Coed verus single-sex ed

Does separating boys and girls improve their education? Experts on both sides of the issue weigh in.
By Amy Novotney
February 2011, Vol 42, No. 2
Print version: page 58
FEATURE
Chicagos Urban Prep Academy boasts of some remarkable statistics: In 2006, only 4 percent
of the inaugural freshman class at the school a public all-male, predominantly black high
school located in one of the citys most beleaguered neighborhoods could read at grade
level. Yet in May, 100 percent of the schools seniors had been accepted to four-year colleges
or universities, many on full academic scholarships.
Many education experts attribute Urban Preps success to its eight-hour school day, intense
focus on college and double periods of English. But some credit another factor: the schools
single-sex format and use of teaching methods that are engaging to young men.
Single-sex education has been growing in popularity since the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act
was passed, allowing local educational agencies to use Innovative Programs funds to support
same-gender schools and classrooms consistent with existing law. The U.S. Department of
Education loosened its Title IX regulation in 2006 to diminish prohibitions on single-sex
education. Today, Urban Prep is among the nations 95 single-sex public schools, according to
the National Association for Single Sex Public Education (NASSPE). In addition, more than
445 public coed schools offer single-sex classrooms.
While simply separating boys and girls doesnt guarantee success, schools that use best
practices for gender-specific teaching may be more successful at teaching to boys and girls
strengths, says NASSPE Executive Director Leonard Sax, MD, PhD, a psychologist and family
physician.
What were doing right now pretending that gender doesnt matter is not working, he
says. We are losing ground.
Yet many experts say much of the success of single-sex schools stems from a demanding
curriculum and a focus on extracurricular activities gains that would have been seen
regardless of whether the opposite sex was in attendance.
You cant simply attribute the outcome to the fact that theyre single-sex when youre changing
lots of other things at the same time, says Diane F. Halpern, PhD, a psychology professor at
Claremont McKenna College who has served as an expert witness in several federal court
Coed versus single-sex ed http://www.apa.org/print-this.aspx
1 of 6 12/9/12 5:01 PM
cases on single-sex education in public schools. Halpern and several other psychologists have
also joined together to create the American Council for CoEducational Schooling (ACCES), a
nonprofit research organization that is examining the science and implications of organizing
classrooms on the basis of students biological sex.
Coeducation advocates and researchers also report that segregating students by gender be
it via entire schools or simply classrooms can lead to greater gender discrimination and
make it harder for students to deal with the other sex later in life.
School is preparation for adult life, says Halpern, a former APA president. How can boys and
girls learn how to interact as equals in the workplace if they have no experience interacting as
equals in school?
What the two sides can agree on, however, is that every child is unique and deserves an
education that uses evidence-based teaching approaches to meet their particular needs.
Whats particularly important is presenting school structures and educational opportunities in
ways that can appeal to and draw on individuals interests, aptitudes and motivations as
opposed to their category membership, says Pennsylvania State University psychologist Lynn
Liben, PhD, who studies how stereotypes affect childrens educational and occupational
choices.
Learning differences
Single-sex education advocates often point to brain differences as evidence for the benefits of
separating girls from boys in the classroom.
According to a 2007 longitudinal pediatric neuroimaging study led by a team of neuroscientists
from the National Institute of Mental Health, various brain regions develop in a different
sequence and tempo in girls compared with boys (NeuroImage, Vol. 36, No. 4). Using 829
brain scans gathered over two years from 387 subjects from 3 to 27 years old, researchers
found several remarkable differences. The occipital lobe, for example the one most
associated with visual processing shows rapid development in girls 6 to 10 years old, while
boys show the largest growth in this region after 14 years old. Other studies have also shown
disparities in language processing between the sexes, concluding that the language areas of
the brain in many 5-year-old boys look similar to that of many 3-year-old girls (Developmental
Neuropsychology, Vol. 16, No. 3).
Timing is everything, in education as in many other fields, says Sax, author of several books
on the science of sex differences, including Girls on the Edge: The Four Factors Driving the
New Crisis for Girls (Basic Books, 2010). Its not enough to teach well; you have to teach well
to kids who are developmentally ripe for learning. For example, asking 5-year-old boys to sit
still, be quiet and pay attention is often not developmentally appropriate for them, but there are
other ways to teach boys to read that dont require boys to sit still and be quiet, he says.
