Where boys don't 'behave like girls'

School's novel strategy targeting disparity in scores

Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News

Published February 4, 2006 at midnight

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BOULDER - Douglass Elementary School fourth-grader Grant McNutt recently chose skateboarding idol Tony Hawk as the subject of his class presentation on a famous American.

Wearing a helmet and carrying a skateboard, Grant, 10, played the role of the man who turned pro at age 14.

It's a subject that suits Grant.

"I like skateboarding," he said later. "It's fun, and it lets me get out my energies."

Letting Grant study a skateboarder is part of a strategy to make Douglass more "boy friendly" at a time when schools are trying to close the achievement gap between boys and girls, said Principal Kelley King.

In addition to giving students more latitude to choose study topics, they're allowed to move more freely around the classroom, and more emphasis is placed on self-expression through physical activities, such as art and role playing.

'Boys less tolerant'

"Girls tend to be more compliant and willing to sit down and do what they're told. Boys are less tolerant of that," King said. "If they don't have control and they're not interested, they're less likely to buy in.

"So we really need to approach it that way, and not make everyone act and behave like girls."

District officials say Douglass has narrowed the gap between boys and girls on tests administered under the Colorado Student Achievement Program since adopting the strategy 18 months ago.Douglass received a flurry of national publicity recently because of those efforts, with coverage in Newsweek magazine and the Today show.

Data released separately by the Boulder Valley School District and available on the Colorado Department of Education Web site show continued gaps at Douglass for some subject areas and some grades, but not in others. And the gaps vary slightly depending on which of two statistical methods are used to analyze the data.For example, the gender gap in fifth-grade math is 10 points when CSAP data is compared by a statistical method called a "weighted index," widely used by school districts and the Colorado Department of Education.

The gap is only 9 points when the data is broken down by the percentage of students who score at the proficient or advanced levels on CSAP tests. The education department uses those categories to report scores to the public on the Internet.

For the school district as a whole, the gender gap for fifth-grade math is 0.01 percentage points when data is broken down by students achieving the proficient or advanced level.

Boys and girls post near-identical scores in fifth-grade reading by both measures. Districtwide, girls hold a 7-point advantage.

However, by either measure, the Douglass scores are in the educational stratosphere, with 98 percent of the fifth-grade boys and 88 percent of the girls scoring at the proficient or advanced level.

Statewide, only 63 percent of boys and girls perform at that level. Douglass's CSAP scores are typical of affluent schools. Only 3.8 percent of Douglass students qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches, a key measure of poverty, and only 2.4 percent - 11 of the school's 469 students - are black or Hispanic. None are English language learners.

Consistent expectations

King believes the methods used at Douglass would help boys who are part of other groups, such as minorities or English-language learners.

Much of what Douglass teachers are doing has become common in public schools in recent decades, including greater freedom of movement in the classroom and wider choice of study topics. But Douglass is using those strategies more systematically to reach boys, said Sheri Williams, the Boulder Valley School District elementary education director.

"They're not things that are not in the repertoire of teachers as a whole, but they may be more frequently visible in a school that is saying boys do learn differently, we do need to think about this daily," Williams said.

Ellen Miller-Brown, who heads middle schools for Boulder Valley, says the methods used at Douglass would work in other grades. "I think these are practices that are valuable for elementary, mid and high school," she said.

Miller-Brown and King have been following research on differences between the brains of boys and girls for three years. King said the methods at Douglass are consistent with that research.

That doesn't mean a return to different expectations for boys and girls - just different ways of getting there, King said.

"If you constantly use methods that don't honor their neurological strengths, they're going to go more into rest state, they're going to check out," King said.

Douglass third-grade teacher Pam Unrau said she used to tell students not to make their stories too gross.

"After thinking about boys and what excites them, we've loosened the reins," Unrau said.

Coby Chow, 9, a student in Unrau's class, described recently his Halloween story as a tale of "blood and assassination."

But some girls take advantage of the increased latitude, too.

Monica Gronseth, 9, said her Halloween story was about kids locked in a refrigerator in a basement. They all die.

"They couldn't eat anything except crumbs off the floor," she said.

morsonb@RockyMountainNews.com or 303 892-5209

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