Dive Brief:
- The number of single-sex public schools has risen significantly over the last decade, and author Juliet A. Williams explores the trend in her new book, "The Separation Solution? Single-Sex Education and the New Politics of Gender Equality."
- Williams told the Atlantic that single-sex schools in the U.S. “are not delivering the results... [and] are producing some unintended consequences in terms of reinforcing damaging gender stereotypes.”
- Williams points to heightened interest in single-sex schools as stemming from a desperate attempt to find solutions for “the failure of U.S. public-school system.”
Dive Insight:
It's unlikely that the re-emergence of same-sex education will become widespread, or that it will have a significant impact on the way schools in general do business. In making a case, the Atlantic compares statistics from two different sources — one of which, the National Association for Single Sex Education, advocates for single sex schools — in order to calculate its reported “25-fold increase” in U.S. single-sex schools. The New York Times has reported that “government figures are not available for earlier years” in relation to the increase in same-sex schools.
The increase of public single-sex education in the U.S. over the last few years has been marked with lawsuits from the ACLU. The organization filed formal complaints with the U.S. Department of Education over teaching in four Florida school districts, on the grounds that they violated the law “with classes based on junk science about differences between boys’ and girls’ brains.” Similar suits were also filed in Texas, Idaho, Wisconsin, and New York.
The New York Times also reported that lawsuits in Louisiana and West Virginia have resulted in single-sex approaches in those states reverting to coeducation.
