US research on single-sex schooling is limited, but advocates say it shows better student achievement and attendance and fewer discipline problems. Critics say there is no clear evidence, and single-sex learning doesn't get students ready for an integrated world.
Only about 91 of 91,000 public schools offer a form of same-sex education now, including The Philadelphia High School for Girls, which sends almost all of its graduates to college.
"The environment itself, I think it empowers girls," said principal Geraldine Myles. "There is no ceiling to stop them from being anything they want to be, in terms of gender . . . at their impressionable age, it probably makes a difference."
While opponents predict the new federal plan will be a big blow to equal-education opportunity, department officials say there will be no easing of the protections against sexual discrimination.
"We are not advocating single-sex schools, and we are not advocating single-sex classrooms," said Ken Marcus, who oversees civil rights for the department. "We understand that coeducation remains the norm in American public education and will continue to be the norm. We are simply trying to ensure that educators have flexibility to provide options."
Since the current rules began in 1975, single-sex classes have been allowed only in limited cases, such as physical education classes involving contact sports. The proposed regulations announced yesterday will loosen those restrictions considerably, allowing districts to create single-sex classes to provide a "diversity" of choices or to meet the particular needs of students.
Schools would have to be "evenhanded," meaning they must treat boys and girls equally in determining what courses to offer. Single-gender enrollment must be voluntary.
If a school creates a single-sex class in a subject, it would not be required to offer the other gender a similar class, but it would have to provide a coed version of it.
The department's plan would also make it easier to create entire single-sex schools.
Current rules allow those schools, but only when a district creates a comparable single-sex school for the other gender. That restriction would disappear. Instead, districts would have the option of demonstrating that their coed schools provide "substantially equal" benefits to the excluded sex.
Some call that bad policy.
"The notion that you can have schools that are `separate but less than equal' is a new low in the understanding and protection of antidiscrimination principles," said Jocelyn Samuels, vice president of education and employment at the National Women's Law Center.
