In September 2003, the San Antonio school district launched an ambitious and innovative program, offering single-sex classes in the majority of the city's middle schools. Dr. Peggy Stark, the district official in charge of the program, told Dr. Sax (Executive Director of NASSPE) that she and her colleagues decided to launch the program as a common-sense, low-cost way to improve students' academic performance and increase students' motivation to learn.
Dr. Stark asked Dr. Sax to lead a professional development seminar for San Antonio middle school teachers, the topic being differences in how girls and boys learn. Accordingly, on January 8 2004, Dr. Sax met for three hours with about 90 teachers and administrators in San Antonio. The San Antonio newspaper described Dr. Sax's presentation in an article entitled "Expert says girls and boys learn differently". You can read the article online by clicking on the link.
You can review a list of the 13 San Antonio public schools, including which grades are being offered which classes in a single-sex format, at this link.Dr. Stark has invited Dr. Sax to return to San Antonio in the 2004-2005 school year to lead a more extensive professional development symposium on gender differences in how girls and boys learn.
The total count of American public schools offering single-sex educational options is now up to 88 schools nationwide: 25 schools which are completely single-sex, plus another 63 coed schools which offer single-sex classrooms as an option. That's almost double the number of schools (46) which offered single-sex educational options in the fall of 2002, and an enormous increase over the four public schools which offered such options in 1996. Still, when you consider that there are almost 90,000 public schools in the United States, we still don't have single-sex options available in even 0.1% of the total.
Most of you know the story of how Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison joined with New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in an extraordinary bipartisan alliance to legalize single-sex education in American public schools. Their amendment passed the Senate by unanimous consent on July 7 2001 and was enacted into law (as section 5131 of the No Child Left Behind Act) on January 8, 2002 -- two years ago. One clause of their amendment (section 5131(c), page 367 of the No Child Left Behind Act) requires the Department of Education to change the regulations governing single-sex education in the United States within 120 days of the enactment of the new law. The regulations currently in force -- written in 1975 -- prohibit single-sex classrooms in coed public schools (cf. 34 CFR 106.34). The Senators, in their wisdom, realized that without a firm deadline, the Department might drag its feet in revising the old regulations, to bring the regulations into line with the new law.
The new law was enacted on January 8 2002. Count forward 120 days from January 8 2002, and you arrive at May 8 2002. On May 8 2002, Secretary Paige announced that he intended to revise the regulations in accordance with the new law -- but that he still had many unresolved questions. The Department released no new regulations on May 8 2002. The action on May 8 was simply a notice that the Department would prepare new regulations, and was inviting comment.
July 8 2002 was the deadline to submit comments. A total of 170 comments were received. In a report published in Education Week on September 4 2002, Department of Education general counsel Brian W. Jones was quoted as saying that the revised regulations governing single-sex education would be published "within the next several months." That was over 16 months ago!
Accordingly, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison sent a letter to Secretary of Education Rod Paige several weeks ago, asking basically: Where are the regulations???!!! Her letter apparently had an effect. According to our sources in Senator Hutchison's office, the regulations are now completed and should be released within the next few weeks, "certainly by the end of February."
We will send out a special bulletin to everyone on our e-mailing list the day the regulations are finally released.
Of course, the release of the regulations won't be the end of the story: there will be another 60-day comment period, and then the final regulations will be published. We'll keep you posted every step of the way.
Our first annual conference, which took place on August 22 in Washington DC, was a great success. If you missed the conference, you can get a CD of highlights from the conference (79 minutes of audio), including:
You can purchase this CD for $12, plus $3 shipping and handling (Maryland residents please add 5% sales tax). Send your check or money order payable to NASSPE at 19710 Fisher Avenue, Suite J, Post Office Box 108, Poolesville, Maryland, 20837. If you prefer to pay by credit card, you can call in a credit card order to us at 301 972 7600, or fax your credit card information (be sure to include expiration date) to 301 972 8006.
Our next conference will take place in the spring of 2005. The NASSPE advisory board will be meeting this spring to decide on details of venue, speakers, etc. Our next newsletter will contain more detailed information about our next conference.
The King Middle School in Atlanta, Georgia recently began offering single-sex classrooms. Teachers discovered that girls and boys learn differently. For example, boys' classrooms are much LOUDER than girls' classrooms -- partly because boys simply don't hear as well as girls do. You can learn more about their experiences by reading this article which was a front-page story for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Atlanta's major daily newspaper.
In September 2003, the San Antonio public school district began offering single-sex classrooms in most of their middle schools. You can read the front-page San Antonio Express-News article on this exciting development here.
The Summit View Middle School in Independence, Kentucky has recently launched single-gender classrooms. You can read how this change improved students' motivation and transformed the classroom experience at this link.
In an editorial September 14 2003, the Washington Times strongly endorsed single-sex education in public schools. The Times observed that gender-separate classrooms broadens educational horizons and improves academic performance. The editorial also reported how speakers at NASSPE's annual conference in August 2003 described the transforming power of single-gender education to turn kids' lives around.
Breaking Stereotypes
Often you'll hear critics say, "Maybe kids do better academically in single-gender schools, but surely kids do better in terms of social adjustment at coed schools." Maybe not. Educators at a conference in Sydney, Australia heard several speakers prevent evidence that kids who attend single-sex schools may do better in terms of maturity and social adjustment, than kids who attend coed schools. Dr. Bruce Cook, principal of the Southport School on the Gold Coast, told the audience that boys educated in single-sex schools end up being more confident around girls. "In coed schools, boys tend to adopt a 'masculine' attitude because girls are there," he said. "They feel they have to demonstrate their emerging masculinity by gross macho over-reaction." Boys in single-sex schools "become more sensitive men," and they're more polite, according to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald.
The New Gender Gap
Several recent articles have focussed on the growing gap between the performance of girls and boys in North American public schools. In a recent column, Jen Horsey documents the acceleration of this trend. Here's the link to Jen Horsey's essay. In an even more provocative essay, columnist Peg Wente writes about the "complete reversal" in higher education over the past 25 years, such that females now substantially outnumber males in college, in law school and in medical school. Wente's essay is entitled "Girls Rule."
NASSPE has entered into an agreement with Sriram Natarajan, founder of Comunaware, for a professional makeover of our Website. We're getting drop-down menus, graphics, and more. You can preview the new Website at this link.
Please let us know what you think: send us an e-mail with your comments or criticism of the new site. Launch of the new site is planned for mid-February.Here's the opening graphic for the home page (the collage will dissolve between four sets of images: two all-girls, and two all-boys):
Incidentally, Sriram is an enthusiastic supporter of single-sex public education. Born in India and educated in Singapore, Sriram has seen first-hand how the wide availability of single-sex education in the public sector can improve educational opportunities for both girls and boys. On moving to the United States, he was puzzled to find that our country doesn't offer the same educational opportunities which are widely available in Singapore and many Asian countries.
You may contact NASSPE at 19710 Fisher Avenue, Post Office Box 108, Poolesville, Maryland, 20837. Or, you can call us at 301 972 7600, or send a fax to 301 972 8006.
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