EDUCATION
Can Separate Ever Be Equal? For Girls, Answer Isn't Simple
Evidence
suggests single-sex classes might offer benefits, but we must be cautious.
By
Reprinted
from the Los Angeles Times, by
permission.
Originally published
For more than 30 years, Title IX has prohibited gender discrimination at any
school that receives federal funding. We think of it as the legislation that
led to parity in athletic programs, but Title IX did much more than that: Among
other things, it prohibited single-sex classes in public schools unless there
was documented proof of inequity in the coed classroom.
Last week, that changed. The Bush administration issued revised Title IX
guidelines that will allow single-sex public schools and classes. Separate but
equal seems to be staging a comeback, at least where gender is concerned.
When Title IX outlawed single-sex programs back in 1972, it was because gender
discrimination was rampant. As the revised guidelines filed by the Department
of Education's Office of Civil Rights put it, "… at the time that the
current regulations were issued, it was not unreasonable to base the
regulations on a presumption that, if recipients were permitted to provide
single-sex classes beyond the most limited of circumstances, discriminatory
practices would likely continue." Loosely translated, we could not be
trusted to get it right; we might offer the boys constitutional law, and the
girls fashion history.
Things are a lot better now: "While there are still more gains to be
made," the document goes on to say, "schools are now far more
equitable in their treatment of female students. Those changes are due in no
small measure to Title IX…."
So we prepare to relax the restrictions, making some feminists and educators
extremely apprehensive. Activists who came of age in the 1960s have always
resisted attempts to tamper with Title IX; after years of hard-won effort,
women's advocates hardly want to see vive la difference elevated to
national policy. There's also a question of semantics. The new regulations
refer to "substantially equal" opportunities for both sexes. My
memory of math class is that things were either equal or not equal. Modifiers
were out of place, because equal was absolute. The federal government seems to
think otherwise at the moment, and the notion of interpretive equality has to
chill the heart of every woman who still earns less than her male counterpart.
The new policy's detractors cite a 1998 report by the American Assn. of
University Women that failed to conclude that single-sex education was better
for girls. But those critics are missing the point: The report called for more
disciplined research because public policy was at stake; the group never said
single-sex classes were a bad idea.
In fact, one of the studies the group reviewed, by
Equality is a more subtle concept than straight-on parity. We might not like
it, but we know a lot more than we did three decades ago about how girls and
boys learn best. There's a physiological reason why most of the students in
remedial reading classes are boys. There's a reason girls don't get called on
first in math, and it's the same reason their grandmothers recover from strokes
more successfully than their grandfathers do. Our brains are not politically
correct; in many ways, they develop differently. And single-sex public schools
that take these things into account may be good for some girls.
Since 1996, when the Young Women's Leadership School of East Harlem opened as
the first new single-sex public school in decades, a handful of dedicated
educators and philanthropists have started two dozen such schools. The results
have been encouraging. The Leadership School takes girls out of a coed system
where they had only a 50% chance of graduating on time, raises their test
scores and grades and sends most of them to four-year colleges with financial
aid. Given our high school students' rather dismal performance, who wouldn't
want to hop on that bandwagon?
Still, wary skepticism is the only appropriate response to the government's new
guidelines. What has been done carefully and well at a handful of schools may
not survive mass production; for starters, it's not clear how already-strapped
school districts would pay for expanded programs, because the $297 million the
government has earmarked for educational innovations has to pay for a long list
of ideas. And simply separating girls from boys is not going to be sufficient.
Single-sex programs require both financial and philosophical support. Without
it, they will end up yet another entry on the long, dismal list of things our
school system fails to do well.
We have the chance, now, to expand the notion of equal opportunity in the
classroom — to bring it up to date, taking into account everything we've
learned. If we cling to the status quo, we may continue to shortchange our
children. If we fail to support single-sex education with funding, passionate
teachers and a truly progressive commitment to equality, then we will undermine
what's left of the public school system.
A friend who is deeply opposed to single-sex education thinks the Bush
administration has opened a Pandora's box. "Once
you open the door," he says, mournfully, "you have to accept the
possibility that people who do not think the way you think will want to do
things you don't want them to do." True enough. But as long as the door
remains closed, a vast population of public school girls and
boys have no chance to experience the benefits that launched the Young
Women's
Until we can honestly say that our girls and our boys receive an equal
education, we have to keep looking for better ways to teach them. Change is
never easy, but unlike the status quo, it carries the possibility of hope.
Reprinted by permission.
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