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Boys Are Struggling. It Can Take Coaches, Tutors and Thousands a Month to Fix That.
Adolescent boys struggle with disorganization and distraction; parents are paying to keep their middle-schoolers from falling behind
Henry Walker, 14, struggles with sitting still in school all day and was diagnosed with ADHD when he was younger.
Julie Jargon, WSJ
Dec. 9, 2023 9:00 am ET
Teresa Lubovich says nearly every student coming to her private tutoring center to learn personal organization skills is a boy.
Starting at $500 a month, her services don’t come cheap, but she says parents are willing to pay to jump-start their middle-school-age boys, many of whom show up unmotivated and disorganized.
“Often the boys are doing the work and not turning it in, there’s no follow-through on assignments, their backpacks are a mess,” says Lubovich, whose Poulsbo, Wash.-based center serves nearly 400 local and online students. “The parents are tired of fighting about it.”
Columnist Julie Jargon, a mother of three, helps families find answers and address concerns about the ways technology is impacting their lives.
Middle school has become high stakes. Students who have fallen behind by eighth grade are less likely to succeed in high school and graduate on time, teachers and education researchers say.
Lubovich says the focus in recent decades on making education more equitable to girls has resulted in less attention being paid to boys. She and other education experts say boys have struggled to regain their motivation after the pandemic, problems compounded by the omnipresent distraction of laptops and other devices at home and in the classroom.
At tutoring, Lubovich has students put their phones in a basket. The buzzing of notifications on the phones can grow so loud, she sometimes puts the basket on the carpet.
“There’s no way they can hold full thoughts and focus if they’re interrupted every few seconds,” she says.
Henry’s parents spent a lot of time and money helping him in school while his younger sister, Elleanor (in the background), was able to handle things on her own.
Lubovich’s clientele is 70% male, up from 50% before the pandemic. The parents she serves are intent on improving their sons’ study habits and boosting their confidence before they get to high school, where poor organization can have far-reaching effects on school performance and college entry.
Thirteen-year-old boys and girls both have had declines in reading and math test scores since the pandemic, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, yet girls score higher than boys in reading. And girls are completing high school at a higher rate than boys.
Girls have been surpassing boys in school since at least the 1950s, says Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization. Colleges in the past were more willing to accept male applicants in need of improvement. That has changed, and women now outnumber men on college campuses.
Some families have decided that spending on tutors, skills coaches and occupational therapists is worth it for better grades, boosted confidence and self-advocacy—even if the monthly tab runs into the thousands of dollars.
Boys whose families can’t afford that risk falling through the cracks. Some educators are tackling the problem with all-boys middle schools or boy-friendly practices and free tutoring in coed schools—the topic of an upcoming column.
Henry’s story
Henry Walker’s struggles in school started when he was 8 years old. He was fidgety and forgetful. He was eventually diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and doctors said he was on the autism spectrum.
Henry struggled in seventh grade, getting Cs and Ds.
Fidgety boys often distract other kids and get in trouble for it, which can lead parents to seek evaluations for ADHD and other disorders. Nearly 14% of kids in the U.S. between the ages of 12 and 17 have been diagnosed with ADHD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Boys get ADHD diagnoses more than twice as often as girls.
While Henry was unfocused, he wasn’t disruptive in the classroom. He was also in the gifted and talented program. His school decided he didn’t qualify for an individualized education plan, which can include free occupational therapy and other services.
Henry’s parents poured hours into helping him, leaving his younger sister to manage school on her own. They hired a private occupational therapist to help him with organization and time-management skills, at a cost of more than $500 a month. He made great progress until Covid-19 happened. Henry spent sixth grade, an important transitional year, doing remote school from his home in Bloomfield, N.J.
“I’d enter the virtual class, turn off my camera and play videogames,” says Henry, now 14.
His mom, Nicolle Walker, says it was a disaster with lasting repercussions. “He completely lost all motivation,” she says.
When he returned to in-person classes in seventh grade, he struggled with the new middle-school routines. He would do well on tests but forget to turn in homework. He was getting Cs and Ds.
Nicolle Walker hired an occupational therapist to help her son learn organization and time-management skills.
Having to bring his Chromebook to every class was distracting. “I would have 14 different tabs open and be mindlessly going through them,” Henry says.
His mom did what she could to keep him afloat. “I was emailing teachers, checking his grades and constantly asking how much homework he had. It felt like a second job,” says Nicolle, who runs a catering company.
In eighth grade, Henry resolved to do better. He had a good circle of friends and teachers who motivated him.
“I wanted to be good at everything I wasn’t supposed to be good at,” he says.
Beyond the letter grade
The roots of boys’ problems are complex. Things that once benefited boys in school, including male teachers, recess and vocational classes, have dwindled in recent years.
The postpandemic ubiquity of technology also has contributed to boys’ problems—and parents’ frustration. “If you have the option between studying for boring chemistry and playing a videogame, who would choose the chemistry homework?” Reeves says.
Henry spent most of remote school playing videogames and finds tech in the classroom to be distracting.
And with Chromebooks in tow throughout the school day, boys are accessing YouTube and games during class.
Girls have their share of tech problems, too. But the desire for likes and connection that makes social media so appealing—and at times harmful—can benefit girls as they pursue positive feedback from teachers and peers, psychologists say.
Do you know of any schools that are doing innovative things to help boys succeed? Join the conversation below.
Parents, tutors and education experts say boys need extra encouragement to understand the payoff of working hard in school. Basically, they need a bigger reason than letter grades.
For Henry Walker, choosing a vocational high school enabled him to see a career path. He’s now a ninth-grader studying law and public safety, with hopes of going to law school. He brought up his grades in his final year of middle school, ending eighth grade in honors classes with As and Bs. And he continues to work on organization and focus.
His mom remains vigilant.
“I feel there’s always that thing that could trip him up,” Nicolle says. “He could get super involved in a videogame one day and forget to do his work and it could snowball.”
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