Is Single-Sex Schooling the Answer?

In last week’s Sunday paper, The New York Times Magazine featured a very interesting article titled, “Should Boys and Girls Be Taught Separately?” The article examined the positive and negative aspects of single-sex education in schools. By separating genders in schools, many parents and school faculty feel that standardized test scores will increase for the lowest-achieving cohort of school-aged children, minority boys. I was intrigued by this topic because recently in class, I feel like we always come to the same conclusion about NCLB. That is, it is close to impossible to try to standardize the way teachers teach and how students learn. Despite six years of No Child Left Behind, the achievement gaps between rich and poor students and white and black students have not significantly narrowed. Every child learns material using different strategies, and to try and standardize one assessment to test an entire nation of children would be ineffective in seeing how children are achieving. So, maybe teachers need to customize their teaching styles and curriculum to conform to the student, instead of having the student conform to the teaching style. Maybe single-sex schooling is the answer, because by separating genders in schools, teachers can teach to a specific group of individuals. If teachers know how boys and girls learn differently, then they can incorporate specific methods in the classroom that work well for a group of boys or girls. Here is what I learned from this article.

It has been well established that boys are currently behind girls in high-school and college graduation rates. In order to explain this, some principals, faculty, and parents seem to think that schools are being shaped by females to match the abilities of girls. Because of the allegations that certain schools discriminated against males, the Department of Education (as part of No Child Left Behind), passed new regulations making it easier for districts to create single-sex classrooms and schools. The number of single-sex schools has skyrocketed. In 1995, there were two single-sex public schools operating in this country and by this past fall, the number is more than 360, with boys-and girls-only classrooms now established in Cleveland, Detroit, Albany, Gary, Ind., Philadelphia, and Dallas.

There are two separate camps who favor single-sex education; those who favor the separation because the two genders are biologically different, and those who believe boys and girls should be separated because they have different social experiences and social needs. The man who supports the biological standpoint is Dr. Leonard Sax. Leonard Sax, a family physician, has his own medical practice, yet he is devoting his time to promote single-sex public education. Keep in mind that Dr. Sax is not a teacher. He lectures at schools, explaining boys’ and girls’ innate differences and how to teach to them. He wrote a book entitled, “Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences.” The book features case studies in which boys, failing and on Ritalin in coeducational settings are now pulling their grades up in single-sex schools. Sax also has a lot of neurological data on boys and girls to back him up. He mentions that, “boys don’t hear as well as girls, which means that an instructor needs to speak louder in order for the boys in the room to hear her; and that the boys’ visual systems are better at seeing action, while girls are better at seeing the nuance of color and texture.” Also, Sax notes that boys solve maze puzzles using the hippocampus; girls use the cerebral cortex. Boys covet risk; girls shy away. Boys perform better under moderate stress; girls perform worse. For all these reasons, boys and girls should be taught in separate environments in order to do their best work.

Although Dr. Sax’s research is convincing, some feel that his remarks are sexist, and that his studies do not gel with other neurological/ physiological studies on sexes. For example, when comparing motor development in boys and girls, the ability to balance, to hop, to use your feet, to use your fingers and hands, 5-year-old girls (as a group) look almost completely the same as 6-year-old boys. The same story is true for speed of output in the case of how quickly a child answers a question. “The gender gap in motor development shrinks through grammar and middle schools,” says Martha Denckla, director of the Developmental Cognitive Neurology Clinic at Kennedy Krieger Institute in Maryland.

Perhaps boys and girls will succeed better in different environments because they differ neurologically and because they have different social needs. David Chadwell, the coordinator of Single-Gender Initiatives at the South Carolina Department of Education says, “For boys, you need to get them up and moving. That’s based on the nervous system, that’s based on eyes, that’s based upon volume and the use of volume with the boys. You need to engage boys’ energy, use it, rather than trying to say, No, no, no. So instead of having boys raise their hands, you’re going to have boys literally stand up. You’re going to do physical representation of number lines. Relay races. Ball tosses during discussion.” For the girls, Chadwell says to focus on “the connections girls have (a) with the content, (b) with each other and (c) with the teacher.” Chadwell also says that girls should not be scolded for talking to one another, because they are more social beings, and teachers should incorporate a lot of meeting in circles, where every girl can share something from their own life that relates to the content in class.

Single-sex schooling is not a new idea. The idea has been around for a while, in private and parochial education, and has proved to be effective. Girls High of Philadelphia has an all female enrollment. Over 95% of Girl’s High graduates are accepted into 4-year colleges or universities. The Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem (T.Y.W.L.S.), is another all-girls school for grades 7-12. Since opening in 1996, every girl in every senior class at T.Y.W.L.S. in Harlem has graduated and been accepted at a four-year college. Yeshivas are another example of single-sex schooling. They are Orthodox, all male Jewish institutions for Torah study.

So how effective is this type of schooling? Well, according to the article, students in single-sex schools do outperform coed students in standardized math, reading, science and civic test scores. However, the article goes on to explain why this may be. First, single-sex schools are better at providing kids with a positive sense of themselves as students. Second, in order to end up in a single-sex classroom, you need a parent who cares enough to make a choice between coed or single-sex education for their child. Therefore, these parents are taking active roles in their children’s educations.

After reading the article, I thought about the pros and cons of single-sex education, and here’s what I came up with. The bottom-line is that sending kids to gender specific schools will not help these children become tolerant citizens. They will not be exposed to working in group settings with all different types of people. In today’s world, good communication and being a team player are important skills to make it in the business world. If we separate children in schools, will they be able to develop these important characteristics? I doubt it. Separating children into different classrooms and exposing them to different teaching styles may improve test scores, but ultimately, children will be confined to their own cohort. Learning how to work with diverse groups, in a multicultural environment, with different intelligences is as important, if not more important, than a perfect score on the PSSA.

By: Marisa Rosenberg