Fox News host: ‘Feminism is to blame’ when boys do poorly in school

[lumberjack_jeff]

109. This is not success.

What Challenges Are Boys Facing and What Opportunities Exist to Address those Challenges?

In Brief:
Facts About How Boys Are Doing

There’s both good news and bad news about how boys in America are faring.

Boys are doing better than they did a decade or more ago across a variety of indicators, including juvenile justice involvement, dropout rates, and substance use.

Today, boys commit fewer property crimes, such as burglary, car theft, and arson, than they did in the late 1980s.(1)
Boys’ smoking rates are lower today than in the mid- to late 1990s. Their drinking rates have also declined.(2)
Since 1995, boys’ dropout rates have fallen.(3)
Between 1994 and 2004, fewer boys between the ages of 10 and 18 have died each year.(4) (Boys are most often killed in accidents, such as car crashes, followed by homicide and suicide.)
Boys are using their time constructively: One study found that nearly half of high school senior boys play a sport, more than a quarter take part in community affairs or volunteer at least once or twice per month, more than a quarter are part of a school club or activity, and about one-fifth play music or do other performing arts.(5)
A greater percentage of high school senior boys volunteered their time in 2006 than in the early 1990s.(6)
However, boys are still facing challenges in many areas:

In 2004, almost three-quarters of young people prosecuted in juvenile courts were boys.(7) Their most common law-violating behaviors were vandalism, theft, and assault.(8)
From 1997 to 2003, around 85 percent of all juveniles in residential placement were boys.(9)
More than 1 out of every 8 tenth grade boys surveyed in 2006 had smoked at least one cigarette in the previous month.(10)
About 1 in every 6 eighth grade boys surveyed in 2006 had drunk alcohol in the previous month.(11)
Nearly 40 percent of twelfth grade boys surveyed in 2006 had used illegal drugs in the past year.(12)
While adolescent boys report depression less frequently than girls, depressed boys are more resistant to treatment and more likely to commit suicide.(13)
While overall dropout rates have declined, in 2004, boys still represented over half (56 percent) of school dropouts ages 16 to 24.(14)
Almost twice as many boys as girls ages 3 to 17 have been diagnosed with ADHD.(15)
The employment rate for high school boys between the ages of 16 and 18 dropped from 33 percent in the 1995-1996 school year to 25 percent in the 2003-2004 school year.(16)
In 2006, 7 percent of boys were out of school and unemployed.(17)
A boy is more likely to be a victim of a serious violent crime, such as assault, robbery, and homicide, as he gets older: 15- to 19-year-old boys are much more often victims of those crimes than are 10- to 14-year-old boys.(18),(19)
Research also shows that specific subpopulations of boys are experiencing particular struggles:

From 1995 through 2005, American Indian/Alaska Native boys ages 10 to 18 consistently had higher rates of suicide and death by motor vehicle crashes than White, African American, and Hispanic boys.(20)
In 2004, the homicide rate for African American teen boys was 55 per 100,000. That’s more than double the homicide rate for Hispanic boys, nearly 4 times the rate for American Indian boys, and nearly 20 times the rate for non-Hispanic White boys.(21)
Although racial disparity in the juvenile justice system is declining, the violent crime arrest rate for African American juveniles was still four times that of White juveniles in 2003.(22)
African American and Hispanic adolescents have improved their performance on standardized tests over the last 20 years; however, their achievement continues to be lower than that of their White peers.(23)
In 2004, 7 percent of White adolescents ages 16 to 24 were high school dropouts, compared with 12 percent of African American adolescents and 24 percent of Hispanic adolescents.(24)

Incarceration rates for African American male high school dropouts more than doubled between 1980 and 1999.(25)
In 2005, 49 percent of Hispanic males, 47 percent of White males, and 30 percent of African American males in high school had at least one drink of alcohol within 30 days of being surveyed.(26)