"Separating genders shows promise at Roxbury school" January 13, 2012|By Akilah Johnson
Last year, many in this orderly first-grade class at Higginson-Lewis K-8 School were kindergartners who were academically unprepared, unruly, and hated school. Pencils were snapped, and fights broke out. There were almost daily trips to the principal’s office and repeated calls home.
Now that has changed. Boys are in one class, girls are in another, a rare practice in Boston, and a way of educating students that has stirred debate nationally. And pupils, teachers said, are more focused, making learning easier....
Three years ago, Boston fought to open the state’s first single-gender public schools in more than a generation, but withdrew the proposal under pressure from civil rights organizations who challenged their legality.
Under Massachusetts law, public schools cannot deny a student admission based on gender. Last year, state legislators filed a bill to amend state law to allow single-sex schools, but no final action has been taken.
Public schools can split boys and girls into separate classes as long as the programs are of equal quality.
Only two Boston schools separate the sexes, Higginson-Lewis and English High School in Jamaica Plain, said a School Department spokesman. All freshman and core sophomore courses - English, math, science, and history - are divided by gender at the high school.
Sarah Wunsch, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, argued that the city’s effort to create gender-specific schools was a well-meaning, but misguided experiment that reinforces gender stereotypes. The same argument, she said, applies when it comes to segregating classes based on gender.
“There’s no scientific evidence that this works,’’ she said. “There’s a lot of garbage out there that talks about the differences between boys and girls and how they learn, but it’s junk, junk science.’’
Like global warming or NIST reports?
A recent report in the journal Science by eight scientists, who are founders of the American Council for CoEducational Schooling, concluded there is no empirical evidence to suggest that single-sex learning improves academic performance. The nonprofit’s report also dismisses the use of neuroscience to argue for single-gender education - the idea that boys’ and girls’ brains are fundamentally different - as pseudoscience.
Proponents of single-sex learning say all-boy and all-girl schools allow some students to focus on learning without the distraction of the opposite sex, enabling them to excel in areas where a gender gap in achievement typically exists.
The social development of first-grade boys at Higginson-Lewis has been profound, teachers, principals, and parents say. There have been no suspensions and few, if any, trips to the office for classroom misbehavior. Students support one another.
Girls, explained 6-year-old Jaleel Jackson, “keep on talking. They can distract us, and you can get bad grades and stuff.’’
Jaleel, whose mohawk is cut into an arrow similar to the protagonist in the cartoon “Avatar: The Last Airbender,’’ sees another benefit of an all-boys class. “We get to have fun, and some people get to play rough, but not rough, rough, rough.’’
For Randall Myers, also 6, a class with no girls means that “you can raise your hand and tell the answer.’’
Across the hall in the girls’ class, Semaj Grahm, 7, said she likes not having boys around. “If we ask for help,’’ she said, “boys will say, ‘Oh, how come you can’t do it yourself?’ or ‘How come you can’t read?’ ’’
Still, in some ways, she admits, it’s not really that different: “Some girls tattle on me, too.’’
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I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention. Too busy looking around the class at all the pretty girls.