TITLE IX FOR BOYS

By now you’ve probably heard about the gap in achievement between male and female students – from the earliest years, girls get better grades than boys, they are more likely to go to college and more likely to earn college degrees. As is common in other states, Maine girls are overwhelmingly more likely to outperform boys in reading and writing and to do as well in math. Boys do somewhat better in science.

The science gap for girls is meaningful, and the U.S. Department of Education understandably is contemplating taking legal action to close it. But the many gaps for boys are at least as meaningful. They are more so, in fact, for those boys who never make it to college, and it is noteworthy that the University of Maine System, which a generation ago was evenly divided between the sexes now has 3,000 more female students than male. Nationally, 133 women will graduate from U.S. colleges this year for every 100 men.

Title IX, though often used to promote equality in school athletics, says, generally, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” In this week’s National Journal, an assistant Education secretary for civil rights said the department is considering action against universities to close the gender gap in the hard sciences. It shouldn’t stop there.

Title IX is about more than mere numbers, and determining institutional biases that prevent students from succeeding in a classroom is harder than counting the sports teams available to boys and girls. But within Title IX’s three-test standard for determining compliance on the athletic fields, schools must show they offer substantial proportionality in their sports participation rates. Or they can demonstrate through their history and continuing practice a good-faith effort to expand athletic opportunities. Or they can demonstrate they are “fully and effectively accommodating the interests and abilities of women on campus.”

The rules, of course, are not only for sports. Just as the Education Department might use Title IX to peer into, for instance, engineering programs that are hostile to women, it might also look at an institution’s teaching methods to determine whether they are systemically disadvantageous to boys, thereby excluding the boys from the full benefits of an education because of their sex.

Using Title IX to examine the status of boys and young men in the classroom has several likely positive outcomes. First, it would provide a legal lever for moving along possible solutions to the achievement gap faster than they otherwise might go. Nothing like a legal threat to get a school administration’s attention.

Second, it would create standards and expectations in the classrooms that accommodate a greater variety of learning styles, improving education generally. Third, it would show that girls are not alone in deserving legal protections to obtain an education unburdened by discrimination. It would change Title IX from a women-vs.-men weapon into a tool that both sexes occasionally need to right demonstrable wrongs.

The federal Education Department, state departments nationwide, individual schools and others are gathering data and trying to understand the reasons behind the rising disparity in achievement between girls and boys. The answer may be as simple as hiring more male teachers in subjects where boys are struggling, such as English and history, as well as more female teachers in science and engineering.

More likely, the solution will contain a dozen different answers with countless permutations depending on local circumstances. Title IX, by demanding an outcome – an education free of discrimination based on sex – can be used to push schools to find their own particular solutions, with the schools knowing there are consequences if they do not.