While the last 20 years have seen huge and long overdue strides in the achievement of girls and women, boys have not fared so well. Women in the United States now earn 62 percent of associate’s degrees, 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees, 60 percent of master’s degrees, and 52 percent of doctorates. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, boys are 30 percent more likely than girls to flunk or drop out of school. When it comes to grades and homework, girls outperform boys in elementary, secondary, high school, college, and even graduate school and boys are four to five times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). According to the U.S. Department of Education, boys make up two-thirds of the students in special education, are five times more likely to be classified as hyperactive, and, according to the CDC, teenage boys are five times more likely to commit suicide than teenage girls.

Christina Hoff Sommers, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “The War Against Boys”, pointed out in the New York Times “…Black women are nearly twice as likely to earn a college degree as black men. At some historically black colleges, the gap is astounding: Fisk is now 64 percent female; Howard, 67 percent; Clark Atlanta, 75 percent. The economist Andrew M. Sum and his colleagues at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University examined the Boston Public Schools and found that for the graduating class of 2007, there were 191 black girls for every 100 boys going on to attend a four-year college or university. Among Hispanics, the ratio was 175 girls for every 100 boys; among whites, 153 for every 100.

Young men from middle-class or more comfortable backgrounds aren’t lagging quite as far behind, but the gender gap exists there, too. Judith Kleinfeld, a psychology professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, analyzed the reading skills of white males from college-educated families. She showed that at the end of high school, 23 percent of these boys scored “below basic,” compared with 7 percent of their female counterparts. “This means that almost one in four boys who have college-educated parents cannot read a newspaper with understanding,” she wrote.

President Obama has recognized the challenges facing boys with his My Brother’s Keeper initiative and a number of Connecticut cities, including New Haven and Hartford, have signed on. The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation is also a partner. For our society to be successful, all our citizens must have the chance to succeed, boys and girls, men and women alike.

Helping boys succeed does not mean turning the clock back for girls. Indeed, many of the programs that have been found to foster boys’ engagement and achievement also address girls’ needs. Every student benefits from approaches to learning that help students focus, pay attention and stay engaged. More physical activity for boys and girls is desperately needed to create healthy men and women in the future. A college education is important, but equally important is recognizing the need for excellent vocational schools that also have a strong academic component. These careers can offer boys a way ahead, as well as exposing girls to non-traditional careers with higher earning potential

Boys’ underachievement is a problem that crosses socioeconomic and ethnic boundaries and deserves the attention of the community at large. Everyone succeeds when we all succeed; if we build better boys, we create better men to partner with our amazing women.

Holly Cheeseman is the executive director of the Children’s Museum of Southeastern Connecticut.