Why So Many Male Students are Falling Behind in School

Jun 11, 2025 | Academics, Boy Brain Science, Health and Wellbeing

Young male student in school uniform Boys are facing unprecedented obstacles to their academic success that begin early in life and compound throughout college and their early careers. School performance data, test scores, college acceptance and dropout rates, and salary data all indicate boys and young men are falling behind.

“The gap between boys and girls is apparent from very early on. The disparities not only exist across the board from kindergarten all the way to college but they are growing over time.” – Ioakim Boutakidis, PhD, Professor of Child and Adolescent Studies at CSU Fullerton

Nationwide, boys are struggling in school, not because they lack potential, but because our educational system does not reflect how boys learn best. Decades of neuroscience confirm that boys’ and girls’ brains develop differently. They process language, emotion, stress, and motivation in different ways, yet most schools, both public and private, continue to rely on teaching models that favor the learning styles more common to girls and not boys.

The result is an emotional and academic crisis for boys as they mature into young men. Boys in elementary through high school are disengaging, being mislabeled, and falling behind academically, emotionally, and developmentally. Boys crave things like structure, leadership opportunities, competition, and experiential applied learning, and one private boarding school on the southern California coast, Army and Navy Academy, is doing just that.

Understanding Why Boys Are Falling Behind

There are four key reasons why males are falling behind in school. Each should be considered when choosing the proper private or public learning environment for a young man entering middle or high school.

1. Developmental Differences

Boys’ prefrontal cortex matures later than girls, which affects focus, impulse control, verbal reasoning, and organizational skills.
Boys’ brains develop differently from girls’ in areas governing speech, emotional regulation, impulse control, and sensory processing.
Boys are naturally more impulsive, more active, and often less verbally expressive, especially at younger ages.
Boys demonstrate more activity in areas governing physical movement, spatial skills, and stress reaction.
Higher levels of testosterone in boys often mean increased competitiveness, risk-taking, and assertiveness, while lower levels of oxytocin make boys less driven to please or seek social harmony compared to girls.

2. Educational System and Structure

In traditional classrooms, the emphasis on rule-following may not align with boys’ active learning styles.
Boys tend to lag behind in reading and writing in elementary school, impacting scholastic achievement as they progress.
Two-thirds of students in special education are male. Boys are twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD.
Boys are more likely to receive medication for behavior and to be diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD).
In classrooms that don’t support their needs, boys often get punished instead of helped. By nature, boys can be more aggressive unless the energy is channeled in healthy ways.
The lack of male role models in the classroom means limited positive examples of male conduct and behavior.
School environments where consideration isn’t given to how boys learn and naturally behave can result in disengagement, poor grades, and disproportionately imposed negative consequences. 72% of all suspensions and expulsions are of boys.

3. Social Factors

Lack of purpose and social isolation in the classroom can impact motivation and academic performance. This can lead to mental disengagement and even mental health challenges such as anxiety and depression.

4. Impact of the Pandemic

Unfortunately, we are still feeling the terrible effects of the pandemic when almost all public and most private schools across the country moved from interactive, experiential learning environments to 2-dimensional classrooms with watered-down curricula, and students feeling isolated and struggling to manage their own academic pathway. Male students were disproportionately affected, which resulted in alarming rates of disengagement and learning loss.
Increased isolation during the pandemic has driven mental health issues to further hinder academic progress in core subjects that are crucial to college admissions, but also to career advancement.

How Army and Navy Academy Addresses the Challenges Boys Face

For over a century, Army and Navy Academy has practiced a unique approach to educate boys. As a college preparatory, military boarding school, every aspect of academics, athletics, leadership training, character development, and campus life has been tailored to help boys ignite a passion for learning, set goals, make good decisions, and master life skills and good habits. Check out the ANA Difference:

Smaller Class Sizes and Individualized Attention

ANA offers personalized instruction, small classes, and support tailored to boys’ developmental needs. Boys feel seen, understood, and empowered. Whether in the classroom, on the field, or in community service projects, ANA students are immersed in hands-on experiences that keep their brains engaged and their confidence growing.
ANA understands the neuroscience behind male brain development and applies it to the pedagogy, curriculum, daily schedule, campus culture, and leader development model. This model reflects what boys need to succeed: structure, mentorship, movement, and motivation.

Classroom Methods:

ANA is designated as a Gurian Center of Excellence following the pedagogical philosophies of renowned educator and author Michael Gurian, a specialist in brain-based learning.
Teachers use interactive, collaborative lessons that spark curiosity and emphasize teamwork.
Stronger teacher-student relationships foster academic confidence and engagement.

