Virginia boys' schooling gaps wider than the nation's, study shows (copy)
The usual gaps between boys and girls when learning to read are wider than the national average in Virginia, the legislature’s new Virginia Boys and Men Advisory Commission heard on Monday.
The commission, the first of its kind in the nation, aims to look at factors that mean many young men feel they don’t see much future for themselves, said Del. Josh Thomas, D-Prince William, the commission's chair.
“I heard this over and over and over again” when campaigning, he said.
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“This is not a zero-sum game,” Thomas said, adding that helping boys and men do better in school and in life doesn’t have to come at the expense of the gains girls and women have started to make.
But Virginia boys and men start off behind, said Alanna Williams, vice president of the American Institute for Boys and Men.
“Start with kindergarten, where boys are showing up less prepared. Then we move through educational learning where we're going to really see those large gaps in reading, which persist for middle grades, persist across races, and throughout, boys are disengaging from school at higher rates than girls,” she said.
“You'll see this most clearly at the end of high school, where boys have higher dropout rates and then don't continue on to higher education as much, which can end up with a 10-percentage-point-degree gap among young adults,” she said.
The institute’s study found that more than half of kindergarten boys in Virginia fall below school-readiness benchmarks, compared with 44% of girls.
While both boys and girls have seen declines in the National Assessment of Educational Progress measure of fourth grade reading comprehension since before the COVID-19 pandemic, the decline for boys was much steeper, a 13.5-point drop in average scores compared to a 5.8-point drop for girls, Williams said.
The gap between fourth grade Virginia boys' and girls' average scores is roughly the same, at 13 points.
“That's a cliff that boys have fallen off in Virginia, and we don't see that bouncing back right now. And this is, I believe, the third-largest gap in the nation,” said the institute’s president, Richard Reeves.
The gap between fourth grade boys and girls was wider for struggling readers, too: 48% of Virginia fourth grade boys were below the NAEP’s “basic” comprehension level, up from 34% before the pandemic.
The percentage of girls below the basic level over the same period rose from 28% to 34%.
Gaps in reading comprehension remain wide in eighth grade, where Virginia boys’ average score is 11 points below girls, with Hispanic boys’ scores showing a 16-point gap.
In high school, boys drop out more than girls – 6.05% of boys compared to 4.02% of girls.
After high school, 47% of young women 18 to 24 enroll in college or graduate school compared to 37% of young men.
The institute suggests one priority for Virginia should be to encourage men to become teachers, noting that fewer than 1 in 5 teachers in K-12 schools are men.
It also suggested a focus on building boys’ reading skills, including screening plans for boys and setting gender-specific targets, while noting that some types of phonics and tutoring programs reach boys more.
The institute also suggested expanding career and technical education options and helping students navigate pathways to higher education.
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