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But is it legal?
On March 3, 2004, the United States Department of Education published new regulations governing single-sex education in public schools. These new regulations were required by a provision in the No Child Left Behind Act, a provision intended by its authors to authorize single-sex education in public schools (specifically, sections 5131(a)(23) and 5131(c) of the NCLB).
The new regulations allow coeducational public schools (elementary and secondary schools) to offer single-sex classrooms, provided that the schools:
1) provide a rationale for offering a single-gender class in that subject. A variety of rationales are acceptable, e.g. if very few girls have taken computer science in the past, the school could offer a girls-only computer science class;
2) provide a coeducational class in the same subject at the same school;
3) conduct periodic review to determine whether single-sex classes are still necessary to remedy whatever inequity prompted the school to offer the single-sex class in the first place.
Just as important, the new regulations clear the way for single-sex schools -- schools which are all-girls or all-boys. In fact, the new regulations provide some incentive for school districts to offer single-sex schools rather than single-sex classrooms within coed schools. Single-sex schools are specifically exempted from two of the three requirements above.
They won't have to provide any rationale for their single-sex format, and they won't have to conduct any periodic review to determine whether single-sex education is "necessary" to remedy some inequity. They will have to offer "substantially equal" courses, services, and facilities, at other schools within the same school district -- but those other schools can be single-sex or coed. In other words, a school district may offer a single-sex high school for girls without having to offer a single-sex high school for boys. A school district can offer an all-boys elementary school without having to offer an all-girls elementary school.
Charter schools are exempt from all three of the requirements: they won't have to provide a rationale for single-gender classes, they won't have to offer comparable coed classes or schools, and they won't have to do periodic follow-up to justify their single-sex format.
The 45-day comment period ended on April 23, 2004.
The complete regulations may be downloaded directly from the Department of Education, in HTML format, by clicking here.
The regulations may be downloaded in Adobe PDF format by clicking on the PDF logo:
NASSPE strongly supports the new regulations. You can read NASSPE's official comment on the new regulations at this link.
There's been plenty of news coverage of this development. We've posted links to a few of the articles which appeared in newspapers around the United States in the days following the Department of Education's announcement:
Los Angeles Times: Can Separate Be Equal?
Chicago public schools consider offering single-sex public schools
Single-sex classrooms open in Las Vegas
New single-gender opportunities in South Florida
If you'd prefer to listen to a reasonably fair discussion of the new regulations, with perspectives pro and con, we recommend a radio broadcast March 8 2004 by the NPR program Talk of the Nation. The program began with an overview of the new regulations from someone who really knows them: namely, Ken Marcus, the director of the Office of Civil Rights (OCR). Mr. Marcus personally oversaw the development of the new regulations. He knows better than anybody else exactly what’s in the 56 pages of the Department's proposal. The second speaker was Professor David Sadker of American University. Professor Sadker strongly opposes single-sex education in public schools. Dr. Sax, Executive Director of NASSPE, was the third guest to speak (beginning about 24 minutes into the 40-minute program). The fourth speaker was Winifred Todd, the principal of Thurgood Marshall Elementary School, a public single-gender school in Seattle, Washington. You can link to a description of the broadcast. Once you're there,
click on Talk of the Nation audio. You will then have a choice of listening to the entire program (about 40 minutes) in either RealMedia or WindowsMedia.
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