Girls outperform boys at YES Prep’s Houston schools. Photo: Eli Reed/Magnum Photos

Top charter schools are closing achievement gaps for low-income and minority students, who earn college degrees at three to five times the rate of their peers in traditional schools, writes Richard Whitmire. But the gender gap remains wide, he writes in USA Today.

Girls outperform their male classmates in charter schools, just as they do in traditional public schools, he found.

Generally speaking, the charter networks take in roughly as many boys as girls, but on high school graduation day there are far more girls than boys on that podium. And six years beyond high school graduation, the gender balances worsen: Far more female alumni earn bachelor’s degrees than male.

For example, 59 percent of graduates at YES Prep Public Schools in Houston are female, he writes. Six years after graduation, two-thirds of the females and only one-third of the males complete bachelor’s degrees.

Nationwide, 57% of college students are women notes Whitmire, who’s the author of Why Boys Fail.

Girls are better than boys at working together to solve problems, concludes an international study.