Education Experts on Gender Gap

The AAUW Where the Girls Are study does not address this particular subject, but some of the questions that parents need to ask as their children prepare for school are about readiness. For example: Have I been reading to my children? Do they enjoy learning? Are they progressing developmentally? Are they healthy and ready for the classroom experience? Many authoritative studies stress early learning preparedness as a key to academic performance, enjoyment of learning, and motivation in school.

To my mind, large-scale, public, single-sex education is still an experiment, albeit a promising one. You can learn more about the national organization promoting this here. There is also an international organization of private, single-sex boys' schools here.

If these are not available in your area, then I would ask questions about how your schooling options treat boys as boys. What is the ratio of boys to girls in special education? What are the high school graduation rates for boys and girls? What are the college continuation rates after high school graduation for boys and for girls? They should be about the same, and if they aren't you should ask why.

I see that you live in Utah. Utah is the only state in the country where men and women earn bachelor's degrees in equal numbers. There appears to be something especially supportive in Mormon culture about the development of boys. I am told this involves non-familial mentoring programs. You may know about these already.