Women's Rights Employment Law Blog

Bush administration has given green signal to new proposals for proliferation in single sex public education in the US. In fact over the years, the number of public schools exclusively for boys or girls has risen from 3 in 1995 to 241 today.

This is not just quite predictable on part of the conservative lobbies, but at the same rate defies the existing laws that were brought to force following years of struggles against sexist power structure.
The National Association of State Boards of Education says that historically, restricting enrollment in a public school program according to sex has been seen as a possible violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program receiving federal funds. Though Title IX does not specifically disallow a district from offering single-sex schools, it does require that districts provide comparable facilities, courses, and services to boys and girls.

The NASBE site has described the arguments against single-sex schools, to distinguish the incidental factors affecting performance:

* Most studies of single-sex schools have been undertaken either in private schools or overseas. Student characteristics vary considerably between private and public schools and between American students and those of other countries; consequently, policymakers cannot assume that the positive outcomes associated with single-sex education documented by research would be replicated among diverse public school populations.

* Data suggest that parents and students who choose single-sex schools are more motivated and achievement-oriented than average. Therefore, the higher achievement documented in single-sex schools may be due to the nature of the students and families rather than the nature of the schools.

* Most single-sex schools have other attributes that correlate with higher academic achievement, such as a smaller student body, stronger emphasis on academics and higher level of commitment to the school's mission. Consequently, the positive outcomes attributed to single-sex schools could be due to institutional factors other than the single-sex student body.

Finally, some opponents to single-sex education believe that efforts to implement a few single-sex schools will subtract resources and energy from the more important goal of improving public schools overall. They are also concerned that tampering with Title IX regulations could undermine decades of work in bringing equality to boys' and girls' programs. Others contend that separating boys and girls can lead to more, rather than less, sex bias. They also point to research showing that when certain groups (such as low-achieving or at-risk boys) are targeted for enrollment in single-sex schools, these schools can be labeled as being for "bad kids," thereby reinforcing stereotypes.

Caryl Rivers and Rosalind C. Barnett in LA Times opine:

“We need to ensure that any single-sex classrooms set up in public schools under the proposed Bush administration regulations will not be based on unscientific ideas about boys and girls.
We know that children learn in many different ways, but segregating them by sex will serve most of our children poorly.”