Higher Standards of Conduct and Positive School Culture

At Army and Navy Academy, students are expected to follow the honor code and adhere to the core values of honor, respect, responsibility, integrity, compassion, and gratitude.
Through strong mentorship, students are guided by positive role models and provided with clear pathways to leadership roles on campus. They are encouraged to compete, collaborate, and grow.
The military framework provides the clarity and discipline boys need, while the value system fosters character, respect, and self-motivation.
An emphasis on discipline, responsibility, and accountability creates a supportive and structured environment.

Strong Sense of Community and Belonging

A close-knit environment helps boys build meaningful relationships and a sense of purpose. The single gender approach reduces gender-based distractions and fosters camaraderie and a close brotherhood.

The Academy provides opportunities for leadership and teamwork in a supportive peer group.
Brain rest and recreation help boys gain life balance and social connection. Surf sessions, downtime in the Recreation Hall, and “local liberty” in Carlsbad Village offer structured time for socialization and relaxation.
Exploration and adventure abound at ANA. From “Warrior Aviation” to spring break trips abroad, Harvard Model Congress and weekend excursions, students at ANA stretch themselves intellectually and socially.

Specialized Curriculum and Diverse Extracurriculars

Whether it’s sports, clubs, or leadership drills, boys are up and moving, keeping their minds active and engaged in class and while pursuing extracurricular interests.
Programs are tailored to boys’ interests and learning styles, including hands-on and active learning options. Dynamic clubs and electives cultivate interests in aviation, drone piloting, culinary arts, marching band, entrepreneurship, photography, video production, computer programming, robotics, community service, and much more.
ANA athletics offer 17 different sports, and 4 seasons of play, in a wide range of sports, including, but not limited to: football, basketball, baseball, soccer, water polo, ice hockey, surfing, esports, lacrosse, tennis, cross country, track & field, and golf.

Male Role Models and Mentorship

A greater presence of male faculty and residential life mentors provides positive examples for students to learn how to develop into emotionally healthy young men of character, set and achieve personal goals, follow an extensive daily schedule, manage their personal needs, athletics, academics, and support their journey from disciplined follower to inspirational leader.

The wide diversity in faculty and staff allows students to be guided by individuals from various backgrounds. All are trained in the Gurian single gender methods for educating boys.

College and Career Readiness

Rigorous academics and structured support prepare boys for college. Recent statistics indicate that only 57.6% of male high school graduates attend college vs. 65.3% of females. At the Academy, 100% of students are accepted to college. While not all choose to follow that route, every student applies and is accepted to at least one higher learning institution, which provides access to that opportunity.
Career-oriented electives, clubs, and academic classes help boys gain practical experience in future careers in areas such as aviation, science, engineering, culinary arts, entrepreneurship, diplomacy, media, art, and other fields.
The holistic approach to academics, social, and emotional growth helps boys thrive in a structured environment where they learn to be accountable and responsible.

Potential Considerations

To attend any private school, families need to understand the financial commitment and make a long-term plan.
The cost of a private school tuition like that at Army and Navy Academy can sometimes be offset in college with academic, athletic, and ROTC scholarships or by attending one of the tuition-free service academies: theUS Military Academy (USMA) West Point, the US Naval Academy (USNA), the US Coast Guard Academy (USCGA), the US Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) and the US Air Force Academy (USAFA).
Families should consider the Importance of family fit and values and ensure their teen is highly committed to attending the Academy.
Families should explore the unique needs of their teens when contacting admissions. For instance, ANA offers Learning Strategies for boys with learning differences and ESL/ESOL for international students.

Explore How to Set Your Son Up to Succeed

A private school like Army and Navy Academy offers targeted solutions to help boys overcome educational challenges, find new purpose, confidence and become highly resilient.Army and Navy Academy is a college preparatory school with boarding and day options. Geared exclusively for boys in grades 7-12, we are a Gurian School of Excellence and ranked as one of the best military boarding schools in the U.S.. ANA is located on a beachfront campus in Southern California’s Carlsbad Village.

Sources include: Pew Research, Brown University Health, NIH, Teach Magazine, Gurian Institute

Army & Navy Academy Admission Office:

We encourage families to evaluate their academic, social and other needs, visit the campus, and explore how Army and Navy Academy can support your son’s success.

Phone: 888-762-2338

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Candace Heidenrich

Candace Heidenrich is the CEO of Aperture Advisory Associates, where she works with private secondary and higher education leaders to strengthen programs and practices. She founded Aperture in 2018 after more than a decade in a senior administrative role at a boarding school in California. Additionally, she held faculty and chair positions at private schools and colleges in Los Angeles and Ojai. Her background also includes director and executive level positions with start-ups and Fortune 500 corporations.

While earning her B.A. in Education and Humanities in the Lawrence Henry Gipson Scholar program, she studied abroad at Oxford before pursuing her master’s at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A frequent speaker at national conferences, she is a recognized thought leader and authority on enrollment management and marketing best practices.

