MND: Claim that Boys Doing OK in School Comes up Short

Article here. Excerpt:

'This study purports to disprove the notion that there's a boy crisis in education. It's by Sarah Mead courtesy of a self-described "think tank" called the Education Sector. From what I can gather, it pretty accurately represents the response by those in the educational system who want to ignore the obvious problems boys have in school.

Mead's short take is that boys haven't performed worse over the past 35 years, girls have just performed better. Indeed, she claims boys are doing better than ever, just not as well as girls. But to get to that conclusion, Mead misreads the data she herself cites and, simply ignores the implications of other facts.
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What has caused this crisis in our efforts to educate males can be a subject for debate. Surely many factors contribute. My personal guess is that it has a lot to do with a culture that has been viciously denigrating men since (what a coincidence!) the early 70s. For at least three decades, men in this country have been consistently told, among other things, that we're stupid. Could that possibly have anything to do with poor performance in school? What about the claim that all the good we do is just patriarchal oppression of our betters? Maybe boys have gotten the message. Think of that.'