Object Lessons | Single-sex schools not the answer

Carolyn Bradley Columnist

Is single-sex education the answer to life, the universe, and everything? You might think so from the broad range of support this new Edu-Fad has gotten lately from Republicans, Democrats, misogynists, and feminists alike. Conservatives argue that the sexes have different learning patterns (the brain is a sexed organ blah blah), and liberals argue that sexist stereotypes marginalize girls in co-ed classrooms. So everyone, welcome the new Department of Education regulations, which drastically weaken basic Title IX provisions and allow U.S. public school districts the right to establish single-sex classes, activities, and schools, as long as students participate only on a volunteer-basis. When it comes to sex segregation, I am sure glad to see that we can all just get along.

Then again, I sure will miss Title IX the way it was. With the new regulations, school districts (as of Nov. 24), have been able to receive federal funds for optional single-sex education programs, which were previously classified as sex-discriminatory under Title IX, part of the 1972 Education Amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Under the pretense of giving people greater “choice,” the Bush Administration has adopted an inside-out interpretation of Title IX, allowing school districts to segregate their classrooms and schools for an assortment of vague purposes, such as “the achievement of an important governmental or educational objective.”

The regulations require that girls and boys receive “substantially equal,” if separate, educational opportunities. What “substantially equal” means in principle, I can’t say (I was under the impression that equality was a zero-sum game; you’re either equal or you’re not). In practice, however, it means that school districts can provide single-sex facilities or classes as long as the excluded sex receives a comparable educational opportunity elsewhere—not necessarily in a single-sex setting. Thus, school districts can provide an all-male math class, as long as they provide a single-sex or co-ed math class for girls as well.

What’s more, the regulations allow districts to establish single-sex charter schools, without obligating the districts to provide an equivalent setting for the excluded sex. So a school district can set up, say, an all-boys’ science charter school, without setting up an all-girls’ or co-ed science school along with it. Which is to say, worse than “separate but equal,” the new regulations allow for just plain “separate.”

How did we get here? A look at the research provides few answers. For all of the elaborate theories about the ways single-sex education can or should benefit children, there is no conclusive evidence to suggest it actually does. The new regulations do, however, open the door for districts to provide segregated education based on flimsy assumptions about differences in the way the sexes learn. Although some programs may be specifically designed to fight sex stereotypes, the danger is that most will simply perpetuate these stereotypes by suggesting the intrinsic differences in the sexes.

As for the feminists who argue that sexist perceptions harm girls in co-ed classrooms, I basically agree. But I’m not willing to concede that those same perceptions would be absent in single-sex settings. We tend to forget that women can be just as sexist as men. How many women do you know who have said they wouldn’t vote for a female president?

That said, I’m not arguing that single-sex settings could never be useful. Feeling safe from sexual harassment and violence is no minor thing. In the end, though, single-sex environments are not corrective to sexism in our society. Even if single-sex education were to benefit the girls who received it, sexism in the co-ed system would still remain untouched. If we want to live in a sex-desegregated world, our task should be to change the co-ed system to prepare all children for it.

At bottom, I suspect that single-sex education has become fashionable because it’s easy. It allows us to hope that the American school system, which is still under-performing, can be improved by just a few strategic re-adjustments: move the boys over here, the girls over there, and poof!— problem solved. But what about our other options for improving education? Better teachers? Better books? Smaller class sizes? These options, unlike single-sex education, are widely supported by research. What’s more, they won’t move us into a murky new area where we can’t call sex discrimination by its name. Then again, these options require motivation—oh, and tax dollars. Maybe that’s why we prefer not to talk about them.