Is MCPS systemically Biased against Boys?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting discussion. I’m a teacher also also a mother of sons. I’ve found that the ways boys misbehave in my classes are much more physical — pushing, hitting, grabbing things — than the ways girls misbehave — such as being off task, talking, relational aggression. I will definitely admit that I am more likely to send a student to the office for physical aggression. So it’s more often the boys. Maybe male teachers have more patience with boys’ hitting but I sure don’t. If you don’t want them to go to the office then teach them to keep their hands to themselves.

Hitting is one thing but I don't believe that does justice to the problem. Thanks to Zoom, many of us sat and listened to teachers praise every half hearted effort of girls. Prop them up as examples of good work while simultaneously scolding boys for their work, for not speaking sweetly enough, etc.

+1 that was definitely one of the few benefits of the in-person school closures: parents got an unprecedented look into their children's curriculum and classroom dynamics. That is why I now know how incredibly subpar things are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a boy and girl in elementary school in Bethesda, both good kids but not angels. My daughter can do no wrong. Even when she tackled and punched a boy giving him a black eye after she got shoved in soccer, all the teachers did was ask her if she was ok.

Any small amount of aggression on the part of my son results in him being sent to the office or an email to us—making a joke in class, yelling at a girl that shoves him at recess etc.

I thought it was just my perception. But in speaking to other parents the common feedback I have received is that MCPS is much, much, tougher in the way they discipline boys compared to girls…aggression is harshly punished in boys, but almost encouraged in girls.

Has anyone had a similar experience?

You are ridiculous

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yep we've seen it too. Also in our Bethesda ES, there are no male teachers and no male adminstrators. The only males working in the building are the building services and janitorial staff.

I've seen little attempts by MCPS to address the massive gender imbalance in hiring.

It's not an MCPS imbalance in hiring. It's a gender imbalance in the number of education majors who are women vs. men. Teaching has always traditionally been seen as a woman's career (I bet teachers would be paid much better if it was a male-dominated field!). The way to address the gender imbalance in schools is to encourage more boys to go into teaching, which won't happen until we change societal expectations of men as providers and women as nurturers.

We heard the same thing in tech -- not enough "pipeline" of women so that's why STEM fields had a huge gender imbalance. So, we focused on ensuring gender balance at the college level, which is why the STEM fields at many universities are now evenly balanced in terms of students studying. The result is more women in STEM fields, since more women are being educated in those fields. We made STEM "cool" even at the grade school level, which is great.

But... no such efforts when the gender imbalance is the other way. Again, we're failing our boys.

The problem with your comparison with STEM is that girls/women have traditionally been seen as not being good enough for these professions, while teaching was seen as not good enough for boys/men - because it doesn't pay enough, it's "easy," etc. (in both cases, boys/men are seen as superior).

Excuses, excuses. We heard a million reasons why women couldn't enter field X and they proved them wrong. Why don't we apply the same to boys?

Men are over-represented in administration positions, as opposed to classroom teacher roles. That suggests the problem isn't the pipeline so much as what men choose to do with the education they receive.

[Anonymous]

Why are your kids this aggressive? This is on you

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve often looked at the gender breakdown of students with disabilities in our school. It’s about 3/4 boys. That number seems pretty lopsided given that disabilities typically affect both genders in equal numbers. The main difference is that girls often are not early identified because their behavior is often less disruptive than boys. One could argue that the lack of addressing the needs of girls with disabilities is discrimination due to disability and gender.

Definitely something MCPS should look into more and address. The numbers indicate a serious problem in schools.

As a woman who had undiagnosed adhd +, and a parent of 2 children with adhd +, it's not the schools job to find students with disabilities. The shocking disparity is the fault of the psychology industry, not the schools.

Federal laws include Section 504 and the IDEA puts the responsibility to identify students with disabilities and their needs on public schools that accept federal funding. There’s a wide discrepancy based on financial resources for parents to pay for private assessments.

As is, MCPS data shows boys are identified more than girls. That shows a probability of bias that impacts the child find process.

