Boys, Race, and California Schools

Article here. From last year but still very relevant. Excerpt:

'Eric’s mother is not alone in her observations regarding the challenges boys encounter in California schools. According to data from the California Department of Education (CA Dept. of Ed.), boys are less likely to earn high school diplomas and less likely to meet other benchmarks.

GIBM reviewed 4-years of data from the CA Dept. of Ed. and learned that race and boys is a systemic problem in California schools. California is not alone. Many departments of education across the country do not collect gender-data on high school graduation rates. According to the Brookings Institute, only 37 states collect gender demographic-data on graduation rates. In its study Brookings reported that boys earned fewer high school diplomas in all 37 of the states it studied.

California is one of 37 states that collects graduation-data based on gender. Retrieving data on boys is not always so simple though. The data is often layered behind other links, and those unfamiliar with the system will not necessarily find the data easily. The California Department of Education has long been focused on “race/ethnicity” and programs that support girls more so than boys. Engaging Girls in STEM, for instance, remains a central tenet of the CA Department of Education. These types of programs encourage girls to pursue STEM professions where they are underrepresented, mostly in the computer sciences and engineering fields. Females are doing quite well in other STEM professions such as biological and biomedical science where they go on to represent 72% of undergraduate degrees according to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES). Encouraging girls is an important part of any educational system. There are, however, fewer checks and balances when it comes to the status of boys, even when gender (sex) is more of a determining factor than race.'