Tag Archive for ‘single-sex’ at The Core Knowledge Blog

Tag Archive for 'single-sex'

Boys Will Be Boys

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 16, 2008 in Students and Teaching. 1 Comment

By next fall, approximately 500 public schools nationwide will offer single-sex classes, reports the Washington Post.

The approach is based on the much-debated yet increasingly popular notion that girls and boys are hard-wired to learn differently and that they will be more successful if classes are designed for their particular needs.

I know lots of teachers who favor single-sex ed, but not one for this reason. It’s all about classroom management. I have no idea if elementary school boys learn differently (I doubt it). But they act differently, and suffer by comparison to the girls in the room in terms of behavior, attention, and energy level. That’s reason enough to make single-sex classrooms a more widespread option.

Crisis? What Crisis?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 20, 2008 in Education Theory and Research and Reports. 0 Comments

Girls’ gains in the classroom have not come at boys’ expense, says a new report from The American Association of University Women. The Washington Post and the New York Times both have pieces on the group’s study out today, which finds that academic success is more closely associated with family income than with gender (Shocker, that).

The best quote comes from the redoubtable Sara Mead of the New America Foundation in the Times:

“There’s still a lot of debate about whether there’s something we should be doing differently in teaching boys and girls. The people on the feminist-leaning side of the debate see the conversation about a boys’ crisis as a strategy to advance the single-sex education agenda. I’m not sure that’s correct. I don’t think the kind of data we have about boys’ and girls’ achievement tells us anything useful about single-sex education.”

Thanks for clearing that up, Sara.

Update: More from Eduwonkette, the Queen of Charts

Teaching to the Testosterone

Published by Robert Pondiscio on March 4, 2008 in Education Practice, Education Theory and Teaching. 0 Comments

The New York Times Magazine entry on single-sex education has set tongues wagging across the edusphere. Alexander Russo likes it and posts an email from Richard Whitmire, USA Today’s editorial page editor and the head of the Education Writers Association who seems to favor single-sex ed, with caveats.

Writing over at the American Prospect, Ezra Klein dismisses single-sex ed proponent Leonard Sax as an “obvious crank.” Why that’s obvious wasn’t obvious to me, but no matter—the moment Klein described Sax as a “self-styled” neuroscientist it was obvious that what followed was going to be the product of a made-up mind. (Self-styled edublogger? Or do I need to be certified?)

The excellent Sara Mead, on the other hand is well-worth reading. She makes a point that can’t be made enough: “Actual neuroscientists…aren’t the ones banging the drum on gender-based education. In fact, many caution against trying to draw practical implications for schooling from their work….Jay Geidd, one of the preeminent neuroscientists studying brain development in children (including gender differences) cautions that gender is much too crude a tool to differentiate educational approaches: the variation within each gender is often larger than the average difference between genders, and there’s substantial overlap in the distributions.”

Continue reading ‘Teaching to the Testosterone’

Singled Out

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 14, 2008 in Education Practice. 0 Comments

A Georgia school district has become the first in the nation to convert to single-sex education. The Greene County school district voted unanimously last week to make the move this fall in response to low academic achievement, among other problems.

In a statement on the district’s web site, Superintendent Shawn McCollough stated, “We have a wonderful community here in Greene County, but our students are not having the type of success that they truly deserve. By converting our schools to Single Gender Academies, we expect student achievement and college acceptance will increase, and discipline rates, teen pregnancy, and dropout rates will decrease.”

“Thinking outside of the box simply isn’t enough,” McCollough added. “You actually have to do something outside of the box. If the single gender format is good enough for our finest private and charter schools, then why wouldn’t it be good enough for our public schools?”

The move has plently of critics including, ironically enough, Leonard Sax, head of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. “This is the worst kind of publicity for our movement,” he tells the Associated Press. “It misses the whole point. Our movement is about choice, about giving parents a choice. One size does not fit all. Even a small school district needs to provide choice.” While districts nationwide have converted individual schools to a single-sex model, the small, rural district east of Atlanta is believed to be the first to adopt single-sex education across an entire public school district.

Federal law allows single-sex classrooms or schools but parents must also have the option of a publicly funded coeducational experience for their children, said Sax, who calls Greene County’s decision illegal. McCollough says he’s been advised by the district’s attorneys that the conversion is allowable under federal law. “This is entirely legal and we’re moving forward with it,” he said.