Latest news with #educationcrisis
New York Times
23-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
The ‘Boy Crisis' Is Overblown
For the past few years I have heard endlessly about the education crisis for boys. In short: Compared to girls, boys around the world are underperforming academically, and this is described as a distinctly modern problem. At this point, it is assumed that young boys and men are at a disadvantage in schools, and need help that girls and young women do not. Reactionary conservative commentators, including Jordan Peterson, say boys are underperforming in school because the 'vast majority of teachers are not only female but infantilizing female and radically left,' boys are made to sit for hours at a time, which is against their 'nature,' and they are told that their 'ambition is pathological,' Peterson said in a conversation with my Times Opinion colleague David French. More liberal or centrist pundits, such as Richard Reeves, the author of 'Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It,' agree that part of the problem is a lack of male teachers, and track the problem back to 1972, when Title IX was passed; 'within a decade, women had caught up and then just blew right past the men' in terms of college graduation rates, Reeves said. I had long accepted the basic premise that a lack of male teachers drove the crisis of learning in boys, and that these problems are fairly recent. But sometime this spring I started thinking about the stories I had heard from older friends and relatives, men and women, about their own school experiences. Boys and girls were made to sit for long periods of time in the 1950s, and their punishment for disobeying was likely harsher than it is in many schools today. (I have heard so many tales of nuns hitting kids with rulers.) I don't think there was a widespread embrace of boys acting out in the classroom in previous generations, and yet no one is arguing that American education of the Eisenhower era made boys less ambitious. This revelation made me want to see if there was actually empirical support for the boy-crisis argument. What I found shocked me. There's not much solid evidence that boys do better with male teachers. And girls have been getting better grades than boys since before women had the right to vote. Let's start with what Peterson says about the 'radically left' political leanings of female teachers. In 2021, the Heritage Foundation, hardly a liberal bastion, found that 'a nationally representative survey of K-12 teachers does not support the idea that America's public schoolteachers are radical activists.' And further, 'Teachers may very well be allies, not opponents, in the pushback against the application of critical race theory and other divisive ideologies in the classroom.' But what about the fact that the majority of American teachers are now women? The teaching force in the United States has been majority female for over 100 years. Reeves notes that the current teaching force is 23 percent male — which is roughly what it was between 1920 and 1940. The number of male teachers ticked up a bit after World War II, but peaked at around 30 percent. It's not like our public schools are bereft of male leadership, either. While women make up the majority of elementary school principals, men dominate middle school and high school administrations. Only a quarter of superintendents, who are in charge of multiple public schools or districts, are women. What's more, the evidence that students do better with same-gender teachers is mixed at best. For example, a 2021 study using seven years of data looked at students in Indiana from grades three through eight and found that 'female teachers are better at increasing both male and female students' achievement than their male counterparts in elementary and middle schools,' and 'contrary to popular speculation, boys do not exhibit higher academic achievement when they are assigned to male teachers.' (The biggest positive effect was for girls when they had female math teachers.) All that said, the research that really surprised me was a meta analysis from 2014 by Daniel and Susan D. Voyer that showed that girls have been outperforming boys in school since 1914. This suggests that female academic achievement is hard to correlate with the post-1972 impact of Title IX or other downstream consequences of second-wave feminism. And going back further, I find it hard to believe that a teaching force trained before women had access to their own credit cards was somehow favoring girls, when the society around them wasn't even sold on higher education for women. The Voyers discuss in the paper a similar 'boy crisis' news cycle that happened almost 20 years ago: A 2006 Newsweek article suggested that boys across the United States are falling behind girls in terms of school achievement, whereas 30 years ago, it was presumably females who were lagging. Unfortunately, no specific references were provided to support these statements. However, this did not prevent more reporting of this so-called boy crisis in various newspapers, magazines and other media. Judith Warner wrote an essay for The Times in 2006 very much like this one, called 'What Boy Crisis?' It showed that 'the