Statistics Suggest Boys & Men Are Falling Behind Academically, Socially, & Economically. Why? What If No One Knows? Can People Have A Rational Discussion About This? Do Schools Have a Role to Play?

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Thanks to a group of anonymous benefactors, students educated in the city's K-12 school system receive paid tuition at almost any college in the state. Other cities have similar initiatives, but the Kalamazoo Promise is unusually generous. It's also one of the few programs of its kind to have been robustly evaluated — in this case by Timothy Bartik, Brad Hershbein, and Marta Lachowska of the Upjohn Institute. They found that the Kalamazoo Promise made a major difference in the lives of its beneficiaries — more so than other, similar programs made in theirs. But the average impact disguises a stark gender divide. According to the evaluation team, women in the program "experience very large gains," including an increase of 45% in college-completion rates, while "men seem to experience zero benefit." The cost-benefit analysis showed an overall gain of $69,000 per female participant — a return on investment of at least 12% — compared to an overall loss of $21,000 for each male participant. In short, for men, the program was both costly and ineffective. This paragraph comes from an article at www.nationalaffairs.com.  The article is titled: "Why Men Are Hard to Help."  The article is written by Richard V. Reeves.  You can read the full article here: https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/why-men-are-hard-to-help Zac and Don discuss the statistics that show boys falling behind in society.  They discuss why this trend is happening.  They wonder if this is a topic that can be rationally discussed.  They also debate whether schools should be taking this issue more seriously.