Perhaps predictably, as picked up by the Guardian Education blog, the debate risks becoming mired in "who suffers most", but of greater interest to me has been the shift in discourse.
When the failures under discussion were black kids, speculation frequently cited "cultural" factors (such as a "lack of reading culture" among "immigrants" or "minorities") or hinted obliquely at questionable parenting practices; Occasionally more overtly racist commenters would cite sources ranging from contestable to discredited (including The Bell Curve) to support prejudiced notions of racial superiority.
When the failures under discussion were white boys, discourse shifted noticeably to structural factors: the feminisation of the curriculum; the disproportionate attention and affirmation of "immigrant" or "minority" kids; the demonisation of the white working class, as epitomised in the Shilpa Shetty / Jade Goody dynamic. Nowhere have I encountered speculation that the reason behind white boys' failure might be cultural or racial inferiority.
Of interest to me too is the sudden focus on gendered performance. As a tail-end Boomer, I've encountered nothing but males being outperformed by females at every level of schooling - from being clustered in the lower-streamed classes to higher rates of failure up the line, leaving senior classes significantly female - despite the disproportionate amount of attention garnered by boys in the classroom. And I very much doubt anyone could accuse the Christian National Education curriculum of the 70s of being feminised...
This relative educational failure of boys appears to be nothing new. That it now enjoys attention says more, I suspect, about political agendas than about educational performance.