The Gender Gap in K-12 Education: What Research Shows About Boys Falling Behind

A well-documented and growing gap in educational outcomes between boys and girls in the United States has attracted increasing research attention and policy concern. Girls now outperform boys on most academic measures in K-12 education, graduate from high school at higher rates, and attend and complete college at substantially higher rates. The causes of this gap are complex and contested, and different explanations lead to different policy prescriptions, but the persistence and growth of the gap make it an important issue for education policy. The gender gap in educational attainment has reversed dramatically from the situation of several decades ago, when women faced explicit and implicit barriers to educational and professional advancement. Women now earn the majority of bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and doctoral degrees in the United States. Boys are more likely than girls to be held back a grade, more likely to be diagnosed with and receive services for learning disabilities and ADHD, more likely to be suspended or expelled, and more likely to drop out of high school. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the gender gap in educational outcomes. The developmental mismatch hypothesis proposes that school environments, particularly early elementary schools, are designed in ways that match the typical developmental trajectory of girls better than boys. Boys develop self-regulation and fine motor skills that support academic tasks later than girls on average, and schools that require extended periods of seated attention, pencil-and-paper work, and compliance with behavioral expectations may penalize boys whose development of these capacities is at a normative but slower trajectory. Engagement and relevance are proposed as factors that affect boys' motivation in school. Research on gender differences in school engagement finds that boys are more likely to report school as boring or irrelevant, less likely to invest effort in tasks that do not feel personally meaningful, and more likely to disengage when they do not see the purpose of academic work. Curriculum and pedagogy that makes connections to students' interests, provides active learning opportunities, and demonstrates the real-world relevance of academic content may be more engaging for boys who are not intrinsically motivated by academic performance. Disciplinary policies have been proposed as a mechanism through which boys' educational trajectories are disrupted. Boys receive the majority of school disciplinary actions including suspensions and expulsions, and the school-to-prison pipeline research discussed elsewhere documents how disciplinary exclusion disrupts educational progress. Research on the disciplinary gap finds that boys in environments with high rates of exclusionary discipline are significantly disadvantaged in educational attainment outcomes. Economic and labor market factors affect boys' educational motivation in ways that have been proposed as explanatory factors for the gender gap. In communities where men without college degrees can access employment with livable wages, the immediate economic return to college attendance is less salient. Research on the geography of the gender gap in education finds that it is larger in communities with stronger labor markets for non-college-educated men, suggesting that alternative pathways to economic security affect male college-going rates. Mentorship and role models have been proposed as factors affecting boys' educational trajectories, particularly for boys in communities where male role models who have benefited from education are less common. Research on the effects of same-gender teacher effects, particularly for Black boys and Black male teachers, finds positive effects on educational outcomes, suggesting that representation in the educator workforce matters for student engagement and aspiration. The policy response to the gender gap in education is complicated by its intersection with race, class, and other dimensions of disadvantage. The boys who are most significantly behind are disproportionately boys of color and boys from low-income communities. Interventions that address the specific factors relevant to these communities, including high-quality mentorship, school discipline reform, and engaging curriculum, are more promising than approaches that treat the gender gap as uniform across all boys regardless of other circumstances.