More public schools splitting up boys, girls

In this photo from May 2012, Dil­lon Elledge, 8, right, and Brody Kem­ble, 7, sec­ond from right, work with flash cards in their all-boys class­room at Mid­dle­ton Heights Ele­men­tary in Mid­dle­ton, Idaho. Mid­dle­ton is believed to be the only pub­lic school in Idaho offer­ing all-boy and all-girl class­rooms, though the move­ment is wide­spread in other states and is now being tar­geted by the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union in a bit­ter strug­gle over whether single-gender learn­ing should be con­tin­ued. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Jessie L. Bonner)

HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH

JESSIE L. BONNER

Asso­ci­ated Press

MIDDLETON, Idaho — Robin Gilbert didn’t set out to con­front gen­der stereo­types when she split up the boys and girls at her ele­men­tary school in rural south­west­ern Idaho.

But that’s exactly what hap­pened, with her Mid­dle­ton Heights Ele­men­tary now among dozens of pub­lic schools nation­wide being tar­geted by the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union in a bit­ter strug­gle over whether single-sex learn­ing should be con­tin­ued. Under pres­sure, single-sex pro­grams have been dropped at schools from Mis­souri to Louisiana.

“It doesn’t frus­trate me,” Gilbert said of the crit­i­cism, “but it makes the work harder.”

While Gilbert’s school is believed to be the only one in Idaho offer­ing single-sex classes, the move­ment is wide­spread in states like South Car­olina, which has more than 100 schools that offer some form of a single-gender program.

Single-sex classes began pro­lif­er­at­ing after the U.S. Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment relaxed restric­tions in 2006. With research show­ing boys, par­tic­u­larly minor­ity boys, are grad­u­at­ing at lower rates than girls and far­ing worse on tests, plenty of schools were pay­ing attention.

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.

On a recent tour, Gilbert peeked into a class­room of third grade boys, who had dec­o­rated their walls with a camp­ing theme, com­plete with con­struc­tion paper camp­fires and a sign that read “fish­ing for books.”

Next door, the third-grade girls opted for an “under the sea” motif. When they spot­ted Gilbert in their class­room door way, a few of the girls jumped from their seats and ran to give her a quick embrace.

They learn the same cur­ricu­lum, they still lunch and play at recess together, but the dif­fer­ences in their learn­ing envi­ron­ments are appar­ent, from the blue chalk­boards in the boy class­rooms, to the red paper hearts that dec­o­rated the wall of one of the girl’s classrooms.

These envi­ron­ments are dri­ven by stu­dent inter­ests and what they’re learn­ing at the time, Gilbert said.

Dr. Leonard Sax, the founder of the Pennsylvania-based National Asso­ci­a­tion for Sin­gle Sex Pub­lic Edu­ca­tion, con­tends the move­ment is about break­ing down gen­der stereo­types, not pro­mot­ing them.

“We want more girls engaged in robot­ics and com­puter pro­gram­ming and physics and engi­neer­ing,” Sax said in a tele­phone inter­view. “We want more boys engaged in poetry and cre­ative writ­ing and Span­ish language.”

For advo­cates like Sax, the increase in this form of learn­ing is excit­ing, but it’s trou­bling for others.

The ACLU launched a national cam­paign, Teach Kids, Not Stereo­types, in May and sent cease-and-desist let­ters to school dis­tricts in Maine, West Vir­ginia, Alabama, Mis­sis­sippi and Vir­ginia. The group also asked state offi­cials to inves­ti­gate single-sex pro­grams in Florida, while send­ing pub­lic record requests to schools in another five states, includ­ing to Gilbert’s school in Idaho.

Doug Bon­ney is legal direc­tor of the ACLU of Kansas and West­ern Mis­souri, where he suc­cess­fully chal­lenged sin­gle sex classes in Missouri’s Adrian R-III School Dis­trict. He argues there’s no proof single-sex class­rooms work while there’s plenty of evi­dence they actu­ally enhance gen­der stereo­types and lead to sexism.

“This isn’t the right step to address higher dropout rates by boys,” Bon­ney said. “They pro­mote false stereo­types about sex-based dif­fer­ences that don’t exist. Pro­mot­ing sex stereo­types can harm both girls and boys.”

Both sides agree the idea is not new and has a long his­tory in pri­vate schools. 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.

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.”

The anal­ogy drew a heated reac­tion from Sax, who argues that a fed­eral judge in Ken­tucky debunked this notion when rul­ing last year against par­ents who tried to block single-sex classes at a Breck­en­ridge County school. Crit­ics like the ACLU are out of line when they draw par­al­lels to Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion, Sax said.

“Either they’re really stu­pid and not able to grasp what the judge is say­ing in the rul­ing, or they’re being delib­er­ately mis­lead­ing,” he said.

Posted by AP News on Jul 8 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.