Snakes, and Snails, and Puppy Dog tails

Who knew this would spark so much sound and fury? Certainly not me.

Of course, not everyone likes my arguments about why we shouldn't be panicking about a so-called "boy crisis." This John Leo blog post provides a pretty good example of some of the less positive feedback I've been getting. I have to admit, I was at a loss when I first read it because, aside from calling my report "basically an op-ed piece," Leo doesn't say word one about the actual substance of the report: he doesn't challenge the data I cite or explain why he thinks we should ignore it or interpret it differently than I did.

His biggest complaint seems to be that...I'm a feminist who doesn't want people to talk about the boys crisis because it distracts attention from girls? I'm still not really sure.

I know I shouldn't be surprised that some people think I'm writing that the boy crisis is overhyped because of some gender politics agenda, or that I want people to focus on girls' problems, or that I hate boys--or something. But it still seems strange to me.

I started looking the this issue because the some of the articles I was reading about the boy crisis earlier this year seemed to rely heavily on individual anecdotes, "expert" quotes that didn't seem to be backed up with evidence, and a few provocative pieces of evidence about how boys were doing relative to girls--most notably the now near-universally known fact that girls make up 56 percent of undergraduate college enrollment. After all, if boys are in trouble, we should be using data--not anecdote--to figure out how to deal with the problem. I was particularly perplexed because the arguments these articles and experts put forward for why boys weren't doing well in school seemed to be all over the place, too, and even contradicting each other.

So I started looking at the data: NAEP data; college enrollment figures; statistics on disabilities, drug use, disciplinary problems--wherever I could find national sample data or statistics from reputable sources. But I found evidence that, contrary to the articles I'd been reading, boys and young men were actually improving on a lot of measures. Sure, there are areas where there are problems--particularly high school--and areas where girls are doing better than boys. But the evidence doesn't suggest that boys--certainly not all boys--are on some kind of train that's speeding rapidly over down* a cliff. And ignoring this fact doesn't help us to think or talk reasonably about how to improve education--for boys or girls.

*My colleague Kevin Carey points out that, while speeding over a cliff is a common phrase, speeding down one really doesn't make much sense. On a purely anecdotal note, one guy who certainly has better verbal skills than this gal.