American students are struggling with reading — test scores are at new lows, and many students don't even read whole books.
But while average scores have declined for everyone, boys are doing much worse. On standardized tests, they score lower than girls in reading in nearly every school district in the United States, and at every grade level that tests are given, according to a new analysis from researchers at the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford. The reading gap exists around the world too...
What could help:
- Teach in small groups. University of Michigan researchers recently studied an intensive tutoring program for reading in North Carolina: groups of four students or fewer gathering three times a week. The surprising result was that all of the progress came from the boys. It could be that boys do better learning in small groups, especially those who struggle with attention, said Nakia Towns, president of Accelerate, a group that is studying ways to close achievement gaps and that financed the study.