Girls rule; boys trail

Article here. Excerpt:

'Academically, girls are outperforming boys in subjects from kindergarten through high school, a four-year review of test scores shows. In some subjects, girls have the boys beat by at least 10 percentage points.

“We recognize this is an issue ... but the answers we’re looking for don’t just jump out at us,” said schools Superintendent Jim Scales. “What we have seen is not disastrous, but it’s enough to be concerned about. Right now, we don’t have any prescription for trying to overcome it.”

And though the problem starts in elementary school, statistics show that there is a domino effect as fewer young men graduate from high school and college.

“Males become less and less represented the farther up the degree chain you go,” said David L. Wright, chief policy officer for the Tennessee Higher Education Commission. “And if that’s true, it puts Tennessee in an even tougher spot in competing for those higher knowledge jobs.”'