Feature > Investigative Report

Boys and Girls Alone:
An Investigation into Single-Sex Public Schools
By Jeanne Lenzer . Illustration by Milan Trenc

“I think if they go to single-sex classes discipline problems will go down. The boys show off for the girls. If you believe in the idea that boys and girls learn differently—and the superintendent at Ellenville brought up things about how boys mature slower and how they are better at straight math while girls like the word problems—then it could be better.” —Robin Markle, age 17, Rondout High School Senior

Single-sex classrooms are making a comeback. Public schools were the exclusive domain of boys until the early 1800s when all-girl academies were established. The drive to equal education progressively led to the demise of most single-gender public schools and classes in the us—until now.

Ellenville Middle School has already made the switch. They offer single-sex classes in academic subjects, but parents can “opt out” if they want their children in co-ed classes. Only 15 to 20 percent did. Although the school made no plans to have their program evaluated, Fran Spielhagen, PhD, an educational policy analyst who teaches at Mount St. Mary College, offered to do a free analysis for the school. She has not yet completed her study, but Ellenville may soon be joined by Rondout Middle School, whose principal, Ray Palmer, says he hopes his school will offer single-sex classes by next year.

Nationwide, only three public schools were single-sex or offered single-sex classes 10 years ago. Currently, 58 schools already offer some form of single-sex education or plan to do so by the 2003–2004 school year, according to the National Association for Single Sex Education.

Surprised? Most people are. In fact, the most common reaction to the change-up is a look of disbelief followed by the inevitable question, “But isn’t that unconstitutional?” The short answer: It was illegal. But not any longer. Under the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind (nclb) Act of 2001, schools are now being encouraged to “reinterpret” Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in education. Enacted in 1972, Title IX prohibits schools from receiving public funds if they segregate classes other than sex education, contact sports, choral groups, and “remedial” or “affirmative action.” The Bush administration has made it clear that they hope to see more single-sex schools with the advent of nclb, and they’ve got some unlikely allies—Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey are also among those who endorse single-sex schools.

Performance claims
Glen Bollin, principal of the Ellenville Middle School, typifies school officials who have ushered in single-sex classes to their schools. He says the change stops boys from out-talking girls in the classroom, making them afraid to speak up: “At this stage of development there’s a lot of peer pressure. Students look at what they perceive to be the reactions of other kids and to what the other students think is cool. That inhibits what they need for a good learning environment. Girls will be hesitant to volunteer to answer questions. They think the boys will make fun of them. I’ve seen it happen quite a bit—they are reluctant to answer questions.”

And it’s not just sexism that they say can be overcome by single-sex classes. Advocates argue that single-sex classrooms can improve boys’ performance as well by allowing them to feel freer to express themselves in English classes, for example, where they under-perform compared with girls. The benefits don’t end there. School violence, truancy, attention deficit disorder, sexual harassment, and even hearing problems can all be slashed by keeping boys with boys and girls with girls, say advocates.

Leonard Sax, MD, founder of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education (nasspe), features testimonials on his Web site from administrators who make impressive claims.

“In the fall of 2001, Principal George Smitherman made a daring move: he decided to split the classrooms up by sex…. The results exceeded his wildest dreams. In mid-June 2002, Smitherman learned that the percentage of students scoring in the two highest categories of the math portion of the Stanford 9 test had jumped in just that one year, from 49 percent to 88 percent. On the reading portion, the percentage of students in the top two categories had shot up from 50 percent to over 91 percent. This improvement means that the students at Moten Elementary are now performing at the same level as students at Washington’s wealthiest private schools. In one year, Moten went from the bottom to the top.” —from nasspe web site www.singlesexschools.org

For parents desperate to cope with children who are not achieving, are cowed by schoolyard bullies, or are simply suffering from the problems that beset students worldwide, it’s easy to see the allure of such a seemingly easy fix. Although single-sex classes are promoted for all age groups by some schools, others focus on middle school students only—a tack taken at Ellenville—with the belief that these students are particularly vulnerable to emerging sexual impulses.

Kristina Carr, a parent of a student at Rondout, says, “There are problems in every middle school. It’s a hellish time. That age group has been a little left out in terms of experimentation or trying to address the special developmental issues—gender segregation is an attempt to deal with those issues. But I’m not convinced it’s going to work.”

