One report explored rates of college-degree attainment, unemployment, and incarceration, among other barometers of academic, emotional, and social well-being. The other report chronicled the struggles that young men of color confront in getting through college.
One of the more disturbing findings focused on 12th-grade reading levels on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress exams. In reading, 51 percent of African-American males and 45 percent of Hispanic males scored below basic.
By contrast, 36 percent of African-American female students and 33 per cent of Hispanic female students scored below basic, while 24 percent of white male students and 13 percent of white female students scored below basic.
Boosting the achievement of young men of color is “critical to the economic welfare of the country,’’ said John Lee, who authored the statistical analysis report and is policy director for the College Board’s Advocacy and Policy Center.
“If we have to compete in a global sense, we can’t do that if only women are driving the educational future of America,’’ Lee said in an interview.
“Men have to step up to the plate.’’
Similar studies in Massachusetts have revealed that males tend to achieve at lower rates than females within their own racial or ethnic groups.
The Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, for instance, found in recent reports that male graduates of Boston public schools were less likely to earn college degrees than females of their own race and ethnicity.
Boston public schools have ratcheted up efforts to reduce the achievement gap between the genders.
About four years ago the district created the “10 Boys’’ clubs, a program that offers additional tutoring, mentoring, and emotional and social support to about 600 boys in grades 4 through 12 in approximately 50 schools.
