By Katie Scarvey
kscarvey@salisburypost.com
When you think about a classroom of all boys or all girls, the image that leaps to mind is boys in rep ties, girls in plaid skirts, parents in Mercedes.
Private school, in other words.
In recent years, however, the single-gender classroom format is increasingly finding its way into public schools, because of the easing of Title IX restrictions.
In 2002, only 11 public schools had single-sex classrooms, says Dr. Leonard Sax, the founder and executive director of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education.
Now, at least 540 do, and Salisbury High School is among them, with four algebra classes that are separated by gender (see story on 1A).
A physician and a psychologist, Sax is the author of several books, including “Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences.”
Sax believes there are significant differences in how males and females learn.
He argues that the brain develops differently in boys and girls. In girls, the language area develops before the part that is involved in spatial relations. In boys, it’s the other way around. Instruction, Sax believes, needs to respect those differences ó and single-sex classrooms make that much easier.
Research suggests that girls in an all-female educational setting are more likely to pursue subjects traditionally seen as male, like math or chemistry, while boys in an all-male environment are more likely to pursue subjects like drama and languages.
Same-sex classrooms can also help eliminate distractions for students and encourage participation from students who might hesitate to speak up in a coed classroom because of self-consciousness.
Re-thinking assumptions
Sax had an experience nine years ago as a family practice physician that set him on the path to being a full-time advocate of single-sex instruction.
One of his young patients had been struggling at what he describes as “a very fine private school.” Sax hadn’t seen him for a while when he returned for a sports physical.
“I did not recognize him,” says Sax, who was expecting the morose, unhappy child he remembered.
Instead, the boy was happy and smiling, speaking enthusiastically about his passions: sports, friends, Minoan culture.
“What happened?” Sax asked the boy’s mother.
He switched to boys’ school, the mother said.
Sax was skeptical.
Single-sex education was, he told the mother, “an antiquated relic of the Victorian era.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she responded.
Sax began visiting schools, quickly realizing boys’ schools took a very different approach than coed schools.
Sometimes, chairs were absent. Sax said he was told that “If you ask third grade boys to sit down, their brains shut off.”
Sax had plenty of experience with boys coming in to be evaluated for ADD. Young boys in traditional classrooms are often “bouncing and bumping and tapping and making buzzing noises,” and end up being referred to a doctor, Sax said.
“I saw this parade of first-, second- and third-grade boys, with a note from their teacher,” Sax said. “And the teacher’s observation is absolutely valid. But not every boy who has a deficit of attention has ADD.”
In fact, he said, about 90 percent of the boys referred to him did not need medication, he said ó although they probably did need a different learning environment.
Success stories
Sax can cite many examples of schools that have seen student achievement improve after the implementation of the single-sex format.
Stewart Elementary School in Toledo, Ohio, for example, saw a huge increase in girls’ academic performance after adopting a single-sex format, going from only 19 percent scoring proficient to more than 80 percent scoring proficient.
Sax also cites Foley Intermediate School in rural Alabama. While the performance of both black and white students improved following the adoption of separate classrooms for boys and girls, the performance of the black students improved so much that the racial achievement gap nearly disappeared.
Researchers at Stetson University in Florida compared single-sex classrooms with coed classrooms at Woodward Avenue Elementary School. Fourth graders were assigned either to single-sex or coed classrooms. Variables were controlled as much as possible, including class size, student demographics, teacher training, and curriculum.
Student performance on achievement testing increased for both boys and girls in single-sex classrooms. The difference was greatest for boys, who went from 37 percent scoring proficient in coed classes to 86 scoring proficient percent in the all-male classrooms. Girls’ scores saw an increase as well, although the jump was less dramatic.
Gains in science for girls?
If teaching approaches are modified taking gender into consideration, Sax says, then both boys and girls can be turned on to subjects that previously held little interest. Sax mentions a professor of computer science at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Caitlin Kelleher, who began to offer an all-girls computer science class.
She found that when they taught computer science the usual way, only 17 percent of the girls would come to the computer lab on their spare time.
By taking a different teaching approach, she found that more than half of her students would work in the lab in their spare time.
Sax, who has visited more than 300 schools, mentions a girls’ school in Melbourne, Australia, where more than half the girls take the equivalent of advanced placement physics. In this country, Sax says, there is a huge disparity when you look at who is taking AP physics: three boys to every one girl.
At the Melbourne school, the physics teacher engaged the female students by asking about the nature of things ó like “What is light?” That approach motivated them, Sax says, adding that the classes were just as rigorous and computational as any other physics class.
While single-sex classrooms can potentially benefit both boys and girls throughout the school years, he believes the benefits for girls are greatest in middle and high school, while the benefits for boys are greatest in the earlier grades.
De-emphasizing looks
Girls tend to face more difficulties in middle and high school because appearance becomes overly important in a coed setting.
“We live in a sexist culture with an unhealthy emphasis on how a girl looks,” Sax says.
He cites a study undertaken by two U.S. researchers who traveled to Belfast, Northern Ireland. In Belfast, students can choose a coed or gender-specific school. If they don’t choose, they are randomly assigned.
The researchers interviewed a cohort of the randomly assigned girls, asking many questions: Are you a good student? Are you good at sports? Are you pretty? The questions correlated to a standard inventory of self-esteem, Sax says.
“What they found was that at a coed school, you only need to ask a girl one question to know her self-esteem: ‘Are you pretty?'”
At the girls’ high school, however, that was not true, Sax said. There, self-esteem was a complex product of multiple factors ó not just looks.
To those who argue that single-gender classrooms are artificial environments that don’t prepare students for the “real world,” Sax responds: “Coed school is nothing like the real world. It’s a very unrealistic world, and that’s why it’s so toxic for girls.”
Groundwork for change
Sax warns, however, that changing to a gender-separate format isn’t as simple as it sounds.
“If schools simply put girls in one room and boys in another, then there is a real danger of reinforcing gender stereotypes,” Sax said. What you don’t want, he says, is teachers resorting to gender cliches ó like using football analogies for boys and shopping analogies for girls. Sax recommends training teachers through workshops and conferences.
“If you do your homework, the odds of a good outcome are much better,” he said.
Sax will be in Rocky Mount June 8-9 to lead a two-day training workshop on single-gender education.
For more information, go to www.singlesexschools.org.