Her husband, Richard Carr, PhD, a music teacher in the Poughkeepsie City Schools, argues that beyond the question of whether segregation works is a larger question of the value of education and inclusion: “Single-sex classes may improve some test scores in some places—but it’s not training kids for life.”
Skeptics who question single-sex education raise the same questions raised by the Carrs: Does it achieve what advocates say it achieves? And even if it does—is the price worth it? What is lost in the process?

does single-sex education deliver?
Although the claims, like those made about the Moten Elementary School, seem as precise as they are grand, the picture becomes a lot fuzzier when basic questions are asked. Questions like: What other factors changed when single-sex classes were introduced? Have co-ed programs made similar improvements? What measures are used to determine “success”?

The initial hope for single-sex classes in secondary schools was often based on the experiences of women graduating from all-women’s colleges. But results thought to be due to the absence of men were quickly called into question when it was pointed out that women who attended all-women’s colleges were already high performers from wealthier socioeconomic backgrounds. And that their enrollment in elite (women’s) colleges, such as Wellesley, Smith, and Bryn Mawr, only further ensured their success. In other words, these young women were going to do well no matter what college they attended.

But the founding of an all-girls public school in New York seemed to put the socioeconomic confounder to rest. The Young Women’s Leadership School (ywls), founded in 1996 by the wealthy philanthropist Ann Rubenstein Tisch, enrolls 7th to12th grade girls—most of whom are Latina or African American and come from Harlem. Every one of its first 32 graduates was accepted by a four-year college. The school seemed well on its way to delivering on the premise that sex-segregation pays off.

But does it?

Ann Tisch bristles at any suggestion that money, connections, and influence, and a selective admissions policy—not gender—may drive the success of the ywls. But according to Mayor Bloomberg’s 2001–2002 Annual School Report, ywls is one of the best-funded schools in New York City, with per-pupil expenditures of $13,335 compared with $10,694 for the rest of the system.

Another confounding factor affecting ywls’s success is that, unlike most public schools, ywls has a selective admissions process. Public schools that have to take every student can hardly compete with those, like ywls, that can pick and choose among the “most motivated” and least problematic students. According to Chris Farmer, guidance counselor at ywls, there were 1,200 applicants for just three ninth-grade slots in 2001. The school’s Web site informs applicants that students will be selected based on their “motivation and commitment…hard work, leadership potential and opportunities, academic achievement, personal and civic responsibility.” Furthermore, according to the Web site, “Students are chosen based on an interview, a test—including a writing and math component, attendance and discipline records and teacher recommendations.”

The Young Women’s Leadership School also boasts an impressive 100 percent college-admission rate, as well as an all-expenses-paid counselor whose sole job is to assist girls with getting into college. Tisch, who says that most public school guidance counselors are “burdened with social problems, truancy, filling in for the gym teacher,” decided to provide the ywls students with a college counselor separate from other guidance counselors, who does nothing but guide ywls girls through the maze of college applications—including assistance with writing their admission essays—and obtaining financial aid.

what a difference a counselor makes
One only has to look as far as Kathy Morgan, who was one of ywls’s college counselors (Morgan is now the director of the CollegeBound program at the Young Women’s Leadership Foundation) to see a bulldog in action when it comes to getting disadvantaged students into college. Morgan managed to pull off the same feat at All Hallows High School in the Bronx by wrestling a clean 100 percent of students into college—only she did it despite dismal scholastic performance by the students. According to a Wall Street Journal article of April 1, 1999, students at All Hallows had combined sat scores of 870 out of a possible 1,600 points and, like students at ywls, come from disadvantaged homes.
Another hidden factor distorting the relative wealth of financial resources available to ywls students is the absence of profoundly disabled students at ywls. Regular public schools cannot refuse such students. Farmer says that although special ed students comprise about 10 percent of the student body, none of them are severely disabled. Instead, ywls admits students he says “need to be mothered a little” or have less severe special needs like attention deficit disorder. Since special ed students consume far more in dollars than other students—$30,464 annually, according to Bloomberg’s report—this relative absence of dollar demand by special ed students at ywls means more dollars available for the general student population.

Although ywls officials deferred all questions about the school’s funding to Tisch, she was clearly irritated when asked about per student expenditures. “This [ywls] is nothing other than a regular public school with regular public school funding,” Tisch told Chronogram. When asked about the $13,335 per pupil expenditures that make it among the best-funded public schools in New York City, she answered, “I don’t believe it. You can’t rely on the Department of Education reports. They’re wrong.”

Questioned as to how much ywls does spend per pupil, Tisch answered, “I don’t know. It’s Chinese math,” the same response she gave a month earlier when questioned about her school’s funding. When asked how she knew the Department of Education per pupil expenditures were wrong if she didn’t know what ywls spending actually is, she responded, “I hear about the [Department of Education report] mistakes from other people.” Finally, pressed to provide actual numbers for per pupil spending and her own dollar donations to the school—which she steadfastly refuses to reveal—Tisch answered, “I don’t know why you want this information anyway.”

