Over at NRO, two writers, Carrie Lukas and Kathleen Parker, are displeased about the recent American Association of University Women report that finds education's so-called "boys crisis" to be fiction. Lukas claims that the AAUW simply seeks a monopoly on gender grievance, and Parker claims that boys are, actually, not fine, and that those males who lag academically excel at activities such as abusing drugs and alcohol.
Parker's piece has its rougher patches, but it ends well: Educators should understand that differences between boys and girls exist, and they should develop strategies thereby. (Some principals, in fact, believe single-sex education is the answer.) What's most important is that school leaders have the autonomy to make the educational decisions that work best for their pupils, and that they can do so without worrying about the PC police.
Groups such as the AAUW or The Boys Project, which advocate exclusively on behalf of one gender, are susceptible to doing more harm than good by overstating the problems that their preferred gender faces.??And isn't it rather silly to look at test data and then construct overarching conclusions about all American male or female students?