An elementary school in Mount Airy, Md. is experimenting with boys-only classes to help close the gender gap in reading achievement in the early grades...

By Nancy Henderson.

An elementary school in Mount Airy, Md. is experimenting with boys-only classes to help close the gender gap in reading achievement in the early grades. A middle school in Boynton Beach, Fla. offers single-gender classes to help increase academic performance and decrease discipline problems. And at a high school near San Diego, Calif., more than half the students have opted for all-girls or all-boys science and math classes.

It's not exactly a tidal wave, but an emerging current of separate-but-equal classrooms for girls and boys is taking hold in a growing number of public schools across the country. More than 150 schools nationwide now offer same-sex classes, compared to almost none a decade ago. Most are coed schools with some single-sex classes, but there are also some 35 single-sex public schools.

The federal government has long prohibited single-sex classes except in subjects such as sex education and physical education. Now, the U.S. Department of Education is reviewing the requirements, with an eye toward encouraging more single-sex academic classes.

Brain Research

Fueling the single-sex trend is a growing body of brain research that shows clear differences in the structure and cognitive development of male and female brains.

"In girls, the language areas of the brain develop before the areas used for math. In boys, it's the other way around. Therefore, a coed curriculum will produce many boys who can't write well and many girls who think they are 'dumb at math,'" explains Leonard Sax, a family physician in Poolesville, Md. and author of the forthcoming book, Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about Sex Differences (Doubleday, March 2005).

Sax also points to brain research showing that in girls, emotion is processed in the same area of the brain that processes language. In boys, research shows that those regions are separate. Therefore, many boys find it hard to answer a question such as, "How would you feel if you were in that situation?" According to Sax, a more engaging question for such boys would be, "What would you do if you were in that situation?"

Studies also show that girls hear better than boys. Therefore, girls can learn more easily in a class where the teacher speaks softly. Boys, on the other hand, may respond better to stress. "A high-decibel, mildly confrontational teaching style can be highly motivating for many boys, whereas the same teaching style will be annoying and irritating for most girls," says Sax.

"We're just at the beginning of understanding brain research [about gender differences]," says Margaret Broad, Head of St. Margaret's School in Tappahannock, Va.

Public Policy

Critics of gender segregation see its potential to violate civil rights. Some public school districts, however, see it as a way to help teachers respond to the pressure to raise student achievement. For parents and students in Frederick County, Md., the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act has lead to a new option for families: Students may enroll in same-sex classes. The hope is that it will lead to higher reading scores for boys and higher math scores for girls.

Would single-sex education be better for your child? There's no simple answer. Most families would need to consider a wide variety of factors, not just whether classes are coed or single-sex.

A Private School Tradition

Most single-sex schools in the U.S. are private, not public. The Washington, DC area offers an unusually a wide range of private girls' and boys' schools, including day schools, boarding schools, large schools, small schools, religious schools, and non-religious schools. There are also single-sex schools to suit various academic abilities.

Many private boys' and girls' schools became coed in the 1970s and 1980s, following passage of Title IX and the notion that separating the sexes amounted to unequal treatment. Now, enrollment at these schools continues to increase and dozens of new single-sex schools have opened.

Many parents don't even want to consider a single-sex school for their child, notes Georgia Irvin, an education consultant in Chevy Chase, Md. "Few of today's parents have attended a single-sex school. We're a coed generation," she says. "But often if I recommend it and they go and look at it, they love it."

Single-Sex Advantages

A recent study by the directors of the National Girls' School Coalition found that girls' schools often help girls in the following ways:

Create a safe environment for taking risks

Counter harmful mass-media influences

Support a can-do philosophy

Ensure than learning takes center stage, free of social distractions

Emphasize teamwork and collaborative learning

Increase girls' interest in math, science, and technology

Focus on practical matters such as career, work, and money

Increase benefits from athletic participation

Honor women's voices, their female perspective, and their female way of doing things. Research also shows several advantages of an all-boy environment. Members of the International Boys' School Coalition have pointed to the following ways that boys' schools can help boys:

Provide a safe environment to discover who they are regardless of how others see them

Encourage interest in the arts and humanities

Encourage self-expression

Increase participation in the arts

Acculturate boys to care deeply for younger, smaller, or weaker boys

Minimize distractions to help ensure that learning takes center stage. Based on recent brain research, author/physician Leonard Sax sees additional advantages of an all-boy environment. He says that single-sex education can:

Provide a developmentally appropriate level of emphasis on literacy and writing for young boys.

Increase opportunities for physical activities, including extra recess time in the early school years.

Encourage teachers to speak up in the classroom, since boys have a less acute sense of hearing than girls.

Encourage teaching styles that involve games and mild forms of confrontation, because research shows that acute stress enhances learning in males but not in females.

See for Yourself

Many of the advantages of a girls' or boys' school may also be present in a good coed school. Good teachers are sensitive to varying gender needs and individual students' needs. Furthermore, some coed private schools offer single-sex classes in math or other subjects.

A variety of good schools—not just girls' schools—emphasize teamwork and collaborative learning. Some coed schools have large numbers of boys and girls who excel in the arts as well as athletics. Some schools are sensitive to ethnic and cultural differences that can be as crucial as gender differences. Furthermore, a coed school may offer a kindergarten program that's developmentally appropriate for boys, with plenty of time for recess and hands-on learning.

Therefore, it pays to be aware of your own child's needs and look for evidence that any prospective school will meet those needs.

Despite the possible advantages of single-sex classrooms, education consultant Georgia Irvin finds a coed school may better suit a child who has little exposure to the opposite sex outside of school. Boys and girls need opportunities for exchange and engagement. Your child needs opportunities to know how the other gender thinks. Maybe your child gets this exposure through contact with siblings, cousins, neighborhood playmates, or church friends of the opposite sex. If not, than a coed school may the best place to get it.