Yours is an interesting comment, but none of it is responsive to the submitted article's concern about differences between boys and girls in school. I have actually lived in another country, and I am aware by direct observation that that country has BOTH higher academic achievement by school pupils than the United States and pervasive recess periods during the school day when young children get outdoors and exercise. I think that United States school officials need to stop believing legends about what goes on in other countries and actually

a) OBSERVE what the school day looks like in other countries,

http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Schools-David-Perkins/dp/0028740...

b) analyze textbooks and teaching practices that produce superior results

http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematic...

c) take careful note of classroom practices that respect learners and help learners learn deeply and not just superficially,

http://timssvideo.com/timss-video-study

and

d) systematically train teachers in effective teaching techniques.

http://teachlikeachampion.com/

Boys and girls, all over the world, are exposed to many different kinds of school schedules and school practices, and it is the basic procedure of educational science to carefully observe the different combinations of home, societal, and school influences on children and try to figure out what helps learners have the best results.

It takes one teacher to teach 20 students.

Where my wife grew up, it took one teacher to teach 60 pupils. A class size of 50 was an exceptionally small class size. Several of the countries that best the United States in academic achievement

http://timss.bc.edu/PDF/t03_download/T03_M_Chap1.pdf

have much higher class sizes per teacher than the United States has. It is definitely possible to improve teacher productivity over the low level maintained in the United States. There are whole books on the subject.

http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Gap-Schools-Japanese-Educatio...

http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Schools-David-Perkins/dp/0028740...

http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-Class...

http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematic...