this advice sounds like it could fix many, many other issues as well?
(Where I went to school, they taught us, parallel to reading, how to analyse propaganda. You can imagine the unintended consequences XD)
"...while average scores have declined for everyone, boys are doing much worse."
And it definitely doesn't get the resources.
"But in contrast with efforts to encourage girls in math and science, which have helped shrink their achievement gap with boys, little attention or effort has been focused on improving boys’ reading skills."
We've been framing things the same way for decades now, ignoring boys. Maybe it is time to frame things differently.
Unless you also think that boys just don't matter.
Vs. over 100 years ago, my grandmother taught 1st through 8th grades. In a one-room schoolhouse. Rural community - maybe 1% of parents had been to college. Annual per-student funding was $50-ish. Grandma's teaching credentials were, at best, a 2-year "Normal School" degree. The School District's Superintendent was probably 1/4 time or less, with zero administrative staff.
And yet the vast majority of grandma's students left her 8th grade able to read at that level. Old family stories from the era have neither "boys vs. girls" subtexts, nor zero-sum worldviews.
I’m not trying to be provocative. I’d only like to know what you think. If there’s a legitimate reason to single young men out in this issue then what’s wrong with that?