In some of the most effective boys classrooms for 5-year-old boys, one boy is standing and
making buzzing noises, while another is lying on the floor, and another is twirling, Sax says.
But all of them are learning to read.
Coed versus single-sex ed http://www.apa.org/print-this.aspx
2 of 6 12/9/12 5:01 PM
Coeducation advocates agree that there are some small physiological differences in male and
female brains. But they also say theres a lack of evidence that these differences matter to
learning at the individual level. For example, a meta-analysis of 242 studies conducted
between 1990 and 2007 published in the November 2010 Psychological Bulletin (Vol. 136,
No. 6) examines gender differences in math performance and finds that girls perform as well
in the subject as boys.
The great majority of these girls and boys did their learning in coeducational classrooms, say
the articles authors, who include University of WisconsinMadison psychologist Janet Hyde,
PhD.
Both Sax and psychologist Lisa Damour, PhD, who co-directs the Center for Research on Girls
at Laurel School, an independent girls day school in Shaker Heights, Ohio, agree that gender
differences can be overblown.
We really shouldnt be developing curricula or approaches to teaching that dont account for
the fact that a lot of girls in a girls school are going to think and act like boys and the other way
around, Damour says. The benefit of single-sex schools, however, is that they offer the
dynamic of having only one sex in the classroom at a time, creating opportunities that dont
exist in the coed classroom, she says. Teachers, therefore, can use strategies in the all-girls
classroom and in the all-boys classroom that dont work as well or dont work at all in the
coed classroom. For example, despite performing as well as boys in math courses, girls often
doubt their ability to develop their math skills when faced with difficult material, according to
research by Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck, PhD. This mindset appears to
contribute to substantial gender gaps in math scores that emerge during and after middle
school, Damour says, so to help students learn that ability can be improved through effort,
teachers at Laurel School provide grade-level appropriate neuroscience lessons about how the
brain creates new connections when its learning challenging material. Teachers also draw
parallels between brain and muscle development, reminding struggling students that the mind
strengthens with effort, and that practice makes the work easier.
We can focus on the needs of girls all day long and never have to give a second thought to
whether were giving someone else short shrift, Damour says.
While these types of teaching approaches may be thought to improve grades, test scores and
college acceptance rates, theres little empirical evidence showing that sex-segregated classes
improve educational outcomes. A 2005 U.S. Department of Education comparison of same-sex
and coeducational schools found a dearth of quality studies examining academic benefits and
concluded that the results are mixed and not conclusive enough for the department to endorse
single-sex education.
The problem, many experts say, is that its nearly impossible to compare apples to apples
when it comes to single-sex versus coeducation. Most research on single-sex education has
been done with private schools, not on single-sex classes in U.S. public schools. In addition,
its rare for any studies on the topic to use random assignment. Even if they are public and
not charter or magnet schools often also make academic changes when they switch to a
single-sex format, making it hard to attribute gains or falls to any one measure.
Coed versus single-sex ed http://www.apa.org/print-this.aspx
3 of 6 12/9/12 5:01 PM
The entire literature on single-sex schooling is confounded by the possible presence of
student and school selection biases, says Rebecca S. Bigler, PhD, a psychology professor at
the University of Texas at Austin who studies gender role development and racial stereotyping.
You cant conclude a thing about single-sex schooling if you dont check for and control those
two potential biases. Research on single-sex education is also complicated by the legal
requirement that assignment to single-sex classes must be completely voluntary.
Bigler adds, however, that as public single-sex schools increasingly begin to offer admission
based on a lottery system, opportunities for more effective studies on the topic should emerge.
Bigler is co-editing a special issue of the journal Sex Roles slated for this year that will include
several studies on single-sex schooling that have controlled for selection biases.
Rewriting gender stereotypes?
Mixed academic outcomes arent the only reason the debate on single-sex education
continues. The research is also inconsistent on whether single-sex education can reduce
gender stereotypes. Sax and other advocates say that single-sex education has been shown to
broaden students horizons and encourage them to explore their own strengths and interests
without feeling constrained by gender stereotypes. A 2003 University of Virginia study led by
educational psychologist Abigail Norfleet James, PhD, for example, found that boys who
attended single-sex schools were more than twice as likely to pursue interests in subjects such
as art, music, drama and foreign languages compared with boys of comparable ability who
attended coed schools (Psychology of Men and Masculinity, Vol. 4, No. 2).
