Teachers fine-tune approach to boys when teaching basic skills

Article here. Excerpt:

'First-grader Cyrus Mends parks himself on an exercise ball and tackles a Sudoku puzzle to help hone his math skills. He calls his teacher "Mr. Mealey" and his classmates by Mr., too. And he's a proud member of "Mealey's Men," made up of three teams that compete to demonstrate the best behavior and the best academic performance.

Tom Mealey's classroom at Carver Elementary School in Maplewood is a bit different from other elementary classrooms. The most obvious distinction? There are no girls.

Mealey is one of many educators tackling what some call a silent epidemic. By almost every achievement measure, boys in Minnesota and across the nation are falling behind their female peers.

Boys' reading and writing test scores continue to lag behind girls', while girls have caught up to boys in math. Check out the names of the top graduates at your local high school — chances are an overwhelming majority are girls. Girls are more likely than boys to get a high school diploma in four years, and they outnumber guys 3 to 2 on Minnesota's college campuses.

"There's something going on with boys," Mealey said. "And we need to deal with this in an aggressive manner."'