Single-Gender Education Making Comeback?

The Greene County, Ga., public school system recently ignited a firestorm of controversy when it took a precedent-setting step by deciding to convert all system schools to “single-gender academies.”

The measure was designed to increase academic performance and respect for authority — part of a program of “holistic learning” — and to decrease discipline referrals. The incendiary issue was whether a school district could pursue such a wholesale course of action, the role of parents’ choice in the matter, and the efficacy and advisability of single-sex education.

Most American schools before the late 1800s were single-sex in format. In the 20th century, coeducation become the standard. More recently, though, single-sex education has resurfaced in both private and public schools, as major educational “crises” have been observed for both girls and boys. “Coed’s not working,” Benjamin Wright, chief administrative officer for Nashville, Tenn.’s public schools, told The New York Times in March. “Time to try something else.”

Wright’s “something else” is working. Before-and-after studies of schools that switched formats without changing curriculum, enrollment, faculty, or funding yielded surprising results. The Thurgood Marshall School in inner-city Seattle, for example, switched to a single-sex classroom model under Wright’s leadership in 2000. Test scores improved dramatically. Before the conversion, only 10 percent of boys enrolled in the school could meet the state’s reading requirements. By the end of the next school year, 66 percent passed. Discipline incidents dropped from 30 a day to single digits.

Other studies were just as dramatic. Researchers at Britain’s Manchester University randomly assigned students from five public schools to either coed or single-sex classrooms. In the single-sex classes, 68 percent of the boys passed a test of language skills, but only 33 percent of the boys in the coed classes did. Among girls, 89 percent of those in the single-sex classes passed, as opposed to 48 percent in the coed class.

Interestingly enough, North Carolina has only eight public schools with single-gender programs, and several of them are special cases: two are Middle College programs, and the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics has only one single-gender class, a computer science course for girls. Only five other public schools in North Carolina have single-gender programs in place.

South Carolina, on the other hand, has taken unusual steps to facilitate single-gender programs in state schools. The Office of Public School Choice was established last year with directors of Montessori and single-gender programs and more. When David Chadwell was appointed to the Office for Single-Gender Initiatives in July 2007, there were about 30 public schools in South Carolina that had single-gender classes. By March 1, 96 schools had such programs in place across the state, and more than 200 might have single-gender programs by the start of the next school year, Chadwell said.

“Parents can opt out at any time,” he said. “People are not opting out — if they were, these programs would be shrinking.” Many schools that were started with a specific grade are adding more.

The primary argument against publicly funded single-sex education is that it resurrects the “separate but equal” argument used to shore up racial segregation before the Brown decision. Dr. Leonard Sax, executive director of the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education and author of two books on male-female educational differences, has argued that while racial differences have no impact on learning, there are real and quantifiable educational and psychological differences between girls and boys that make single-gender classrooms desirable.

Regardless of the exact explanation, evidence is mounting that boys learn better in the company of boys, and girls with their peers as well. Social pressure is less prevalent, and grades and discipline improve.

Schools are catching on. According to The New York Times, in 1995 there were only two single-sex public schools in the country.

At least 392 public schools nationwide will offer single-sex programs in 2008-09, according to Sax’s association.

While single-sex classrooms or schools might not be the best fit for every student or every school district, renewed interest in alternative educational strategies gives parents a wider range of educational choices to fit their own child’s unique strengths and needs.

John Calvin Young is a contributing editor of Carolina Journal.