near-ubiquitous belief that our nation's boys are being academically neglected and emotionally persecuted by teachers whose training, style and temperament favor girls' was 'little more than a myth.' The myth persists because there's always a market for anti-feminist backlash, and now that we're in the middle of an anti-education backlash as well, a mostly female teaching force is sadly an easy target. The 'crisis' doesn't seem to be that boys are doing particularly poorly of late. It seems to be that girls are finally being rewarded in the form of college attainment and more equal pay for their efforts. Make no mistake, there are boys and men who are legitimately struggling now, in school and in life, and they deserve our care and respect. Boys may be cognitively behind girls when they enter school, and we should prepare them better. Everybody should have more recess time, not just 'fidgety boys.' We should figure out why fewer men than women are choosing to go to college. Is it the cost of higher education? Is it that they think they'll earn more money without college, in a trade? In rural areas, young men may be making a rational economic decision to eschew college, as they can earn well without it, and young women are making a rational decision to attend college because that's their only ticket to financial solvency. According to a 2024 report from Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce, 'More than half of men in rural areas with no more than a high school diploma have a good job, but the same is true for only 21 percent of women with a high school diploma.' These are all important questions to consider. But if we are identifying the root of boys' problems based on vibes rather than real evidence, we are not going to find helpful solutions. By incorrectly blaming female teachers, society may also end up downplaying some of the gendered harassment that girls and their female teachers experience — another problem that doesn't seem to be abating. I called Daniel Voyer to ask him the million-dollar question: If it's not because of some kind of discrimination against boys, why do girls get better grades? Voyer said the first thing to note is that the differences between boys and girls are still not enormous — they are more alike than different. But while we can 'speculate until hell freezes over' about why girls do somewhat better, one of the reasons could be the way boys are socialized. To sum it up, it's seen by some as unmanly to study, and there's less of a social cost to girls to be nerdy and to be seen trying to do well. Based on Voyer's analysis, gender performance gaps were smallest in regions like Scandinavia, 'because they are very strong on gender equity,' he said. I also wondered if boys are being socialized at home to know that they don't have to put in as much effort as their mothers and sisters, which might have a knock-on effect. So much of doing well at school and in the modern work force is executive function and organization. If every domestic task or household plan is carried out by a woman, boys may not learn that they need to try. As one high schooler interviewed about why boys take on fewer leadership roles in school told Education Week's Elizabeth Heubeck earlier this year, 'Guys know that if they sit back and relax, something will get done by somebody else.' End Notes The Scarlet Jumbotron: Like everybody else, I have been following the Coldplay concert cheating scandal. (If those words mean nothing to you, catch up here. In short: A former C.E.O. and a fellow executive were caught canoodling on a Jumbotron in Massachusetts and their whole lives were blown up. The C.E.O. resigned.) On one hand, I really hate our hyper-surveillance culture. I know that there are cameras everywhere, but I don't think it is good for us as humans to all accept that we are being watched and judged constantly. I won't defend cheating on one's spouse, but I think the internet's outsize moralizing is over the top. Everybody's grounded, and your homework assignment is to read 'The Scarlet Letter.' On the other hand, it really is pretty dumb to cheat someplace so public. Feel free to drop me a line about anything here. Thank you for being a subscriber Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.
Telegraph
22-07-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Parents letting their children miss school instead of being late
Some parents are keeping their children at home because they are embarrassed about lateness, MPs have heard. Changes in how pupils are recorded as absent if they are more than 30 minutes late to school have been 'unhelpful' for relationships with families, education leaders have suggested. Britain is in the grip of a school attendance crisis, with a record number of pupils missing more than half of lessons. The impact of Covid Department for Education (DfE) data indicate that in 2023-24, 2.3 per cent of pupils were 'severely absent', which means they missed at least 50 per cent of possible school sessions, compared with 2 per cent in 2022-23. Overall, 171,269 pupils were classed as severely absent last academic year, up from 150,256 in 2022/23. In 2018-19, the last academic year before the Covid-19 pandemic, 60,247 were classed as severely absent.
