The AJC has a good story today on the trend in single-gender public schools.
I attended a single-gender Catholic high school and enjoyed it, but wouldn’t argue strongly for the practice as I didn’t see any academic benefits. In the Northeast, it was very common for Catholic schools to become single gender at the high school level. There were co-ed parish schools through eighth grade, and then girls and boys went in different directions, only to meet up at school dances on weekends.
This piece attributes the rise of single gender schools in the South to an effort to prevent black boys from attending classes with white girls in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that it was unconstitutional to establish separate public schools for black and white students.
The story states:
But Galen Sherwin, staff attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, said its history in public schools is much darker and has roots in the South, where it was broadly instituted in an effort to evade the desegregation requirements of Brown v. Board of Education to try “to prevent black boys from being in the same room as white girls.”
“In the wake of Brown, many schools in the south integrated racially but segregated on the basis of sex,” Sherwin said.
In 2002, only about a dozen schools were separating the sexes, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, an advocacy group. Now, an estimated 500 public schools across the country offer some all-boy and all-girl classrooms.
Proponents argue the separation allows for a tailored instruction and cuts down on gender-driven distractions among boys and girls, such as flirting. But critics decry the movement as promoting harmful gender stereotypes and depriving kids of equal educational opportunities. The ACLU claims many schools offer the classes in a way that conflicts with the U.S. Constitution and Title IX, a federal law banning sex discrimination in education. Researchers also have weighed in.
Diane F. Halpern, a former president of the American Psychological Association, co-authored a review of studies last fall in the journal Science that found research doesn’t support the benefits of single-sex education. Additionally, there are lots of problems whenever you segregate people into groups, Halpern said.
“Stereotyping increases so we really do have lots of data that says it’s just not supported,” she said.
However, proponents have put out their own studies, showing the benefits of separating students. Middleton Heights Elementary cited the research when it first piloted single-sex classes in a few grades. The goal was to address the struggles boys were having in reading.
The idea proved so popular that single-sex classes have expanded throughout the school. Parents can opt out, a choice required by law, if they want their kids in a traditional coed classroom.
In the single-sex classes, teachers use microphones that allow them to electronically adjust the tone of their voice to match the level that research suggests is best for boys. When preparing for a test, the boys may go for a run, or engage in some other activity, while the girls are more likely to do calming exercises, such as yoga.
Both sides agree the idea is not new and has a long history in private schools.
Nancy Levit, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, addressed this issue at a meeting of the Association of American Law Schools: “Think about it, in terms of race,” she said. “What would people say if the state paid for an all-white school or an all-black school? As long as there was a racial element nobody would have a problem seeing a constitutional difficulty.”
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog