Altered Classrooms: Same-Sex Classrooms

By Judy Molland

Ben Wright talks with pride about the drastic changes he made at the elementary school where he served as principal.

“We turned the school upside down,” he says. “The environment in the school changed overnight; participation shot up; the name-calling, the social behavior completely changed. The focus on academics went way, way up.”

What exactly did he do?

Four years ago, Wright’s students were doing poorly on standardized tests – only 10 percent of the boys had passed the reading text. None of the girls had passed the test for math. So Wright decided to reinvent his school – with single-sex classrooms. In one year, the percentage of boys passing the reading test rose to 73 percent; the percent of girls passing the math shot up to 55 percent.

“It not only works,” Wright says, “in my opinion, it’s the only way to fly in America right now when we have so many kids who are not making it.”

Education reform required by the nation’s No Child Left Behind law is among the factors forcing educators to re-examine their teaching practices. Along with placing students in single-sex settings, public schools nationwide have also been experimenting with academic tracking, or ability grouping, and looping, in which teachers advance from grade to grade along with students.

Self-Esteem in Single-Sex Classes

Supporters of single-gender classes say these set-ups lead to improved test scores and greater self-esteem because teachers tailor their instruction to the different learning styles of girls and boys.

The number of public schools nationwide offering single-sex options has quadrupled in the past three years, according to Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D., founder of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. There are currently 25 public schools, in 16 different states, that are entirely single-sex, while at least 63 public schools in 22 states offer some single-sex classrooms.