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Others to Study School Gender Program

Posted on: Monday, 27 March 2006, 21:00 CST

By Erica Erwin, Erie Times-News, Pa.

Mar. 25--Administrators from the North Allegheny School District are taking lessons from a local school on single-sex classrooms.

Representatives from the Pittsburgh-area district will visit Erie's McKinley Elementary School this spring to learn about the school's gender-based education program, in which boys and girls are separated into different classrooms as part of a study of how the two genders learn.

North Allegheny has been interested in the subject for some time and is just beginning to research whether some kind of gender-based program would work in that district, said Lynn Kovacic, North Allegheny's director of special education and people services.

"We wanted to have a dialogue with the folks who are already making a go of (gender-based education) and get some insights," Kovacic said.

Erie schools Superintendent Jim Barker said he's not surprised that McKinley's program -- the first of its kind in a northwestern Pennsylvania public school -- is catching the attention of other districts.

"We're looking outside the lines to find solutions to better educate all students, and other districts are recognizing that,"Barker said.

Thirty-two fifth-graders -- 16 boys and 16 girls -- at McKinley are separated by gender into classrooms for reading and math classes.

The idea is to boost test scores by using teaching methods tailored to the ways in which boys and girls learn. For instance, some research shows that boys need movement and noise, while girls need a more structured, focused environment.

So far, it seems to be working, McKinley Principal Malinda Bostick said.

While Bostick didn't have hard numbers, she said preliminary results from standardized tests show that students in the single-sex classrooms are making more gains on reading and math than their peers in co-ed classrooms.

"The initial results look like there's a statistically significant difference," she said.

Opponents of gender-based education argue that splitting girls and boys into separate classrooms increases discrimination and encourages gender stereotypes -- for instance, that girls are better in English and writing, and that boys are better in math and sciences.

But the practice is catching on nevertheless.

At least 156 public schools in the United States offered single-sex educational opportunities during the 2004-05 school year, according to the Maryland-based National Association for Single Sex Public Education.

Cathedral Preparatory School, a male-only parochial high school, is the only mainstream Erie school that offers single-sex education.

McKinley's experiment is bringing attention to the concept of single-sex classrooms and to research that shows boys and girls learn in different ways, Bostick said, adding that she's also received calls from the Clymer, N.Y., school district and from a parent in Pittsburgh.

More and more districts have become interested in single-sex classrooms since the federal government relaxed the rules of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits gender discrimination in public schools, to allow some gender-based education, Bostick said.

"There has been a rising tide of interest, and I think it's going to become a tidal wave," she said.

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Source: Erie Times-News

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