Single-Gender Education: Why the Rush?

A couple of years ago, my wife casually mentioned that our son’s school in Chattanooga, Tennessee, would be introducing some single-sex classes. I was surprised because I thought any type of segregation was illegal. But after a little research, I found that a sexual revolution has been brewing in our public schools.

The trend toward single-sex classes began in 2006 as part of the No Child Left Behind reforms. The Department of Education issued new rules making it easier for school districts to create them. Seven years ago, only 11 public schools offered single-sex classes. Now, the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education reports that at least 445 classrooms nationwide are segregated by gender.

Why the rush to segregate? Some educators see it as an answer to the “boy crisis.” They believe that boys struggle in school more than girls and point to lower test scores and higher dropout rates as proof. Critics of this viewpoint say the “crisis” tends to rest with boys at inner city and rural schools – areas where public schools are weak in general.

Beyond this debate, many educators simply feel that single-sex education is best for some – though not all – students. They believe parents should have the choice of putting their children in all-boy or all-girl classes.

Single-sex advocates come to the debate armed with passionate anecdotal evidence. A New York Times article on single-sex schools last March drew more than 100 responses from readers. Many claimed that the single-sex classrooms they grew up in eliminated the normal sexual tension of coed classes. Students felt more liberated to explore and study. And teachers felt they could spend extra time on subjects in which either boys or girls struggle.

“What a better environment in which to learn,” one of them wrote, “little peer pressure and I developed very deep and lasting friendships.”

Despite glowing reviews like this, there is no solid empirical evidence that single-sex classrooms improve learning. In 2005, the Department of Education tried to clear things up by analyzing the studies done on single-sex and coed classes. But the results were mixed. Forty percent favored single-sex school over coed schools, 45 percent found little difference between them, 8 percent favored coed schools, and 6 percent saw positive results for one gender and not the other.

Meanwhile opponents feel that single-sex classes are a waste of time. They say students need to learn early on how to deal with the opposite sex. And single-sex classes may cut tension for some heterosexual students, but that’s hardly the case for gay and lesbian teens. At the same time, sex discrimination seems almost inevitable in such a setting.

“Our kids [in single-sex classes] were basically being taught ideas about gender that come out of the Dark Ages,” said one disgruntled parent in Mobile, Alabama.

(Not that students need to be segregated by gender in order to pick up strong ideas about what gender means. As psychology professor Rebecca Bigler has noted [2], many common classroom practices teach subtle, unintended lessons about gender roles.)

Count me as one of the skeptics about single-sex education. I have a hunch that in ten years this we’ll look back on this as one of those “What were we thinking?” moments in school reform. But I’m willing to see where this experiment is going. And for the sake of the kids involved, I sure hope I’m wrong.