Schools are not allowed to diagnose learning problems or disabilities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Totally agree about schools being biased against boys, but when it comes to youth sports, boys definitely have the advantage and it's pretty petty to be pissed about Girls on the Run.

No, you. If you had a boy who needed confidence building and found such a program exists but your child was purposely excluded because he's a male, you'd be pretty disappointed too. Imagine "straights on the run" or "Caucasians on the run" being an acceptable program.
It's exclusion based on a protected class: sex. They shouldn't allow that. Especially when schools push it/host it/advertise it.

DP. There is a confidence building running program for boys as has been pointed out. If you think it's important and needed, but your school doesn't have it, you should step up and lead it. If your only interest is in tearing down things for girls, then feel free to keep whining about it on the internet.

DP

That’s not the point. The point is that the school is actively offering and promoting a program for girls without offering an opportunity for boys. That would not be allowed in any other context. The PP is correct.

Youth sports orgs like BCC Baseball use public facilities to offer programs that overwhelmingly serve boys. They have priority for using fields because they have been around longest.

What? That is not true at all. I have a son who plays baseball for BCC and a daughter who plays softball for BCC. There are plenty of organizations that serve girls’ athletic teams. Field hockey is a sport that overwhelmingly attracts females.

Your post makes no sense.

BCC Baseball does serve girls, but it serves a lot more boys than girls. This is true of most youth sports orgs, but if course there are exceptions as you have pointed out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve often looked at the gender breakdown of students with disabilities in our school. It’s about 3/4 boys. That number seems pretty lopsided given that disabilities typically affect both genders in equal numbers. The main difference is that girls often are not early identified because their behavior is often less disruptive than boys. One could argue that the lack of addressing the needs of girls with disabilities is discrimination due to disability and gender.

Definitely something MCPS should look into more and address. The numbers indicate a serious problem in schools.

As a woman who had undiagnosed adhd +, and a parent of 2 children with adhd +, it's not the schools job to find students with disabilities. The shocking disparity is the fault of the psychology industry, not the schools.

Federal laws include Section 504 and the IDEA puts the responsibility to identify students with disabilities and their needs on public schools that accept federal funding. There’s a wide discrepancy based on financial resources for parents to pay for private assessments.

As is, MCPS data shows boys are identified more than girls. That shows a probability of bias that impacts the child find process.

Schools are not allowed to diagnose learning problems or disabilities.

But they do via their own psychologists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve often looked at the gender breakdown of students with disabilities in our school. It’s about 3/4 boys. That number seems pretty lopsided given that disabilities typically affect both genders in equal numbers. The main difference is that girls often are not early identified because their behavior is often less disruptive than boys. One could argue that the lack of addressing the needs of girls with disabilities is discrimination due to disability and gender.

Definitely something MCPS should look into more and address. The numbers indicate a serious problem in schools.

As a woman who had undiagnosed adhd +, and a parent of 2 children with adhd +, it's not the schools job to find students with disabilities. The shocking disparity is the fault of the psychology industry, not the schools.

Federal laws include Section 504 and the IDEA puts the responsibility to identify students with disabilities and their needs on public schools that accept federal funding. There’s a wide discrepancy based on financial resources for parents to pay for private assessments.

As is, MCPS data shows boys are identified more than girls. That shows a probability of bias that impacts the child find process.

Schools are not allowed to diagnose learning problems or disabilities.

The words used above is identifying. They have staff to do the necessary assessments to identify students with disabilities and their needs. Identifying is written in the law.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve often looked at the gender breakdown of students with disabilities in our school. It’s about 3/4 boys. That number seems pretty lopsided given that disabilities typically affect both genders in equal numbers. The main difference is that girls often are not early identified because their behavior is often less disruptive than boys. One could argue that the lack of addressing the needs of girls with disabilities is discrimination due to disability and gender.

Definitely something MCPS should look into more and address. The numbers indicate a serious problem in schools.