Yahoo
20-07-2025
- General
- Yahoo
46 Wildly Concerning Photos That Sum Up Living In America Right Now
1.I feel so bad for kids nowadays. 2.I mean, I'm not surprised they feel this way. live in the Bad Place. cool, this doesn't sound dystopian at all! Related: if Palantir wasn't a scary enough company without reminding you that it's watching with this massive ad. not really feeling like this is a r/MadeMeSmile situation. It should not have cost $41k to begin with. it should not take two decades to pay off student loans. shouldn't have to donate plasma from our bodies to afford books for school. already costs an arm and a leg, and then they charge prices like this just to access course materials. is not the heartwarming story it's framed as. is this. of the things I hate most about Trumpism is that he's given every misogynistic, xenophobic, racist asshole permission to be a massive misogynistic, xenophobic, racist asshole in public. 14.I heard this ad recently in a taxi. For reference, over 90% of NYC taxi drivers were born outside the US, as of 2020. 15."No one wants to work anymore" for a reason, it seems. Related: want to work. But they're not even getting past the door. me again why people who work part-time (who, btw, are also probably working another job or in school), can't have time off? fact that police violence is so bad that this needs to exist is pretty damning. AI help make the world a better place? Maybe one day. But so far, AI is giving a ton of inaccurate info, creating dangerous situations, and spewing stuff like this. me who said Trump would pay for these tariffs? 21.I feel like there's an easier way to protect kids from death via gunshot wound ( gun laws?), but okay. is the state of American healthcare. is this. Related: denying someone a CANE. case you need a more damning indictment of American healthcare, here ya go. wouldn't need to have cards to remind ICE and law enforcement agents of our rights if they weren't trying to violate those rights. is concerning as hell. 28."I never thought Leopards would eat MY face!!!!" yet this is what rural states voted for. fact that this question is even being landlords deserve jail time. man, we are so, so cooked. about right for America. glad investors can benefit from this. as long as the investors are good! Related: this legal? Why are younger people paid less for the same work? is where we're at now. is why people can't buy homes. happens when we all get priced out of any housing at all? that pretty much sums it up. whole internet's full of paywalls. Since most people get their news from the all pretty much screwed. when we fought a war so that we wouldn't have a king? Look how far we've fallen. is horrifying. in the propaganda...? how is this different from the bus, and why is it more expensive? suspicious. Brother is watching, y'all. Also in Internet Finds: Also in Internet Finds: Also in Internet Finds:
Irish Times
07-07-2025
- General
- Irish Times
1,847 teaching posts vacant amid ‘supply crisis' for new school year
More than 1,800 teaching posts were left vacant this year, while many schools in the Greater Dublin Area report that they are struggling to hire qualified staff in the run-up to the new academic year. Principals say the housing crisis and cost-of-living issues mean it is difficult to find teachers in and around the capital, especially in schools located in more deprived areas . A Department of Education review of teacher payroll in March of this year found there were 1,847 vacant posts across schools. Most unfilled teacher positions were at primary level (1,228 posts) compared to second level (619). A similar review conducted in November last year found there were 1,600 vacant posts, indicating that more posts became vacant as the academic year continued. READ MORE Paul Crone, director of the National Association of Principals and Deputies , said many Dublin schools, as well as those in other large urban areas and some remote locations, were having difficulty finding qualified teachers in time for the new school year. He said the situation was especially acute in subjects such as home economics, physics and engineering, while 'post-primary schools nationally are finding it impossible to fill positions to replace teachers on parental leave, paternity leave and even maternity leave'. 'In many of these situations, principals are covering this leave with the teacher extension scheme, supervision and substitution, PME [professional master of education] students or unqualified teachers,' Mr Crone said. A department spokesperson said, overall, the number of unfilled teaching posts continues to be 'low' with vacancies accounting for 2.5 per cent of all 74,611 allocated posts in schools. The payroll analysis was a 'snapshot at a point in time' and schools continually recruit throughout the year, the spokesperson added. In an attempt to boost teacher supply, meanwhile, the department has extended several measures to assist schools in accessing additional teaching and substitute hours. The 'teaching hours extension scheme' allows teachers on full teaching contracts of 22 hours to provide additional substitution cover of up to 35 additional hours for each term. In addition, teachers who are job sharing will continue to be able to work as substitute teachers in any school, as long as they are off duty, while teachers who are on a career break can continue to work as substitute teachers at primary and second level. Minister for Education Helen McEntee said that while they were not long-term solutions, they will continue to support schools to access qualified teaching for the students in their schools. 'Teachers are at the heart of our schools and we are so lucky to have more teachers working in our schools than we ever have had before. However, in some areas there are teacher supply challenges and I am committed to tackling this,' she said. Other measures due to come into force include fast-tracking newly qualified teachers into secure permanent contracts and helping teachers who have trained abroad apply for registration in the State. Teacher unions, however, say a 'supply crisis' is being accentuated by the affordability of the profession for new entrants and unsustainable workloads. The department said the new public service pay deal will mean salaries for new entrants climb to €46,000 and a maximum of €85,000 per year, which it said compares well internationally. Some schools have also reported difficulties hiring principals in advance of the school year, with deputy principals obliged to 'act up' as a temporary measure. While figures for 2025 are not available, last year 160 primary principals (5 per cent of all principals) and 35 second-level principals (7.5 per cent) retired. These numbers have remained relatively steady over recent years.
