Fleming test-drives single-sex classes [US] [2007]

[Roanoke.com, Wednesday, October 31, 2007] Officials weigh whether a new class setup can lead to better test scores.

 

By David Harrison

The boys are so engaged that they're interrupting one another and Troy Manns, the teacher, has a hard time getting his questions out.

"What was the Quartering Act?" Manns asks.

"Had to house the soldiers," comes the response, referring to a despised pre-Revolutionary law imposed by the British.

Manns is teaching an 11th-grade American literature class at William Fleming High School, similar to countless others except in one respect: there are no girls here.

Manns and the 25 boys constitute one of two new single-sex classes in Roanoke. The other is a girls' geometry class at Fleming, the only public school in the Roanoke Valley to offer such classes.

Fleming Principal Susan Willis started the single-sex classes this year to see whether teenagers perform better in school without distractions from the opposite sex. Before the start of the year, Willis handpicked the 25 boys and 25 girls to be the experiment's subjects.

The students didn't know they would be in single-sex classes but were given the option of leaving. So far none has, Willis said. In fact, three new girls have signed up for the math class.

The test will come during this year's Standards of Learning exams.

"If I see improvements" from the students in single-sex classes, "then we will definitely keep those and maybe expand the offering," she said.

The number of single-sex classes in public schools nationwide, which has been growing in the past few years, got a boost last year when the U.S. Department of Education relaxed the regulations governing all-boys or all-girls classes.

Estimates from interest groups on the number of single-sex classrooms nationwide range from 250 to more than 360. They are particularly popular in urban schools with large minority populations, such as Fleming.

The Virginia Department of Education does not keep track of the number of single-sex classes in the state, a spokesman said.

Despite their increasing popularity, it's unclear how effective they are. A 2005 U.S. Department of Education review of studies on single-sex education found the results "equivocal."

Advocacy groups have stepped in to fill the void.

"In the past decades ... good research has demonstrated that there are, in fact, hard-wired differences in the ways girls and boys learn, and that there are evidence-based techniques that can exploit those differences," wrote Leonard Sax, executive director of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education in a 2005 essay for Education Week.

On the other hand, the push for single-sex classes "ends up reinforcing detrimental stereotypes," said Lenora Lapidus, director of the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. "These classes are started as a kind of quick fix to other problems in the schools."

In the boys' class Tuesday morning, the free-wheeling, wide-ranging discussion of the ideals of the Revolutionary period led to a discussion of the Jena Six case and a case about a teen jailed over a sex act.

Jamelle Hagins echoed many of his classmates when he said he liked not having the distractions that girls in the class would bring.

"We can relate because there's more guys talking," he said. "We can be more open because there's no girls."

"There's more testosterone, that's for sure," said Manns, who also coaches the girls' basketball team. "But the guys are more relaxed because there's not the distractions. What we did today would have been kind of difficult with young ladies. You had a good debate."

In the girls' geometry class that afternoon, students hunched over their notebooks, calculating whether two lines were parallel. The class was quiet and focused.

"The class is naturally more relaxed, more cooperative," said Kristen Saia, the teacher.

Besides geometry, Saia said she talks about colleges and careers to the students. On Thursday, she's planning to take the class on a field trip to Hollins University.

Brittany Jennings said the single-sex setting allows female students to come up with answers more frequently than they would if they were competing with male students.

Saia "gives us more chances," Brittany said.

If there were boys in the class, "there would be more talking and stuff: the girls talking to the boys and boys talking to each other," said Amanda Camden.

"They just seem to goof off and make jokes a lot of the time," said Jasmine Alexander.