As a woman who had undiagnosed adhd +, and a parent of 2 children with adhd +, it's not the schools job to find students with disabilities. The shocking disparity is the fault of the psychology industry, not the schools.

Federal laws include Section 504 and the IDEA puts the responsibility to identify students with disabilities and their needs on public schools that accept federal funding. There’s a wide discrepancy based on financial resources for parents to pay for private assessments.

As is, MCPS data shows boys are identified more than girls. That shows a probability of bias that impacts the child find process.

Schools are not allowed to diagnose learning problems or disabilities.

The words used above is identifying. They have staff to do the necessary assessments to identify students with disabilities and their needs. Identifying is written in the law.

How do schools track how well theybdonat *identifying * students with disabilities? Is there standard screening, like there is with hearing and vision? Why not?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yep we've seen it too. Also in our Bethesda ES, there are no male teachers and no male adminstrators. The only males working in the building are the building services and janitorial staff.

I've seen little attempts by MCPS to address the massive gender imbalance in hiring.

It's not an MCPS imbalance in hiring. It's a gender imbalance in the number of education majors who are women vs. men. Teaching has always traditionally been seen as a woman's career (I bet teachers would be paid much better if it was a male-dominated field!). The way to address the gender imbalance in schools is to encourage more boys to go into teaching, which won't happen until we change societal expectations of men as providers and women as nurturers.

We heard the same thing in tech -- not enough "pipeline" of women so that's why STEM fields had a huge gender imbalance. So, we focused on ensuring gender balance at the college level, which is why the STEM fields at many universities are now evenly balanced in terms of students studying. The result is more women in STEM fields, since more women are being educated in those fields. We made STEM "cool" even at the grade school level, which is great.

But... no such efforts when the gender imbalance is the other way. Again, we're failing our boys.

The problem with your comparison with STEM is that girls/women have traditionally been seen as not being good enough for these professions, while teaching was seen as not good enough for boys/men - because it doesn't pay enough, it's "easy," etc. (in both cases, boys/men are seen as superior).

Excuses, excuses. We heard a million reasons why women couldn't enter field X and they proved them wrong. Why don't we apply the same to boys?

Men are over-represented in administration positions, as opposed to classroom teacher roles. That suggests the problem isn't the pipeline so much as what men choose to do with the education they receive.

Do you know that for a fact? The superintendent of MCPS is female as are many of her deputies.

MCPS only seems to post demographics by race, not gender, of their staff:
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/about/

I wonder why?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve often looked at the gender breakdown of students with disabilities in our school. It’s about 3/4 boys. That number seems pretty lopsided given that disabilities typically affect both genders in equal numbers. The main difference is that girls often are not early identified because their behavior is often less disruptive than boys. One could argue that the lack of addressing the needs of girls with disabilities is discrimination due to disability and gender.

Definitely something MCPS should look into more and address. The numbers indicate a serious problem in schools.

As a woman who had undiagnosed adhd +, and a parent of 2 children with adhd +, it's not the schools job to find students with disabilities. The shocking disparity is the fault of the psychology industry, not the schools.

umm it's literally the LAW for schools to find students with disabilities!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve often looked at the gender breakdown of students with disabilities in our school. It’s about 3/4 boys. That number seems pretty lopsided given that disabilities typically affect both genders in equal numbers. The main difference is that girls often are not early identified because their behavior is often less disruptive than boys. One could argue that the lack of addressing the needs of girls with disabilities is discrimination due to disability and gender.

Definitely something MCPS should look into more and address. The numbers indicate a serious problem in schools.

As a woman who had undiagnosed adhd +, and a parent of 2 children with adhd +, it's not the schools job to find students with disabilities. The shocking disparity is the fault of the psychology industry, not the schools.

Federal laws include Section 504 and the IDEA puts the responsibility to identify students with disabilities and their needs on public schools that accept federal funding. There’s a wide discrepancy based on financial resources for parents to pay for private assessments.

As is, MCPS data shows boys are identified more than girls. That shows a probability of bias that impacts the child find process.

