Single-sex classrooms gaining favor

[The1calledTKE]

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (AP) -- Without a snicker, or even a whisper, the eighth-grade boys listened as each of their classmates stood and pledged to study hard and earn high marks to get ready for high school.

Social studies teacher Wilma K. Spencer smiled. On the first day of single-sex classrooms at Southern Leadership Academy, her students had abandoned the wisecracks, the note-passing, the fighting, the flirting and the shyness, and were ready to learn.

"I think sometimes with the two genders together, they are so influenced by each other," she said. "They want to impress each other."

The public middle school, plagued by low test scores and unruliness, is near the forefront of an initiative that could catch hold as the U.S. Department of Education drafts regulations making it easier for schools to create gender-specific classes.

From the day's first bell to the last, Southern's 820 boys and girls are cloistered in separate classrooms. Only chorus and band remain coed.

Class times are staggered to avoid boys and girls mingling in the hallways. They might eat lunch at the same time, but they can't sit at the same tables.

Some students say the change reduces distractions and eases pressures.

"We won't be embarrassed to stand up in front of the class and do a report," said seventh-grader Ebonee Herd. "And we don't have to look all pretty-pretty."

Seeing a change
Nearly 65 percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches at the school, tucked into a South Louisville working-class neighborhood near the famed Churchill Downs horse track.

The school has struggled with low test scores and high suspension rates for several years. "We felt we needed to think out of the box and take a risk and do something dramatically different that was substantive," Principal Anita Jones said.

The faculty recommended switching to single-sex classrooms, and the plan was approved by the school's local council: Jones, three teachers and two parents.

Southern followed the lead of Paducah Middle School, about 225 miles west of Louisville, which set up some single-gender classes in the middle of the last school year.

Boys and girls attend separate classes in sixth grade, but they are gradually brought together in school as they prepare for high school.

Assistant Principal Richard Dowdy said that during the first three days of the last school year, when all classrooms remain mixed, 25 students were sent to the office for misconduct. This year, the number dipped to four.

Title IX and the single-sex classroom
Nationally, about 15 public schools have same-sex-only classrooms or are exclusively boys or girls schools, said Dr. Leonard Sax, a psychologist and physician who heads the Maryland-based National Association for Single Sex Public Education. An additional 40 to 50 schools offer single-sex classes but don't require them, he said.

Sax predicted the numbers will grow once the government removes a legal cloud over schools with single-sex classrooms.

The Title IX law prohibits public schools from discriminating on the basis of sex, and schools with single-sex classrooms have tried to avoid a conflict with the law by offering boys and girls an essentially equal education.

The Education Department is drafting new Title IX regulations to give schools more flexibility to offer single-sex instruction. A final version likely will take effect next year, said department spokesman Dan Langan.

But Nancy Zirkin, spokeswoman for the American Association of University Women, said her group opposes the change because "separate is never equal."

"We would never accept this in a race context. Why in the world are we doing this in a gender context?" Zirkin said.

The National Education Association, in a letter to the department, said single-sex public education would elevate the "discredited doctrine of `separate but equal' to official government policy," promote "harmful and false sex stereotypes" and leave students ill-prepared for the real world.

NEA staff attorney Cindy Chmielewski added in an interview, "There is nothing out there that can conclusively demonstrate that single-sex education alone improves student achievement."

But at Southern Leadership Academy, Assistant Principal Bill Redmon likes the early results of dividing the genders.

"From what I've seen going around the classrooms, it's much more orderly," he said during lunchroom duty. "We don't have the boy-girl hormonal thing going on."