Boys in 8th through 12th grades demonstrate a markedly lower commitment to school than girls in the same class ranks, a recent study from the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission says.

Besides not earning grades as high as girls, boys who aren’t committed to education are at a “significantly greater risk for gang membership, carrying guns, … and reporting much higher usages of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs,” said Steve Ballance, director of the Criminal Justice Commission’s Statistical Analysis Center.

“It is clear that boys are reporting lower levels of school commitment and higher academic failure rates than girls,” Mr. Ballance said. “The underlying reason for this trend is less clear. However, it does provide a challenge for school officials, policy makers and parents to devise strategies to help engage boys regarding school.”

Surveying 5,877 boys and 6,001 girls, the study conducted among a sample of students in grades 8, 10 and 12, found that 30.8 per cent of the boys said they “seldom or never found assigned school work meaningful or important.” Among girls, 21.4 per cent expressed the same attitude.

Other Findings:

• Boys also were more likely — 38.4 per cent vs. 28.4 per cent of girls — to report having one or more friends being suspended from school.

• 40.1 per cent of boys vs. 23.1 per cent of girls were more likely to agree that they do “something crazy and a little dangerous at least once a month.”

• 31.7 per cent of boys vs. 20.1 per cent of girls said handguns were “very easy” or “sort of easy” to obtain.

• Girls do show higher risks in some areas, such as being more likely than boys (23 per cent vs. 16.7 per cent) to see themselves as failures, the study says. Also, 48.9 per cent of girls vs. 39 per cent of boys said that their “families argued about the same things over and over.”

FYI

The complete report is available on the Criminal Justice Commission’s Web site, http://www.acjc.state.az.us, by following the “What’s New” link. —