Before reading this, watch the TED Talk below.  It really makes the concept hit home.  Our education system is failing our boys:

http://www.ted.com/talks/ali_carr_chellman_gaming_to_re_engage_boys_in_learning.html

There are some really amazing statistics that she quotes from the 100 girls project:

For every 100 girls that are suspended from school, 250 boys are.

For every 100 girls that are expelled from school, 335 boys are.

For every 100 girls in special education, there are 217 boys.

The numbers go on and on.  We can choose to draw one of two conclusions from this: either the male gender is completely flawed or our education system is not meeting the needs of boys.  Since I, like the speaker, really have a hard time making  the assumption that half of our population is majorly flawed, I opt for the second option.  Clearly, our education system needs an overhaul with regard to helping boys succeed.

Numerous books and articles try to find reasons and solutions for the current crisis:

Richard Whitmire: Why Boys Fail

Michael Gurian, Kathy Stevens: The Minds of Boys: Saving our Sons From Falling behind in School and Life

http://www.newsweek.com/2006/01/29/the-trouble-with-boys.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-day/why-boys-are-failing-in-a_b_884262.html

Almost invariably, I see several possible reasons brought up.  Whitmire introduces the concept in his book that schools teach literacy at very young ages and then just assume literacy as children get older.  This is a major disadvantage for boys who tend to be less fluent than girls at younger ages.  Also, boys are clearly more physical by nature, more impulsive, and have less fine motor skills at a young age than girls.  What does this mean?  In a traditional classroom, boys begin to fall behind early and find themselves unable to catch up.  The article in the Huffington Post states the following:

Gurian's book presents statistics that boys get the majority of D's and F's in most schools, create 90 percent of the discipline problems, are four times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with ADHD and be medicated, account for three out of four children diagnosed learning disabilities, become 80 percent of the high school dropouts, and now make up less than 45 percent of the college population.

So, what can be done?  

The Newsweek article tells of how a middle school decided to experiment with separating boys and girls into single-gender clasrooms.  The teaching then changed to accomodate the different genders.  The results of their experiment:

This fall, the all-girl class did best in math, English and science, followed by the all-boy class and then coed classes.

But, boys do not have to be separated out to have their needs met.  Most of them just require more hands on and physical time.  Frequent recess breaks, being allowed to act out reports and understanding rather than having to sit at a desk and write to show they understood a book. They need to be able to write about topics that they want to write.  

One thing that really hit me from the TED Talk, seeing as I am the mother of two boys, was her comment on writing.  She says that most boys come home and tell their parents they hate writing.   When asked what they had to write about, they talk about writing about poems, what they did over the summer, and journalling nature.  But, she says, boys don't enjoy writing about that.  They want to write about video games, comic book monsters that terrorize cities, and superheroes that come in and beat the bad guys. The issue is that these topics tend to be banned in schools.

I relate to this really well.  My two young boys are very literate, but for the longest time I could not get them to read books.  I couldn't understand why.  I love books, and I had hoped my children would too.  Then, my older son discovered Captain Underpants.  Captain Underpants is a chapter book by Dav Pilkey that has all the sorts of humor that I, as a girl, cringed at.  But, let me tell you, they devoured them.  The books became a gateway for my children to read other things and now both my children crossed into third grade reading Percy Jackson and other books of that level of difficulty.  

When they read those books I was terrified that the school would have an issue with them.  I worried that they would be scolded for the kind of humor included.  Luckily, the charter school they go to had them in the library and seemed to be fine with the children reading the series.  In the school the children were in earlier, this might not have been the case.  

The point is, just from my own life and dealing with my own two children, I can see that she makes a very valid point in regards to writing and the point extends to reading. Neither of my boys wanted to read Beverly Clearly books when forced to at school.  Many of the girls in the classroom loved the assignment.

What does this have to do with High School?

Most of the information addresses the failure in elementary schools to address boys' needs, and that by the age of 13 we've pretty much lost these boys.  So, what does this mean for High School reform?

The research means that, until the issue is resolved, we need to work extra hard to re-integrate the boys into the learning environment.  This presents an incredibly difficult challenge, especially for the ninth grade curriculums.  Not only do the children have to be shown the relevancy of their education and kept engaged, with boys we need to completely re-engage them.  Because literacy tends to only being taught at younger grades, boys who become fluent later than that point may actually need some remediation in the earlier part of High School to be brought back to a level of literacy that most High Schools just assume they have.  

Unfortunately, it is hard to find true information on re-engagement of boys at high school. I assume that much of the work that has been done on re-engaging foster children, economically disadvantaged children, and minorities would be relevant, but I can't be sure.  I do know that any good high school needs to think long and hard about how to accomplish this feat.