NEWS
- Girls are the majority at some of D.C.’s top high schools, which some see as an inequity [Excel Academy PCS, Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS, and KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
Girls are the majority at some of D.C.’s top high schools, which some see as an inequity [Excel Academy PCS, Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS, and KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
September 10, 2015
Benjamin Banneker Academic High School has an abundance of college-level classes and some of the highest graduation rates in the District. It’s also overwhelming female. Three out of four students in the 2013-2014 school year were girls.
Banneker is not the only high-performing District high school that serves mostly girls. Duke Ellington School of the Arts, which offers both arts and academic enrichment, was 68 percent female in 2013-2014, according to the most recent data available. And School Without Walls, where some students take classes at nearby George Washington University, was 60 percent female.
An academic gender gap — with women outperforming men — is increasingly defining education nationwide. Young women are more likely to graduate from high school and go on to college. Female students began to outnumber males on college campuses in 1979, and now account for about 57 percent of college enrollment, according to federal data. An annual abundance of female applicants has led many private colleges to offer affirmative action for male applicants.
Disparities in educational attainment and performance are particularly acute for minority boys. In the District, 48 percent of black male students and 57 percent of Hispanic male students graduate in four years, compared with 62 percent of black girls and 66 percent of Hispanic girls and 82 percent of white boys and 91 percent of white girls.
Only about a third of the city’s black male students were proficient in reading in 2014, according to the DC CAS scores, compared to 46 percent of black girls and 94 percent of white girls. And while black boys made up 34 percent of all students in D.C. Public Schools in 2013-2014, they were 58 percent of those who had been suspended.
“Black males are always at the top of any negative list. It’s not just that young black males have the highest dropout rate, the lowest college completion rate, or the highest rates of unemployment, it’s literally life and death stuff — black males live shorter lives,” said Tim King, the founder of Urban Prep Academies, an all-boys charter school organization in Chicago that has sent hundreds of African American males to college in the past decade. “It all points to the fact that you have this particular population that is in crisis and needs some help and needs some intervention.”
Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson launched an effort last winter to concentrate resources on mentoring programs and other supports for black and Hispanic males in schools. She hopes to raise $20 million in private funds to support the Empowering Males of Color initiative.
The centerpiece of her plan is an all-male college prep school, modeled after Urban Prep and being created with help from King, that is scheduled to open in 2016 in a heavily minority neighborhood east of the Anacostia River. The District already has a public charter school, Excel Academy in Anacostia, that serves only girls.
Michelle Lerner, a spokeswoman for D.C. Public Schools, said officials are “confident that building up mentorships, providing schools with additional funding, and opening an all-male college prep high school will make a big impact in the lives and education of males of color in DC.”
Banneker principal Anita Berger, who has worked at the school since 1993, called the low number of male students at the top school a “disappointing trend” that has held steady throughout the time that she’s been there, with boys rarely surpassing 30 percent of the student body.
Imani Hopper, a 2015 graduate of Banneker, said she thinks a lot of boys in the District aren’t interested in Banneker because it’s so challenging and because it doesn’t have a football team.
“A lot of males in D.C. want to play sports, so when it’s time to go to college, they get recruited,” she said.
Berger said she has reached out to potential male applicants over the years, letting them know they are welcome and even that they can still play on sports teams at neighborhood schools. “We want to make sure that as many students as possible have the opportunity to come.”
But she said few boys apply and are accepted. Banneker requires applicants to have a minimum grade-point average of 3.0, teacher recommendations, and an interview.
Some of the city’s highest-performing charter high schools, including Thurgood Marshall and KIPP DC College Prep, also enrolled majority girl classes in 2013-2014, with 62 percent and 61 percent of their enrollments female that year.
Conversely some of the city’s comprehensive high schools, which admit students year round and have low test scores and high dropout rates, served a majority male student population: Cardozo Education Campus was 64 percent male and Roosevelt High School was 61 percent male.
Michael J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank, noted the “missing young men” in Washington’s top high schools in a blog post Thursday. He suggested that the imbalance could warrant a policy response, such as extra funding for schools that serve more male students or affirmative action for boys applying to competitive application schools.
“I stand with strivers, the low-income kids who are most dedicated to learning and willing to work hard,” Petrilli wrote. “But the notion that male strivers are few and far between leaves me despondent.”
Keith Thomas, a 2015 graduate of Banneker, said he enjoyed going to a “mostly girls” school, where he made a lot of friends, including a close group of male friends that supported each other.
This fall, he’s a freshman at Old Dominion University in Virginia, where he said he feels well-prepared academically.
“It’s like I’m in high school, but with more boys,” he said.
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