Girls have been posting higher reading scores than boys for decades, but other trends suggest they may also have surpassed boys in overall academic performance. Girls have higher high school grade-point averages, are more widely represented as school valedictorians, and attend and graduate from college in greater numbers than boys. All this has educators, researchers, and journalists debating: Are the boys in U.S. schools in crisis, and, if so, what should educators be doing differently to help them succeed? Concerns that boys are at serious academic risk have been in the spotlight before. The most recent concerns focus largely on literacy skills. One reason gender gaps in reading have captured so much attention is that they seem universal. On a recent Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, which measured performance on 4th-grade reading tests and other literacy indicators in 40 countries around the world, girls outscored boys in all educational systems from which sufficient data were available. In the United States, the gaps also seem to hold across differences in race, ethnicity, and family income. This article provides some steps educators can take to help all struggling readers. The goal for most educators would be for all groups to make gains, but for low-performing groups to make larger gains so that they catch up.