Tuesday, May 20, 2008

No Crisis For Boys In Schools, Study Says - washingtonpost.com

No Crisis For Boys In Schools, Study Says - washingtonpost.com: A new study to be released today on gender equity in education concludes that a 'boys crisis' in U.S. schools is a myth and that both sexes have stayed the same or improved on standardized tests in the past decade.

The report by the nonprofit American Association of University Women, which promotes education and equity for women, reviewed nearly 40 years of data on achievement from fourth grade to college and for the first time analyzed gender differences within economic and ethnic categories.

The most important conclusion of 'Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity in Education' is that academic success is more closely associated with family income than with gender, its authors said.

'A lot of people think it is the boys that need the help,' co-author Christianne Corbett said. 'The point of the report is to highlight the fact that that is not exclusively true. There is no crisis with boys. If there is a crisis, it is with African American and Hispanic students and low-income students, girls and boys.'