Schools are not allowed to diagnose learning problems or disabilities.

The words used above is identifying. They have staff to do the necessary assessments to identify students with disabilities and their needs. Identifying is written in the law.

How do schools track how well theybdonat *identifying * students with disabilities? Is there standard screening, like there is with hearing and vision? Why not?

MCPS has data that they internally review. I saw Phil Lynch review the data at a SEAC meeting before. When broken down by disabilities as compared to general population distribution, some disabilities were over identified in MCPS where others were underrepresented. One of the largest over identified was Autism. They have the ability to also analyze by gender.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve often looked at the gender breakdown of students with disabilities in our school. It’s about 3/4 boys. That number seems pretty lopsided given that disabilities typically affect both genders in equal numbers. The main difference is that girls often are not early identified because their behavior is often less disruptive than boys. One could argue that the lack of addressing the needs of girls with disabilities is discrimination due to disability and gender.

Definitely something MCPS should look into more and address. The numbers indicate a serious problem in schools.

As a woman who had undiagnosed adhd +, and a parent of 2 children with adhd +, it's not the schools job to find students with disabilities. The shocking disparity is the fault of the psychology industry, not the schools.

umm it's literally the LAW for schools to find students with disabilities!

How? What screening do they use they use? When is this screening performed? I don't know a single person who has had their child identified as learning disabled through the school yet I know many parents of learning disabled children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yep we've seen it too. Also in our Bethesda ES, there are no male teachers and no male adminstrators. The only males working in the building are the building services and janitorial staff.

I've seen little attempts by MCPS to address the massive gender imbalance in hiring.

It's not an MCPS imbalance in hiring. It's a gender imbalance in the number of education majors who are women vs. men. Teaching has always traditionally been seen as a woman's career (I bet teachers would be paid much better if it was a male-dominated field!). The way to address the gender imbalance in schools is to encourage more boys to go into teaching, which won't happen until we change societal expectations of men as providers and women as nurturers.

We heard the same thing in tech -- not enough "pipeline" of women so that's why STEM fields had a huge gender imbalance. So, we focused on ensuring gender balance at the college level, which is why the STEM fields at many universities are now evenly balanced in terms of students studying. The result is more women in STEM fields, since more women are being educated in those fields. We made STEM "cool" even at the grade school level, which is great.

But... no such efforts when the gender imbalance is the other way. Again, we're failing our boys.

The problem with your comparison with STEM is that girls/women have traditionally been seen as not being good enough for these professions, while teaching was seen as not good enough for boys/men - because it doesn't pay enough, it's "easy," etc. (in both cases, boys/men are seen as superior).

Excuses, excuses. We heard a million reasons why women couldn't enter field X and they proved them wrong. Why don't we apply the same to boys?

Men are over-represented in administration positions, as opposed to classroom teacher roles. That suggests the problem isn't the pipeline so much as what men choose to do with the education they receive.

Do you know that for a fact? The superintendent of MCPS is female as are many of her deputies.

MCPS only seems to post demographics by race, not gender, of their staff:
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/about/

I wonder why?

The Schools at a Glance county summary shows MCPS professional staff at 21.8% male and support staff at 24.7% male.

https://ww2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/sharedaccountability/glance/

[Anonymous]

I was dumbfounded when I volunteered in my kids' MCPS classroom that teachers reward students who can sit still on the classroom rug as early as K. All the boys fidgeted, all the girls got the rewards. As they got older, there were various extracurricular enrichment geared toward girls - not just Girls on the Run but also arts programs where boys were not permitted to join. It blew my mind that public schools could discriminate against one gender. I asked the art teacher at our MCPS elementary school, who held afterschool art classes that were only open to girls, why - she said boys rarely signed up because they were too busy with sports.

I have 2 boys, one of whom loves sports and the other who is totally indifferent. An afterschool art class or casual running club would have been a godsend especially as they got ready for the social pressures around middle school. It should be illegal to offer preferential activities that discriminate by gender.