A practical leadership guide for boys and parents, built on structure, mentorship, and the daily choices that shape character

If you spend a few minutes with Major General Arthur Bartell (U.S. Army Retired), you’ll notice something right away. He is direct, calm, and deeply focused on people. Academy President Barry Shreiar sat down with General Bartell in a recent podcast episode to talk about what develops confident young men in a world that feels louder, faster, and more complicated than ever.

It was not a conversation about hype or shortcuts but about playing the long game. Boys become men through structure that becomes habit, habits that become lifestyle, and a lifestyle that becomes identity.

The conversation also served as a reminder that what ANA is building is bigger than school. It is an academy in the truest sense, a place designed to shape the whole person for life.

Key Takeaways

Structure is not the goal; it is the tool that helps boys build durable habits.
A boy’s confidence often grows from small, repeatable habits: eye contact, a firm handshake, showing up ready.
Mentorship matters most when it is consistent, honest, and respectful.
Consequences teach better than shame, and recovery from mistakes is a skill boys must practice.
Technology and AI are not going away, so boys need readiness, sequencing, and guardrails to work within this reality, not a denial of it.
Daily physical training is about more than fitness, it is a culture check for discipline.
ANA’s mission to forge virtuous young men is more relevant now than it has been in decades.

Why This Conversation Matters for Young People

General Bartell served 36 years in the U.S. Army. He entered at a pivotal moment, after the Vietnam War and during the rise of the military as an all-volunteer force. He lived the Cold War years, deployed during Desert Storm, served in the Global War on Terror era, and later commanded U.S. Army Cadet Command, overseeing ROTC and JROTC programs nationwide.

As a military child and later an army officer himself, Bartell spent his life moving frequently, and remarkably, his eight years serving as the president of Army and Navy Academy was the longest he had lived in one place.

That matters because it is how he is able to understand what ANA does so clearly. He knows what instability feels like and what leadership requires. He also knows why a values-driven environment is not a “nice extra,” it is a stabilizing force, especially for those in formative phases of life.

Lesson 1: Your Day Builds You, One Rep at a Time

One of the most practical stories Bartell shared in this episode was about physical fitness training and why, through it, character is revealed.

General Bartell remembered a commanding general in the 10th Mountain Division who believed he could evaluate a unit simply by watching their morning physical training (PT) routine. This general would show up unannounced and watch how the unit formed up, how they carried themselves half-awake, followed instructions, and how they stayed together when it got uncomfortable. Afterwards, he would send a letter to the commanding officer, detailing what he observed went well and what needed work.

That story resonates with cadets because at ANA, PT is not just exercise; it is part of the culture.

It teaches boys to do hard things early, before excuses pile up.
It reinforces the idea that discipline is a skill, not a personality trait.
It creates a collective challenge, often uncomfortable, which becomes shared pride.

For boys, especially, this matters because the body is often the front door to the mind. Movement can regulate emotion. Exertion can reduce stress. Physical challenge can create clarity. General Bartell’s leadership point is simple: the little things show the truth. A unit’s character shows up in the morning. A boy’s character does, too.

“He used to say that he could tell everything about a unit by how they did their PT.”

– General Arthur Bartell

Lesson 2: Structure Is Not Control, It Is a Launchpad

Structure leads to habits, and habits lead to lifestyle.

ANA uses the military model because it provides a clear, boy-friendly structure. The point is not blind conformity but to reduce chaos by building consistency.

This is one reason families often see changes quickly in a boy who needs a reset. When the day has a rhythm, boys stop negotiating every step and instead start practicing steadiness.

Here is what that can look like, in real-life terms:

A uniform is structure. How a cadet wears it is a habit.
A handshake is structure. Eye contact is a habit.
A schedule is structure. Showing up ready is a habit.
A rule is structure. Owning choices is a habit.

Those habits become a lifestyle, and lifestyle becomes identity. Over time, boys stop “trying to be disciplined” and start recognizing themselves as disciplined. That shift is a major part of what parents want, even if they do not always describe it that way. They want their son to feel capable and to trust himself. Structure done well helps boys build that trust.

“We have a structure here and our structure leads to habits, and habits lead to a lifestyle.”

– Barry Shreiar, ANA President

Lesson 3: Consequences Teach Better Than Punishment

Boys will make mistakes, and many will test boundaries. Some of that is immaturity, some of that is wiring, but the simple truth is that boys often learn by doing, not by hearing.

General Bartell likes to reference a hot stove as an easy image to make his point. You can warn a boy not to touch a hot stove, but many still feel compelled to test that warning. That is not a moral failure. It is a developmental reality. The key is what happens next.

Punishment says: you are the problem.
Consequence says: your choice has an outcome, now let’s learn and recover.

