The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Boys lag girls on several important measures of educational achievement and engagement. They begin school with weaker early literacy and self-regulation skills, perform worse in reading but not in math, and are more likely to exhibit behavioral problems and to drop out. These patterns are durable, widespread across countries, and largest among students with the greatest learning and behavioral challenges. This article synthesizes findings from major U.S. and international assessments—the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class; the National Assessment of Educational Progress; and the Program for International Student Assessment—to document where gender gaps are largest and how they have changed over time.

I draw from several decades of work as a psychologist—in clinical and consulting practice, on staff at a boys’ school, and conducting research studies—to offer a set of observations about boys’ education. I argue that despite a long history of poor outcomes, schools have neglected to ground their approach to male students in sound developmental science. In my initial research, boys across the globe were clear about the primacy of the student–teacher relationship for their learning. In a follow-up study, I learned that these relationships are particularly vulnerable to break down due to normative cultural stresses and teachers’ reactions to boys’ resistance. Yet it was also clear that the teacher bears primary responsibility for the working alliance. Finally, I learned that it is in these relationships that boys can best learn critical skills of accountability and moral behavior.

I elucidate the educational and occupational struggles of boys and men using an evolutionary framework. This perspective is useful in explaining boys’ relative disadvantage in language and reading development and their advantage in visuospatial and mechanical abilities. I show that classroom settings and the behavioral expectations of formal schooling are more of an evolutionary mismatch for boys than girls because of sex differences in physical activity levels and social relations. This results in boys being disproportionately identified as having behavioral difficulties. Further, there are universal preferences that influence occupational choices: More men than women, for example, show an interest in working with things, and these interests align with boys’ and men’s relative strengths. I argue that secondary schooling does not fully capitalize on boys’ evolved capacities to help prepare them for the modern workforce, and suggest how schools can adapt to better accommodate boys’ strengths.

Girls’ math and reading scores declined more than boys’ during the pandemic, but these gender differences varied substantially across communities. Using test score data from roughly 7,000 U.S. school districts, we investigate how local context shaped these patterns. Community socioeconomic resources buffered children against the negative academic consequences of the pandemic, and these protections were substantially stronger for girls than for boys. In high-resource communities, pandemic disruption had little differential effect on girls and boys, while in low-resource communities, disruptions produced larger academic declines for girls than boys. This resulted in gender gaps shifting toward boys on average, but especially in low-resource settings with high levels of community disruption. These patterns suggest that the gendered allocation of resources is shaped by family and community context, perhaps because gender norms—which shape expectations, opportunities, and resource allocation—are more deeply activated in conditions of disruption and resource scarcity.

Attempts to explain gender differences in postsecondary enrollment and completion have focused almost exclusively on students’ academic performance and experiences in middle school and high school. Our analysis shows that elementary-grade test scores are also an early indicator of postsecondary outcomes. We examine the relationship between third-grade test performance and students’ college outcomes, focusing on variations by gender, race/ethnicity, and free/reduced-price lunch eligibility. We establish how the gender gaps in college outcomes that favor females relate to early-grade academic performance and show the extent to which third-grade test scores are predictive of college enrollment and degree completion.

The efficacy of single-sex education for boys has been a focus of scholarly inquiry for decades. The consensus has been that the all-boys format does not boost academic achievement for boys, on average. In this article, I suggest that the scholarly consensus may be mistaken or at least misleading. I argue that while some boys’ schools are successful and others are not, the all-boys format creates opportunities to educate differently. But when teachers are not trained in boy-friendly instructional strategies, nothing good happens and bad outcomes are likely. I consider some characteristics of a successful boys’ school and the prospects for boys’ public schools in the United States.

Boys, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, increasingly trail their female peers across key educational and economic milestones. One long-proposed policy intervention aimed at ameliorating this inequity is to increase the share of male teachers, especially in earlier grades where men comprise just a small fraction of the teaching workforce. I review the theoretical rationale for this policy approach and the empirical evidence on how teacher gender affects student outcomes. Male teachers could benefit boys in at least two ways: They could serve as same-gender role models, or they could employ distinct pedagogical or disciplinary approaches that are helpful to boys. The causal evidence supporting either of these ideas is mixed. Some studies find modest positive effects of same-gender teachers on grades and test scores, but others detect no benefits, and research on long-term outcomes is largely absent. I conclude by identifying potential directions for future research on the topic.

In developed countries, males lag females on nearly every educational indicator, from early childhood readiness to postsecondary enrollment and completion (Hurst 2024; Irwin et al. 2024). One contributing factor is their limited access to positive male role models and mentors in their families, schools, and communities (Yu et al. 2021). Although formal mentoring can help bridge these gaps, many programs are not as effective as they could be and suffer from a shortage of male volunteers. I review what research has shown about the need for mentoring and the promise of various mentoring approaches, and I propose several strategies to increase both the effectiveness and availability of male role models and mentors in the lives of boys and young men.

Male students graduate from high school and enroll in college at lower rates than females. Male participation in the workforce has also declined over the past several decades. We present evidence on changing workforce demand and participation that highlights how opportunities for female-dominated employment have outstripped those for male-dominated occupations. We also show how several of the high-growth occupations that do not require a BA fall under the category of career and technical education (CTE), suggesting that CTE has a role to play in improving outcomes for males. We conclude with four implications for policy and practice: (1) scale successful models, (2) support areas shown to benefit male students, (3) use CTE to connect applied postsecondary education to employment, and (4) use CTE to connect males to occupations with high demand or strong compensation, including jobs in which males are not well represented, like education and health care.

School accountability policies are central to current education reform efforts, and most of these policies prominently focus on race- and income-based achievement gaps. Recently, though, discussion of gender-based achievement gaps in schools has emerged in research and policy discussions, so accounting for gender-based achievement differences in existing accountability policies may be an inevitable next step. In this article, I offer a brief background on the origins of school accountability as an education policy priority and review the evidence on its effects. I then discuss gender gaps in education and consider how they stand apart from gaps based on race and socioeconomics. I speculate about the possible adverse outcomes and potential benefits of including gender differences in present school accountability policies and offer concluding recommendations about using these measures in school accountability.