Although she has no research on it, Damour adds that at Laurel students seem much more
focused on school than on the other typical concerns of adolescent girls. During the school
day, theyre not distracted by the cute boy down the hall, and theyre not worrying about how
they look or what theyre wearing, Damour says. I never felt that relaxed in the hallway of my
public coed high school.
Yet other experts suggest that segregating students by sex can actually increase gender
stereotyping. A study by Liben and her graduate student Lacey Hilliard found that highlighting
gender promotes stereotyped views in children as young as 3. The researchers evaluated 57
3- to 5-year-olds at two similar preschools over a two-week period. In one set of classrooms,
teachers were asked to avoid making divisions by sex, and in the other, teachers were asked
to use gendered language and divisions, such as lining children up by gender and asking boys
and girls to post their work on separate bulletin boards. At the end of two weeks, the
researchers examined the degree to which children endorsed cultural gender stereotypes
asking the children, for example, whether only girls should play with baby dolls and assessing
their interest in playing with children of each sex. They found that children in the classrooms in
which teachers avoided characterizations by sex showed no change in responses or
behaviors. However, children in the other classrooms showed increases in stereotyped
attitudes and decreases in their interest in playing with children of the other sex. They also
were observed to play less with children of the other sex. The study appears in the
November/December Child Development (Vol. 81, No. 6).
These results suggest that children are strongly affected when the surrounding environment
Coed versus single-sex ed http://www.apa.org/print-this.aspx
4 of 6 12/9/12 5:01 PM
makes gender divisions explicit, even though they are already well aware of gender, Liben
says. These effects are likely to have profound impacts on the kinds of learning experiences
and personal relationships kids have down the line.
Others point to the long-term effects of gender stereotyping on school infrastructure and
curriculum as a down side of separating boys and girls in the classroom. Educational
psychologist Sue Klein, EdD, education equity director with the Feminist Majority Foundation, a
non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to womens equality, reproductive health and
nonviolence, says that separate rarely means equal in public schools that make the switch to a
single-sex format. Often, Klein says, women receive fewer quality resources, and many
single-sex schools and classrooms exaggerate and encourage sex stereotypes by
emphasizing competition and aggression among boys and passivity among girls or by setting
the expectation that boys are not good at writing. In addition, while many schools justify their
separation of boys and girls using the 2006 updated Title IX regulation, many of the
sex-segregated public education programs are illegal because parents arent provided with a
coeducational choice for their child or the links between the education goal and the single-sex
program arent shown, she says.
We need to understand this whole area better, but I think we know enough now that this is not
a good way to spend our countrys limited education dollars, Klein says.
Its about choice
The bottom line, Sax says, is that most single-sex education advocates dont believe that
single-sex education is best for every child.
There is a great variation among girls and a great variation among boys and for that reason,
choice is a good thing, says Sax. One size does not fit all.
Effective teaching often depends on getting children engaged and excited about learning the
material, says Florida State University psychology professor Roy F. Baumeister, PhD, and for
that, each teacher has to work with each childs motivations, interests and preferences.
Americas schools have many problems, and there is no one solution, says Baumeister,
author of Is There Anything Good About Men? (Oxford, 2010). But if there is one suggestion
that is likely to yield solutions, it is to allow experiments.
So, as the research continues to explore the benefits of coed and single-sex schools,
Baumeister suggests letting parents decide which option is best suited to a childs individual
needs and talents.
Many boys and girls do fine with coed schools, but some do better in same-sex schools,
Baumeister says. Society can benefit from choice and diversity, so lets offer options.
ACCES researchers, on the other hand, argue that segregation is very seldom a beneficial
form of choice and that fostering diversity within schools, rather than across schools, is the
best option. Psychologists and education experts are likely to hear much more about this
controversial issue as researchers on both sides continue their work.
Coed versus single-sex ed http://www.apa.org/print-this.aspx
5 of 6 12/9/12 5:01 PM
Find this article at:
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/02/coed.aspx
Amy Novotney is a writer in Chicago.
Coed versus single-sex ed http://www.apa.org/print-this.aspx
6 of 6 12/9/12 5:01 PM