Saturday, October 10, 2015

"For every 167 women in four-year colleges, there were only 100 men."

Michelle Obama’s misguided girl power agenda | New York Post: "In the developing world it is true that girls are prevented from getting an education. They are too poor, their families need them to carry water to and from their homes, they have no sanitary facilities at school or there are Islamist lunatics trying to kill them or kidnap them when they go to school. But the girls in America are in an entirely different situation. In 2013, according to the Current Population Survey, 25- to 34-year-old women were 21 percent more likely to have a college degree than men and 48 percent more likely to have finished graduate school...

Even the most disadvantaged girls are more likely to get an education here than boys from similar circumstances. Richard Whitmire, author of “Why Boys Fail,” has argued that our discussions about the racial achievement gap and even the effects of poverty on educational attainment have masked the biggest disparities, which are between girls and boys. In an interview in the magazine Education Next, Whitmire cites a 2009 study by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University that tracked the students who graduated from Boston public schools. For every 167 women in four-year colleges, there were only 100 men. But poverty wasn’t the problem — all the kids were coming from the same neighborhoods. “The study found that black females were five percentage points more likely to pursue further study after high school, including community colleges, four-year colleges and technical or vocational schools, than white males,” notes Whitmire. All of which is to say that girls in America don’t need a pep talk from the first lady anymore than, say, boys do."


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