Boys Here, Girls There: Sure, If Equality's the Goal

Many parents may be wondering what the fuss was about this past week, when the Bush administration endorsed single-sex public schools and classes. Separating the sexes was something we did in the days of auto shop and home ec, before Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Title IX. How, then, did an apparent return to the Fifties come to symbolize educational reform?

Here's how: By creating an alternate, parallel universe where smart matters more than anything, good looks holdlittlecurrency and a strong sense of self trumps a date on Saturday night -- a place where "class clown" is a label that young boys dread and "math whiz" is a term of endearment for young girls.

I have just spent three years working on a bookabout two all-girls schools, the private Marlborough School in Los Angeles, and The Young Women's Leadership School of East Harlem (TYWLS), asix-year-old public school in New York City. I went to class, I went home with the girls, I went to dances and basketball games and faculty meetings, and what I learned is this: Single-sex education matters, and it matters most to the students who historically have been denied access to it.

Having said that, I do not intend to proselytize. Single-sex education is not the answer to everyone's prayers. Some children want no part of it and some parents question its relevance. The rest of us should not stop wondering what to do with our coeducational public schools just because of this one new option.

But single-sex education can be a valuable tool -- if we target those students who stand to benefit most. For years, in the name of upholding gender equity, we have practiced a kind of harsh economic discrimination. Sociologist Cornelius Riordan says that poor students, minorities and girls stand to profit most from a single-sex environment. Until now, though, the only students who could attend a single-sex school were the wealthy ones who could afford private tuition, the relatively few lucky students who received financial aid or those in less-expensive parochial schools. We denied access to the almost 90 percent of American students who attend public schools.

For the fortunate ones -- like the girls at Marlborough -- the difference is one of attitude, more than any quantifiable measure; their grades and scores may be similar to the graduates of coed prep schools, but they perceive themselves as more competent, more willing to pursue advanced work in fields such as math and science.

At TYWLS, though, the difference is more profound. Students there are predominantly Latina and African American, survivors of a hostile public system. Half of New York's high school students fail to graduate on time, and almost a third never graduate. Throughout the nation, one in six Latina and one in five African American teens become pregnant every year. But most of the members of TYWLS's two graduating classes have gone on to four-year colleges, often the first members of their families to do so, and pregnancy is the stark exception.

There are now 11 single-sex public schools in the United States, all of which serve urban students, many of them in lower-income neighborhoods. Most are side-by-side schools that offer comparable programs for boys and girls in the same facility. The stand-alone girls' schools say that they are compensating for years of gender discrimination; several attempts at similar schools for boys have failed, however, casualties of legal challenges.

Now, thanks to a bipartisan amendment to President Bush's education reform bill, sponsored by Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), the administration is about to revise the way it enforces Title IX, to allow for single-sex schools and classes.

The first objections last week came from the National Organization for Women and the New York Civil Liberties Union, both of which opposed the opening of TYWLS in the fall of 1996. The two groups continue to insist -- as though it were 1896 and they were arguing Plessy v. Ferguson -- that separate can never be equal. I appreciate NOW's wariness of the Bush administration's endorsement of single-sex public schools, since I am of the generation that still considers the label "feminist" to be a compliment -- and many feminists still fear that any public acknowledgment of differences between the sexes will hinder their fight for equality.

But brain research has shown us that girls and boys develop and process information in different ways; they do not even use the same region of the brain to do their math homework. We cannot pretend that such information does not exist just because it conflicts with our ideology. If we hang on to old, quantifiable measurements of equality, we will fail our children. If we take what we learn and use it, we have the chance to do better.

Educators at single-sex schools already get it: Equality is the goal, not the process. There may be more than one path to the destination -- but it is the arrival, not the itinerary, that counts.

Some researchers complain that we lack definitive evidence that single-sex education works. There are so many intertwined variables; the students at TYWLS might do well because of smaller class size, passionate teachers and an aggressively supportive atmosphere. Given that, the absence of boys might be beside the point.

The American Association of University Women called for more research even after publishing a 1998 report that showed some girls continued to suffer in the coed classroom. But it is probably impossible to design a study that would retire the question permanently, and, as TYWLS's first principal, Celenia Chevere, liked to say, "What am I supposed to do with these girls in the meantime?"

What is this misplaced reverence for the coed school? Do not think that it wasdesigned with the best interests of all children at heart. As education professors David and Myra Sadker explained in their 1994 book, "Failing at Fairness: How America's Schools Cheat Girls," our schools were originally created to educate boys. In the late 1700s, girls went to class early in the morning and late in the day -- and unlike the boys, they had to pay for the privilege. When families demanded that the public schools do more for their girls, school districts grudgingly allowed the girls into existing classrooms -- not because it was the best way to teach children but because no one had the money to build new schools just for girls. Coed classrooms are not necessarily better. They just are.

For those who like hard data, here is a number: 1,200 girls on the waiting list for a handful of spaces in the ninth grade at TYWLS. There is a growing desire for public school alternatives, for an answer more meaningful than a vague if optimistic call for systemwide reform. The demand for single-sex education exists -- and now the Bush administration must figure out how to supply it.

Implementation will not be easy. Girls may learn better without boys, but research and experience show that some boys seem to need the socializing influence of girls: Will there be a group of educational handmaidens, girls who are consigned to coed schools to keep the boys from acting out? Who will select the chosen few who get to go to single-sex schools, and how will they make that choice? Will they take students who already show promise or those who most need help? Or perhaps the philosophy of a new pair of boys' and girls' schools in Albany, N.Y., provides the answer: Take the poorest kids first.

Whatever the approach, no one is calling for a wholesale shift to segregation by gender, and that means someone will be left out. Single-sex public schools perpetuate the kind of two-tiered system that used to be based solely on family income, even if they widen the net. But that has always been true of innovative public schools, and it is no reason to hesitate.

The most troubling question about single-sex public education -- Why now? -- has nothing to do with school. When support comes so readily from opposite ends of the political spectrum, it is reasonable to ask why everyone is so excited, particularly given the political debate about vouchers and school choice.

If the intention is to strengthen the public school system by responding to new information about how our children learn, then these classes can serve as a model of innovative teaching techniques, some of which can be transported back into existing coed classrooms. Single-sex public schools and classes, as odd as it may sound, are about inclusion; any school district that wants one can have one and everyone can learn from the experience.

But if this is about siphoning off the best and potentially brightest, and ignoring the rest, then it is a cruel joke, a warm and fuzzy set-up for measures like vouchers. If single-sex becomes a satisfying distraction from existing schools that desperately need help, then it only serves to further erode the system. The new educational reform law is called the No Child Left Behind Act, an irresistible sentiment with a chilling edge to it -- did we ever actually intend to leave certain children behind? The challenge, in developing these new schools and programs, is to make them part of a dynamic, ongoing reform, and not an escape hatch from a troubled system.

Karen Stabiner is the author of "All Girls: Single-Sex Education and Why It Matters" (Riverhead Books), to be published in August.