Is the age-old adage that “boys will be boys” a lame excuse for bad behavior, or is it a credible reflection of the cultural nuances of boys’ emotional and intellectual development?

Some are beginning to think it is the latter, as the number of boys falling behind their female counterparts in classrooms throughout the state and the nation grows and as the percentage of boys being diagnosed with ADD/ADHD climbs.

Worcester Deputy Superintendent of Schools Stephen Mills, who once worked as a school psychologist, said that the fact that girls mature faster than boys is a factor in the gender achievement gap.

“You go to any of our middle schools and you see girls acting like young women, while the boys are still acting like little boys,” he said.

Others, such as Worcester School Committee member Mary J. Mullaney, agree, but also believe that classroom management and teaching styles, curriculum materials and cultural norms impact greatly on the academic growth of boys.

As currently constituted, schools are failing boys particularly at the elementary level, according to Mrs. Mullaney.

“I think elementary schools subconsciously favor females,” she said.

“Most of the teachers at that level are females, and the environment rewards behaviors such as sitting still, doing neat work, coloring between the lines, raising your hands. Boys don’t typically do those things. They were once the hunters and the gatherers. They like to move around, and in a large classroom you cannot have a lot of movement.”

Mrs. Mullaney believes that educating some boys separately from girls is an option education policymakers should consider, and one of the state’s top education research groups, the Cambridge-based Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy appears to agree with her.

Tomorrow, between 8:30 and 10 a.m. at the Bank of America Auditorium in Boston, the center will be taking the first high-profile look at the widening gap between girls and boys in Massachusetts with the release of a policy brief titled: “Are Boys Making the Grade? Gender Gaps in Achievement and Attainment.”

S. Paul Reville, executive director of the Rennie Center, said a study of the state’s achievement test scores and dropout rates gives a “pretty distinct portrait of an achievement gap between boys and girls.”

“The issue of gender differences has not received sufficient attention in Massachusetts and elsewhere, but the scope of this gap deserves some attention,” he said.

Here are some of the brief’s findings.

In Massachusetts, the achievement of girls not only exceeds that of boys in English language arts at all grade levels, but girls are generally outperforming boys in math as well, an area which has traditionally been a strength for boys.

Across the state, especially in the 10 largest urban districts, dropout rates are higher for boys than girls, and statewide more than two-thirds of special education placements are male.

The class of 2005 lost 23 percent of the male students that had enrolled as ninth-graders in 2002. This attrition rate was significantly higher among blacks and Hispanics. Nearly half of the 4,829 Hispanic students enrolled in ninth grade in 2002 failed to make it to the 12th grade four years later.

Closer to home, city educators have noticed over the past several years that the overwhelming majority of the top students in the system’s graduating classes have been girls.

Worcester Superintendent James Caradonio noted, for example, that one year only one of the 25 top students at one high school was a male.

“The gender gap is real and negatively affects boys, most notably black and Hispanic boys,” the brief concluded.

In addition to permitting some experimentation with single-sex education, the Rennie Center is recommending that educators incorporate information about gender differences into teacher training and pay particular attention to black and Hispanic males.

Mr. Reville cautioned that the new scrutiny on how boys learn should not distract ongoing efforts to help girls further raise their achievement levels.

“Twenty years ago, people were saying that the education system favored boys over girls, and now some are saying it is going the other way,” Mr. Reville said.

“But this is not a race between the sexes. What is important here is that any group in which we find a significant gap between what they are doing and proficiency — that group’s learning deserves some attention.”

Contact Clive McFarlane by e-mail at cmcfarlane@telegram.com.

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