to support claims by [...]
…about whether post-high school schooling, even a bachelors’ degree, is necessary for minorities. My writings on this site would suggest so, but this New York Times piece suggests otherwise. My problem: The article compares white/college to black/college but leaves out the racial comparisons between those who fail to graduate [...]
I wrote a different angle on the admissions controversy for my former newspaper.
I’m struck by how college presidents view this. I interviewed a few recently from small private colleges that obviously over select men to keep their gender imbalances in check. To them, there was no discrimination involved. Rather, [...]
A Gendered Choice by David Chadwell, who oversees the single sex programs in that state, is out. I’ll let folks like Leonard Sax and Lise Eliot battle out the science behind the surge in single sex schooling. What I know for certain is the issue [...]
…pay close attention to what’s going on in South Carolina.
From the Spartanburg Herald Journal:
instruction a change for better
By LEE G. HEALY
lee.healy@shj.com
Published: Monday, November 30, 2009 at 3:15 a.m.
Last Modified: Monday, November 30, 2009 at 12:23 a.m.
Windy Hodge’s fifth grade class at Boiling Springs Intermediate School is a [...]
…the boy troubles are being defined through the prism of single-sex schools.
From the LA Times:
latimes.com
Single-sex middle school aims to divide and conquer
At Young Oak Kim Academy, students focus on science, math and technology in mixed-grade, single-gender classes. Teachers are still tweaking their methods to better reach each group.
[...]
One of the smartest commentators I know of on these issues has a commentary in today’s Chronicle.
Here’s the top:
November 28, 2009, 09:00 PM ET
A Book for Boys
By Mark Bauerlein
For a few years now, a recurring concern has been the widening gap between boys and girls at the college [...]
Here’s the key graph in this piece:
“It doesn’t help that women outnumber men on most college campuses, where there are about 80 men for every 100 women. So men are the scarce resource, and they get to make the rules. And they know it, too.”
That’s what I wrote about in [...]
Keep in mind, this is a state with relatively modest gender gaps at the high school level. I wish the writer had cited graduation data rather than enrollment numbers. That’s the number that counts.
Also, it’s instructive to read the method used by Middlebury to keep gender gaps there in check. [...]
…in this study from England. From the Telegraph:
Poor boys ‘turned into criminals’ at school
A generation of working class boys are being transformed into “misfits and criminals” by the education system, according to research.
By Graeme Paton, Education Editor
Published: 8:01AM GMT 27 Nov 2009
According to figures, white boys eligible for [...]
Thanks to Greg Toppo for spotting this one:
Contact: Kelsey Jackson
JacksonKN@missouri.edu
573-882-8353
University of Missouri-Columbia
Female breadwinners bring home the bacon and tension
MU professor examines female breadwinners’ experiences in nontraditional role
COLUMBIA, Mo. - In nearly a third of U.S. households, women are the sole or main breadwinners for their [...]
From Australia:
Boys face compulsory feminism programs in state schools across Victoria
John Masanauskas From: Herald Sun November 26, 2009 12:00AM Increase Text Size Decrease Text Size Print Email Share Add to Digg Add to del.icio.us Add to Facebook Add to Kwoff Add to Myspace Add to Newsvine What are these?
Picture: [...]
One in three boys showing up for a summit here said they had to sell drugs to survive:
From the Detroit Free Press:
November 24, 2009
JEFF GERRITT
What the streets don’t teach
BY JEFF GERRITT
FREE PRESS EDITORIAL WRITER
One in three of the 225 teens at the Boys to Men Education Forum in downtown [...]
Here’s Sax speaking outside Philly on the growing gender gaps among teens. From PhillyBurbs.com:
By: GREG FORESTER
Burlington County Times
Education expert warns parents about the problems facing today’s teens.
DELRAN - Boys are obsessed with video games. Girls are obsessed with their bodies. Both are overindulging in distractions such as [...]
KATE HAMMER
From Monday’s Globe and Mail
Published on Monday, Nov. 23, 2009 12:00AM EST
Last updated on Monday, Nov. 23, 2009 3:10AM EST
Co-ed classrooms can promote gender stereotypes and leave most boys longing for the escape of video games, according to Leonard Sax, a Philadelphia-based physician, [...]
…drinking clubs or support groups? You decide.
From the Guardian:
Rise of male student support groups sparks row at British universities• Support groups explore masculinity as a concept
• Critics claim societies a front for ‘macho activities’
Caroline Davies The Guardian, Monday 23 November 2009 larger | smaller Article history
A male student [...]
Chronicle of Higher Education writer Thomas Bartlett does a thorough job surveying the books and reports about boys. The piece (which requires registration) is strong on weaving together the flow of books but weak on reporting (boys’ academic struggles are, for the most part, shrugged off, especially the college imbalances).
[...]
…tracing who’s faring the worst in the recession: young, poorly educated men.
[...]Not sure, because nobody’s looking. I’ve come across several data points that suggest something similar is playing out here, but nothing definitive. I know that universities that serve the sons and daughters of blue-collar families are experiencing especially sharp gender imbalances.
But for now, all the coverage of this issue comes [...]
That’s the title of Christina Hoff Sommers’ new book. She’s tackling an issue that has been discussed here before, the relative paucity of women in the sciences — roughly a fifth of the B.A. recipients in the key fields. If college campuses were gender [...]
I get a sense there’s a shift taking place on the boy troubles issue. The recession has laid bare problems with men and employment, which in turn exposes the gender education imbalances.
This report from the Association of Public Land Grant Universities may not have drawn much press attention but it [...]
This commentary in the Chronicle of Higher Education lays out another factor behind the reluctance among women to pursue careers in the science.
[...]It’s all part of a science-based approach to heading off gang violence among Chicago males, at least according to this.
[...]The drive to ramp up college graduations will go nowhere unless the issue of lagging males is addressed. To date, that problem has been pointedly ignored by educators and foundations, mostly due to political correctness. I mean, who wants to talk about helping males when they rule Wall Street and [...]
Linda Perlstein, who writes The Educated Reporter blog as public editor for the National Education Writers Association, filed this. Go the actual link to get her embedded links:
Next in the course catalog: Chicks 101?
I’m glad to see more people talking about young men’s troubles getting through college, and [...]
Here’s an interesting upcoming conference on boys, focusing on the problems in New Mexico and held at a casino. I visited that state as part of my research for Why Boys Fail — schools there could use some guidance. There are some good ideas in the program that other [...]
