The school system is unprepared to deal with such issues, mainly because it is not designed to concern itself with the needs of students in general. teachers always ask eachother how to motivate students. They never ask students.

For more on this notion: http://wp.me/ptcfd-1L

My hypothesis was that with other inhibiting factors for women attending college removed, perhaps role models have become more important.

Perhaps there is better data than this, but this data seems to indicate a steady rise in female college enrollment:

http://www.prb.org/Articles/2007/CrossoverinFemaleMaleCollegeEnrollmentRates.aspx

So whatever the reason for the trend I’d guess some slow acting cultural changes.

In recent studies, it has been proven that by the time a male graduates from high school (assuming he manages to do so), he is at least a full grade level behind in reading, and one to one and one-half behind in math.

The lack of two parent households, role models, and the idea that it’s cool to be the class screwup or Mr. sex machine is common on school campuses today, and is not likely to change in the near future.

As more women become professionals, they’re going to find it incredibly difficult to find a long term relationship with a male with roughly equal educational background (it’s becoming very acute in Canada these days).

I would agree that the elimination of phonics from schools is probably the most damaging thing which has been done to literacy of the current generation of students compared to students who grew up with phonics instruction.

In math, the lack of knowledge that students possess when it comes to addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, percentages, and fractions is appalling as well (you’ll never be able to succeed in higher math without understanding fractions – i.e. algebra, geometry, trig, pre-calc or calc). I blame the overuse of electronic calculators (which weren’t affordable until about the early 80’s) for damaging the math ability of many students (want proof, watch a person under 25 try to make change when the cash register breaks down, or if they have to figure out sales tax by hand).

We are so fortunate to have you.

I put this on educators, women’s lib and everything else in that category. Girls needed encouragement decades ago and affirmative action was very helpful. However the pendulum, as it normally does, swung way to far and the white male was left out. In government schools the black males suffers much, much more and these trends continue. Educators and government default schools ignore these kids that need help to understand how society works and how they can be successful.

For all boys, girls, too, competition is very healthy. Yet government educators are too damn scared of harming the child’s self esteem. No wonder this country is struggling…geez…

Oh yeah, welfare is one of the worse things that could ever have happened to the black family. It was never ever intended to be a way to support one’s self…it was to be a safety net yet all it has done is destroy the black family….

Government…the more they are involved the worse things become…government schools are the biggest example of this…

yes…i am the mother of two males who are doing quite well…because of their family and we finally exited the default/government schools of our community…high quality private schools are awesome!

Maybe part of the problem is the way that the white middle class is raising boys. Yes, they are different than girls but boys maybe raised to be quitters (see sports) instead of problem solvers.

And let’s face it–boys do just fine on the SAT. If preferences are being granted, it’s in the area of grades. And grades are a fraud, so who cares? Admissions should be ignoring grades more, not less.