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Single-Sex Classrooms, Controversy Grow; Arrowhead, New Milwaukee Charter School Plan Offerings

Posted on: Wednesday, 22 March 2006, 21:00 CST

By SARAH CARR

The question posed by Susan Henzig to her students at Milwaukee's St. Joan Antida High School, an all-girls program, prompts an unusual discussion on a snowy Thursday morning in English class:

How would you raise your own daughter differently than you've been raised?

One student says she wouldn't shelter her daughter too much. Another says she wouldn't expect her child to be "100 percent perfect." A third explains that she would let her daughter attend college outside of Milwaukee even if it seemed far away.

Henzig ends the discussion with a question. "Would this discussion be different if there were a boy in the room?"

The girls trickle off to their next class, but Henzig's question resonates across the country as exploding numbers of parents and educators push the topic from contemplation to action. The growth in the number of single-sex educational offerings in recent years has been fueled by parents, politics and, most recently, growing publicity on the struggles of boys in classrooms.

A decade ago, only a handful of public schools offered single- sex classrooms or programs, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. That number reached 211 this year.

In Wisconsin, a bill allowing school boards and charter schools to create single-sex programs has been passed by the Legislature. Gov. Jim Doyle is considering whether to sign it.

In Milwaukee, a charter high school geared to young women plans to open in a year and a half. And in the suburbs, Arrowhead High School hopes to introduce single-sex classes in English and biology as soon as next fall.

Among private schools, Divine Savior Holy Angels, an all-girls Catholic high school in Milwaukee, has watched its waiting list grow. And at Notre Dame Middle School for girls, parents have started clamoring for the school to expand into the lower grades.

Supporters of the movement cite research showing achievement gains in single-sex classrooms, different learning styles between the sexes and the importance of giving parents a range of options. Those critical of the efforts say the research is more ambiguous and that single-sex programs sometimes reinforce gender stereotypes.

"If (schools) do it right, it can boost grades and test scores," said Leonard Sax, executive director of the association for single- sex education, adding that teachers have to understand the differences in the way boys and girls learn. "Just putting boys in one classroom and girls in another is not a guarantee of anything good."

But Rosalind Barnett, a senior scientist at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., said the trend is "very conservative, very traditional, very retro," and there's limited evidence that boys and girls learn so vastly differently.

"I think parents should be their own judge and not listen to this because it's the flavor of the month."

Not nuns with rulers'

When people mention an all-girls school, "You imagine 1950s nuns with rulers, snapping them on their wrists," said Veronica Leshok, the social worker at St. Joan Antida. "But it's nothing like that."

Candanisha Bishop, an 18-year-old senior at St. Joan, said her favorite time of year is "cultures week," when girls of all backgrounds be they Muslim, Jewish or Catholic can share information and traditions from their backgrounds and faiths.

"It's like the moment is still everyone is really mellow," Bishop said. She thinks the intimacy of the week wouldn't be possible in a coed environment.

Her main concern about being at a single-sex school is a more pragmatic one: "When we have dances, all of the girls have to find boys to come."

While St. Joan represents a more traditional approach to single- sex education the private school is all girls a more recent trend has been to add single-sex classes in public schools. Sax's association points out that of the 211 public schools with single- sex offerings, 167 are coed with only some gender-specific classrooms.

Although there continues to be movement toward creating and expanding single-sex options for girls, more attention has been focused on boys recently, as illustrated at Arrowhead. It would be the first district in the state joining 33 other states with such an offering.

"Boys are doing much less well than they were 30 years ago," Sax said.

Arrowhead South Campus Principal Gregg Wieczorek grew interested in single-sex classrooms after reading a Newsweek article on the struggles of boys and watching the success of an alternative program for freshmen at his high school. The program enrolls mainly boys.

The school plans to offer voluntary single-sex courses in freshman English and sophomore biology next year.

Wieczorek said the curriculum and teacher will be the same for both sections, but the teaching approach might differ. Hypothetically, the girls might read "Romeo and Juliet" in English, while the boys might read "Julius Caesar," he said.

Chris Ahmuty, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, said his organization is mobilizing against such efforts.

"Even the Department (of Education) recognizes that the research is, as they put it, equivocal on the issue of whether single-sex schools get beyond the stereotypes and actually make a difference when it comes to achievement."

Murky legality

The legality of single-sex offerings in public schools is murky, which has turned off some people who had considered opening single- sex schools locally.

A provision of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002 gave public schools the legal authority to offer single-sex classrooms and programs, although the regulations necessary to finalize the law have never been approved.

School districts adding single-sex classrooms or schools often try to protect themselves from legal challenges by making sure comparable programs for both sexes exist within the school or district and that the programs are voluntary.

Milwaukee has two public all-girls high schools. Lady Pitts works with pregnant and parenting teenagers. And Spectrum, founded as a non-profit school in 1975, became part of MPS in 1992 under the "alternative partnership school" designation. It serves primarily at- risk girls.

Although both of these schools have survived, the educators who plan to open the Young Women's Institute for Global Studies as a Milwaukee charter school in the fall of 2007 plan to take no chances. They will not refuse boys, but will market the school to young women and keep their fingers crossed that only girls sign up.

Barnett at Brandeis is worried that instead of empowering young people, single-gender programs can limit their thinking and ambitions.

She points to a study of several single-gender academies in California, which found teachers sometimes reinforced traditional gender stereotypes. For instance, in some classes boys were led to assume that men are the primary wage earners and are emotionally stronger than their wives.

Sax counters with another study of an elementary school in Florida where the test scores of both boys and girls randomly assigned to single-sex classrooms were higher than those in the coed classes.

While experts battle over the research, the long-term fate of single-sex schools is much more likely to be determined by parents and students voting with their feet.

Abeer Ayesh, a 17-year-old senior at St. Joan, said "most of the girls at first don't like it because they are forced to come by their parents. It's sometimes the case that they are dragged in." But at different times and in different ways, eventually most "really appreciate coming to St. Joan," Ayesh said.

Even if it wasn't exactly their first choice.

4

Number of public schools in the United States that offered single- sex educational opportunities eight years ago.

At least 211

Number of public schools that offered them as of January.

Copyright 2006, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. (Note: This notice does not apply to those news items already copyrighted and received through wire services or other media.)

Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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