In reading, Dick lags far behind Jane

Huddled in a cozy corner of a Cooper Elementary School classroom, three pals were having a blast, sprawled on their bellies, reading about the adventures of Captain Underpants and laughing uproariously.

"The boys pick cool books," said kindergartner Vinny DeFrancesco, motioning to his two fourth-grade reading buddies. "Like when kids get in trouble, and funny stuff."

Vinny, Zack DiAmore and Jose Berrios, both 10, were unaware that they were blazing a trail in their Cherry Hill school that experts think could go a long way toward helping bridge a gap - a trio of boys, handpicking books they loved, shoring up reading skills, and fostering a love of literature.

In the region and across the country, boys lag behind girls in nearly every educational benchmark.

The gap shows up in federal and state test scores and is most pronounced in reading, especially in middle and high school. In 2005 New Jersey tests for eighth grade, boys scored 23 percentage points lower than girls. In Pennsylvania, the gap was 11 points. Boys scored slightly higher in math in both states.

Males are more apt to drop out of school and almost twice as likely to be classified as special-needs students. They are less likely to graduate from college, take the SAT or Advanced Placement classes.

There is widespread agreement that the gender gap holds true for all economic, racial and ethnic groups. And while the root of the problem is unclear, it is certain that, as the marketplace becomes increasingly global and competitive, the stakes for boys are high.

"The gap is there," said Gregory Thornton, chief academic officer of the Philadelphia School District, referring to district test results. "Where it really compounds is where there is a racial and a gender gap. That's what you see for African American and Latino males. It's a real challenge for us."

Although boys lag behind girls in some subjects, Peter Kuriloff, professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education, warns that there is not a generalized crisis for all.

"Some boys are doing less well than girls; not all boys," said Kuriloff. "Brown and black boys are not doing as well - poor white boys aren't doing as well."

It's not that boys are performing worse nowadays, Kuriloff said. The point is that girls are performing better.

"There's a kind of moral panic in the country - a feeling that boys have had this sudden drop," he said. "It's not true."

In fact, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that girls have been outscoring boys in reading since 1971. And, the most recent tests in 2005 show a 10-point gap at eighth grade.

The gap narrows around fourth grade, widens by eighth grade, and continues, increasing slightly by 12th grade.

Michael Smith, professor in Temple University's College of Education and coauthor of Reading Don't Fix No Chevys, said the language of crisis was overblown but noted that the facts are plain: Boys read later than girls and lag them in both reading and writing across grades. They read fewer books, and value reading less.

"If you go to your local high school, the basic-track classes are dominated by boys, and the AP courses are dominated by girls," Smith said.

It's not that boys aren't reading, he said. It's just that the things they are reading - comic books, video game manuals, sports magazines - aren't valued by schools.

"We have to create the conditions that support the boys' areas of strengths," Smith said.

Explanations for the gender gap are all over the map.

Thornton, of the Philadelphia district, sees the gender gap as a matter of culture and expectations of girls being more studious and interested in reading while boys are more physical.

"These are purely expectations that we have institutionalized on little boys, so we get the results that we have. You begin to live up to those expectations," he said.

Michael Gurian, a family therapist based in Colorado Springs, author of many books on the gender gap, and founder of the Gurian Institute to help educators work with boys, believes that the gap exists because boys' and girls' brains are wired differently.

"The male brain is not set up to move material as quickly to words," he said. "Walk into a day-care center and watch the boys physically moving a lot to learn. They grab at things, they're impulsive."

A major problem in the contemporary classroom is that teachers aren't trained to cope with kinetic boys' learning styles, Gurian said.

While the debate about gender differences rages in the media and academic circles, it has largely not filtered down to schools. "I haven't heard anyone in Chester County say, 'Wow, look at our boys - they're not doing well,' " said Melody Wilt, the curriculum director for the Chester County Intermediate Unit, which provides services to public school students.

Rather, many educators are focused on giving teachers a toolbox of techniques to work with each child.

Still, the gender gap shows up in schools throughout the region. In Philadelphia and its Pennsylvania suburbs, eighth-grade girls performed better than boys in the state reading test in 215 of 245 schools, according to an Inquirer analysis. In the South Jersey counties of Camden, Burlington and Gloucester, eighth-grade girls did better than boys in 53 of the 60 schools.

Some schools have been focusing specifically on the gap.

Six private schools, including Chestnut Hill Academy, the Haverford School, and the Shipley School in the Philadelphia area, have formed a nonprofit research organization called the Center for the Study of Boys' Lives. Its aim is to learn more about how young men can thrive and to apply the lessons learned to their schools.

The center's executive director, Haverford School psychologist Michael Reichert, said that many of the schools are examining the "hidden curriculum" of gender stereotyping that narrows many boys' options.

The center, he said, hopes to create schools "that don't funnel boys into narrow gender roles and say 'you have to be a jock, you have to be tough, you have to be unemotional, you have to disdain academic achievement in favor of being a party guy or a cool guy.' "

Mary Kline, principal of Cooper Elementary School, oversees a range of efforts to help boys achieve. From the reading buddy program, which pairs kindergartners with older role models; to encouraging fathers to read to their sons; to ensuring the school library is stocked with nonfiction titles that boys often prefer over fiction, it's a conscious effort to help them feel confident.

It's a cause close to Kline's heart. The mother of five boys, she remembers well the day her second son declared his intention to become a chemical engineer "so he'd never have to take another English class. That was such a wake-up call for me. I wanted to make it so that didn't have to be for boys."

Work on gender issues goes beyond classrooms, too.

At Norristown Area High School, African American male staff members from a group called the Norristown Area Alliance of Black Educators pulled together a group of 16 struggling black male students to talk about their perceptions of school.

"It's been eye-opening for us to see young men in a beautiful school with a lot of resources, but some of them have a sense of hopelessness," counselor Ernest Hadrick said.

Adrian Golston and Tyrone Tolson, who are in the group, said they feel branded by their race and their hip-hop clothing - labeled as "corner boys" who are not at school to learn.

"You go in there, and if you try to ask them a question, they will tell you to put your hand down and do your work. If you get mad, they throw you out, and you'll be suspended," said Tolson, a junior.

Said Golston, a senior: "You've got to prove that you belong there as much as anybody else sitting in that classroom."

Tolson's goal is simple. He wants educators to look at students like him, he said, and think, "Here's a potential honor student."

In the Tredyffrin/Easttown School District, a program called Generating Expectations for Student Achievement, or GESA, includes discussion of gender issues, with the goal of making teachers more aware of learning styles.

The program started at a time when attention was focused on girls.

"It used to be that girls were given the short shrift and got all the attention, to make sure their needs were being met," said eighth-grade history teacher Seth Schweitzer, a GESA participant. "I guess some people forgot about the boys."