The ywls is not the only single-sex school where money rather than gender may drive success. Moten, where the results of single-sex classes “exceeded [Principal Smitherman’s] wildest dreams,” was previously funded at $2,870 per pupil but received a boost to $5,972 by 2000. Moten became a single-sex school in 2001. Furthermore, Smitherman cut the one-hour lunch period in half and instituted extra reading and math work, and started an after-school enrichment program in 2002.

jefferson leadership academies
Confusion about the factors driving a school’s success is emphasized by yet another school promoted by advocates—the Jefferson Leadership Academies of Long Beach, California. nasspe’s Web site says that student scores at Jefferson on statewide standardized tests “have improved 16 percent since the school switched to single-sex classrooms. And, the school remains very popular with students and their parents. One reason may be that the school is perceived as being safer than other schools in the neighborhood, as a result of its single-sex character. Again, single-sex schools have dramatically lower rates of sexual harassment, and appear to have lower rates of drug use and within-sex violence as well.”

The words “appear to” and “perceived as” dodge the real work of determining whether a school’s success is real; and if real, whether it’s due to gender segregation.

A very cautious response to these questions comes from a surprising source: the Long Beach District of the Jefferson Academies itself. Although the nasspe Web site provides links to many single-sex school Web sites, including the Jefferson Academies, one Jefferson Web page you can’t get to from nasspe is the Long Beach School District Office of Research, Planning and Evaluation page, where they post the results of their research on single-sex education—something that should be of key interest to nasspe.

In its research summary the district posts a prominent “Warning to Consumer” that states: “Single-sex/Coeducation research includes unsubstantiated assumptions, inconsistent findings, and overgeneralizations. Many studies were ‘testimonials’ and small case studies. Most of the past research on SS education suffers from several methodological problems.” [Emphasis in the original.]

The Long Beach School District’s report went on to conclude that while some students may be affected either positively or negatively, “Most researchers argue that the gender composition of the school has little effect on the achievement and attitudes of most students.”

In fact, the news about single-sex schools is downright underwhelming. So underwhelming that 10 of 12 such experimental schools in California closed down by 2001. Researcher Amanda Datnow of the University of Toronto conducted a three-year study of single-sex academies in California (1998 to 2000) and found that class size, equitable teaching practices, and a strong curriculum played a more important role in academic success than single-sex classes.

ellenville’s “success”
Ellenville principal Glen Bollin characterizes his prior experience in the Liberty School district with same-sex classes as a “success.” When asked how that success was measured and who could confirm the program’s outcome, Bollin replied that the program at Liberty lasted only five weeks and had not been formally assessed. He could offer no names of people who could confirm his claim of success. He says of his current efforts at Ellenville, “It will take years and years to develop a valid database” in order to know whether the program is successful.
However, the need for “years and years” to develop a valid database didn’t stop Bollin, after just one year of single-sex classes, from enthusiastically endorsing gender segregation at an informational meeting of Rondout parents and teachers considering the option. Bollin earlier told Chronogram that the reason for instituting single-sex classes at Ellenville was to address academic, not behavior issues. Yet he acknowledged at the Rondout meeting that the academic success he’d hoped for hadn’t materialized during this first year. He went on to assure parents, however, that discipline had improved and other benefits, including academic benefits, could be anticipated in the future—explaining that boys and girls learn differently.

accountability
The No Child Left Behind Act, as part of its accountability, states that new programs should be “scientifically based.” Yet the lack of hard data regarding single-sex classes is far from slowing the noisy bandwagon of adherents who are clamoring for gender segregation.

The “studies” touted by single-sex advocates rarely control for confounding variables, often rely on anecdote and qualified statements (“it appears that”), and rarely, if ever, address broader problems and values. Those studies that do attempt to control for such variables, like the research by Datnow, do not find the kind of pristine results nasspe and other advocates like to quote (“discipline problems have decreased by 99 percent!”).

The American Association for University Women (aauw) initially supported single-sex classes. However, aauw changed its position after performing a “comprehensive review of research” and concluded there is “no evidence that single-sex education is better than coeducation,” according to the organization’s report, Separated by Sex: A Critical Look at Single-Sex Education for Girls. aauw Director of Communications Ashley Carr remarks pointedly, “Separate is not equal.”

So, if single-sex education isn’t proven to deliver on its promise of better academic performance, why the headlong rush to segregate the kids?

Part II Single-Sex Public Schools: What’s lost due to the No Child Left Behind Act, and the Bush neoconservative agenda, will appear in the November issue of Chronogram.