Teachers tend to grade those of the same gender more leniently. Boys appear to be aware of this fact

[4th law of robotics]

Abstract: Our results show systematic gender interaction effects: male students invest less with female teachers than with male teachers while female students invest more with male teachers than with female teachers. Interestingly, female students’ perceptions are not in line with actual discrimination: Teachers tend to give better grades to students of their own gender. Results do not suggest that ethnicity and socioeconomic status play a role.

Full paper: http://www.insead.edu/facultyresearch/research/doc.cfm?did=48404

Basically boys are aware that female teachers will judge them more harshly and are more willing to give up without trying.
With male teachers they (accurately) do not perceive a bias against them.

Whereas girls interestingly enough expect preferential treatment from male teachers (inaccurate) and are unaware (apparently) of the preferential treatment they actually get from female teachers.

As far as I am aware there is no national movement to correct the gender gap wherein boys perform poorly compared to girls nor is there any effort towards achieving demographic parity among our teaching staff.

Being denied equal access to education: check your privilege.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

1. I confess...

...in college I did my best (not that it was difficult) to avoid women teaching math. In my first freshman year Calculus course about 10 weeks into the course we started a type of problems that my Physics class had been working on since week 3. When I encountered a problem of this type on a math test, I wrote down a formula I had memorized for Physics and solved getting the right answer but losing 3/4 of the points for not deriving the formula. Probably had nothing to do with the teacher's gender but I've matured since then.

[ElboRuum]

2. Hmm...

It is often opined that equal outcomes are the "push" behind recruitment in professions, attending college, et. al. Now I've always been for equal opportunity rather than equal outcomes because equal opportunity can be enforced without utilizing artificial means to a general positive effect, whereas in order to guarantee equal outcomes, you almost have to introduce inequities within the system that can have unfortunate unintended consequences.

Yet here is a perfect opportunity to sue for equal outcomes in the teaching profession, however, since it is men who are underrepresented, crickets chirp.

[4th law of robotics]

3. Bingo

if we were talking minorities (80% white in a 50% minority district) or a hypothetical school where they happen to have 80% male teachers (I don't think this has ever happened) there'd be a lively debate on different methods we could employ to address this imbalance.

But since it's just males, even though there is demonstrable negative effects on roughly half the population this leads to a resounding. . . meh.

[lumberjack_jeff]

4. Despite getting grades that preclude them from college

Boys perform significantly better on standardized tests.

Teachers award grades based on criteria other than apprehension of the subject matter.

Teachers produced by modern colleges are indoctrinated in the idea that elevating the performance of girls is their noble goal. It becomes quickly apparent that suppressing the performance of boys is the easy way to the same outcome.

Disparities in scores by gender and income also widened:

•Average scores dropped 5 points for females and 2 points for males. While females represent more than half (53.5%) of test takers, their total average score (1496) is 27 points below the average score for males (1523).

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-08-25-SAT-scores_N.htm