Headlines

On the front page of The Washington Post's Metro Section for Friday, September 11, there were adjacent headlines:

• At the top of a caption showing the NASCAR driver Danica Patrick, Revving up girls' dreams
• Above a story just right of the picture, Girls are in majority at D.C.'s top high schools

The top high schools in this case are public high schools with competitive entry, namely Benjamin Banneker (math and science), School Without Walls (humanities), and Duke Ellington School of the Arts.

What does it all mean, the high school part? I don't know. The statistics quoted show boys graduating from high school at anywhere a rate anywhere from 10 percent to 25 percent lower than girls in their ethnic groups, so something is going on. But as far as the selective high schools, I wonder. A family on our street has a daughter who graduated from Banneker and another who graduated from Walls. Their two sons tested in to Banneker, then chose Wilson, a good school but one that admits by boundary or lottery. Their mother teaches in the DC public schools and must have regarded the choice as reasonable.