Irish Times
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Mother rails against ‘broken system' after special needs child shunned by 60 schools
Families of children with special needs say the 'education system is broken' with many unable to access school places or support needed to help pupils with basic care needs. Charlotte Cahill, whose daughter with additional needs turns six soon, told the Oireachtas education committee on Wednesday that she received more than 60 rejected admission applications from schools over the last two years. This was despite assurances at the time from government ministers that every child known to education authorities would receive a school place. 'After legal action, my daughter was finally allocated a section 67 place, bypassing others on the waiting list. This highlights the ongoing crisis many families face,' she said. READ MORE Ms Cahill, a member of the Equality in Education campaign, said the experience of parents of children with additional needs reflects a system under severe pressure and struggling to function effectively. 'While educators and frontline staff are deeply committed, urgent structural reforms are needed to ensure all children with additional needs can access inclusive, timely, and appropriate education,' she said. In addition, she said the allocation model for special needs assistants (SNAs) and special education teachers was deeply flawed. 'Parents are often excluded from meaningful participation, despite being the most consistent voices for their children,' she said. A focus on meeting primary care needs in SNA allocations meant neurodivergent children – who experience high levels of dysregulation, anxiety, or sensory overload – were being denied SNA support. Rebecca Meehan, whose son has additional needs, said the education system was constantly firefighting with little planning or choice for parents. 'Families are often encouraged to accept whatever place they are offered, regardless of suitability,' she said. The National Council for Special Education (NCSE) told the committee that it was working closely with schools and patrons to speed up the allocation of school places for children with additional needs, with almost 400 special classes sanctioned before Easter. The NCSE is also supporting the establishment of five new special schools in Dublin, Monaghan, Tipperary and Cork. The council's chief executive, John Kearney, said progress was going 'very well' in offering places to pupils, but was unable to tell TDs how many children are without a school place. Minister for Education Helen McEntee told the Dáil recently that 92 per cent of the 3,275 students with a recommendation for a special class or special school place for September 2025 have been allocated a school place. When asked by Socialist Party TD Ruth Coppinger if this meant up to 260 pupils were without a place, Mr Kearney said the Minister was due to brief the Cabinet shortly on placements. Ms Coppinger responded: 'We're dealing with parents who don't have school places ... I absolutely appreciate the pressure you are under ... but we should be privy to this information.' The Irish Primary Principals' Network (IPPN) told the committee that resourcing of schools has not kept pace with growing demands on the system. 'Furthermore, pressures are being brought to bear on some schools to open additional special classes when other schools in the same catchment area do not have any,' said IPPN chief executive Páiric Clerkin. Some schools, he said, were being pressured to admit a seventh or eighth child into special classes designed for six children. 'This is inequitable and unfair,' he said. At the very least, he said, schools require additional teachers and other supports to meet the needs of the children until a new special class place opens up, or a new special class is built.