At ANA, the goal is not to crush a boy for a mistake but to build his ability to recover, make a new choice, and keep moving forward. This is a life skill, not just a school skill.

“I never liked this notion of punishment, so I would push this notion of the consequence.”

– General Arthur Bartell

Practical Strategies for Parents and Educators: Consequences That Build Character

State the rule and the reason in one sentence.
Use predictable consequences, not emotional ones.
Keep your tone calm, even when your son is not calm.
Separate the boy from the behavior. Address what happened, not who he is.
Ask one reflective question after the consequence: What will you do differently next time?
Praise recovery. Boys need to learn that bouncing back is part of strength.

Lesson 4: Mentorship Is the Shortcut Boys Actually Need

Mentorship is repetitive, consistent, and sometimes feels inconvenient. It is a weekly phone call. It is the adult who is willing to say the hard thing, respectfully, and stay in the relationship.

Shreiar and General Bartell talked about General William Crouch, an ANA alumnus and former Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, who served the Academy as a board leader and mentor. In the Pentagon, he had a reputation for being intimidating. At the Academy, he was direct, but also deeply empathetic. For General Bartell, he became a grounding presence during his transition into school leadership.

This is exactly what boys need too. They need adults who:

tell the truth clearly
keep standards high
don’t withdraw when a boy struggles
model steadiness under pressure

That is how boys learn to lead themselves and later to lead others.

“He epitomized the word mentor. He was always brutally frank with me, but always respectful.”

– General Arthur Bartell on General William Crouch

Lesson 5: In a Tech-Saturated World, Boys Need Readiness and Order

The episode turned toward one of the most urgent realities facing parents and schools: boys are receiving information out of sequence.

General Bartell mentions how early boys are gaining access to smartphones, and how unprepared they can be for the volume and intensity of what comes through that device. Shreiar extends the idea with a powerful analogy: kids are being handed advanced material before they have the basics.

AI adds another layer. The challenge is not simply academic integrity. The deeper issue is development. If a boy uses powerful tools before he understands fundamentals, he can lose the chance to build:

critical thinking
discernment
frustration tolerance
the ability to spot what does not make sense

In other words, he can lose the very muscles he will need to thrive. This is where virtue education becomes practical. Virtues like responsibility, integrity, and self-control are not abstract. They are the reason a boy chooses the hard work first, and the shortcut second.

“They’re not prepared. They’re not mature enough to understand the information that they have.”

– Barry Shreiar, ANA President

Practical Strategies for Parents and Educators: Helping Boys Use Tech Without Losing Themselves

Teach in proper sequence: fundamentals first, tools second.
Create phone-free zones tied to purpose, like meals, homework start time, and bedtime.
Ask your son to explain his thinking out loud. This reveals gaps that tech can hide.
Teach a simple rule for AI: AI can assist your thinking, but it cannot replace your thinking.
Build “friction” into impulsive habits: charging phones outside bedrooms, app limits, or scheduled check-ins.
Model restraint yourself. Boys learn more from what they observe than what they are told.

ANA as a Living Lab for Virtue, Structure, and Growth

This conversation is a clear window into what ANA is designed to do. ANA is not trying to produce perfect boys. It is trying to shape capable young men who can handle life with steadiness and character.

That is why cadets practice the basics daily:

showing respect in small interactions
learning to recover after mistakes
building confidence through repetition
living inside a structure that becomes their self-discipline
being mentored by adults who stay consistent

General Bartell described something he noticed immediately after closing his talk to the Corps of Cadets earlier in the day: cadets making eye contact, giving a firm handshake, carrying themselves with confidence. Those are not small details. They are early signals of identity forming. This is what “forging virtuous young men for life” looks like in real time.

“These cadets are our credentials.”

– General Arthur Bartell

What You Practice Becomes Who You Are

Cadets, here is the truth you may not want to hear, but later you will be glad you did.

You are building your future self right now, whether you mean to or not. Every morning is a vote. Every choice is a rep.

When you show up, you build reliability.
When you take correction without collapsing, you build resilience.
When you own a mistake and recover, you build integrity.
When you do the hard thing before the easy option, you build leadership.

You do not need to be perfect, just consistent. And if you are wondering whether this really matters, ask almost any alumnus. Many of them will tell you the same thing: for some, the light bulb may turn on later, but when it illuminates, that’s when the growth happens.

Final Takeaways

Structure is not about control; it is about building habits that last.
Consequences teach boys how life works, and recovery is part of strength.
Mentorship changes trajectories, especially when it is consistent and honest.
PT is a daily culture check for discipline, teamwork, and mental toughness.
Technology requires readiness and sequencing, not just rules.
Virtue is practical; it is the reason boys choose the hard right over the easy wrong.

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