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Taylor Yungk’s classroom looks different than it has the last four years.
Arizona State Standards keep the topics the same, but the approach changes because seventh and eighth grade classes at Huachuca City School are either all girls or all boys.
The students last year suggested to teachers that there might be some benefit in single-sex classrooms.
“This came right from the students,” Yungk said. “They investigate the pros and the cons and they came back with some stuff and took their ideas and were really successful in that.”
After teachers adapted the idea over the summer, Huachuca City School implemented single-sex classrooms for this school year.
“Having the two sexes separated, you can gear your lectures,” Yungk said. “You don’t have to worry about how I’m going to reach the boys and girls. It allows a little more freedom.”
Parents have had mixed reactions, but teachers at the school can’t recall someone being pulled out of the school because of the new classroom set up.
Separating them has seemed to work, though, according to educators.
“Research wise, we’ve looked at both sides,” she said. “The teachers that put it all together found the good and the bad … but some of my girls, they are now asking questions and I can see achievements on both sides of the genders and they are not worried about stereotypes. They are more focused on academics.”
But in Arizona, Huachuca City School’s not alone.
For this school year, the formerly coed Crittenton Academy in Phoenix transformed into a public charter school named The Girls Leadership Academy of Arizona, a high school serving ninth through twelfth-grade students with all girls classes.
Chandler's Andersen Junior High School began its single-sex class offerings in 2006. Before that, Cactus Middle School in Casa Grande began offering single-sex classes in grades sixth through eighth starting in the 2005-06 school year.
The Westwind Middle School Academy in Phoenix also offers some single-gender classrooms.
Most of the findings from single-sex classrooms or schools say that participation by those most timid students rises significantly in these single-gender classes and that disciplinary issues are also down because of this change.
But a study published in Science in September, the “Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling,” takes the theory that Huachuca City School and all those other places implemented and turns it on its head.
The study reads that single-sex classrooms are “deeply misguided, and often justified by weak, cherry-picked, or misconstrued scientific claims rather than by valid scientific evidence.”
Positive results sometimes do not account for students being more advanced when entering or switching out before final performances are rated, according to the study. The study says that common misconceptions like boys are thrilled by loud, energetic teachers whereas girls respond to a gentler touch that is being implemented in sex-separated schools is pseudoscience and a detriment to kids in schools, the study said.
But the study also noted that it disguises “institutional sexism … as choice” by dividing kids on arbitrary lines of sex, which pushes boys and girls apart within an otherwise constructive learning environment.
This switch to same-sex schools is part of a national trend.
In 2002, about a dozen public schools nationally offered same-sex classrooms. This school year that has shot to 506 public schools, nearly 390 of which are coed schools that offer single-sex classes, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education.
But Yungk said this isn’t the view that teachers see at Huachuca City School.
“We’re trying to better our students. We’re not trying to harm them or cause them a disservice,” she said. “We jumped with it and lets give it a shot because we want to help them out to better their education.”
And this is reflected in studies outside of Science.
A 2005 review by the Department of Education titled "Single-Sex Versus
Coeducation Schooling: A Systematic Review" said that some short-term benefits were seen in students but no long-term evidence can be generalized from it. However, it also said that there could be positive lifelong benefits including more active roles for males and females in social lives paired with college education as well as a reduced likelihood to drop out of high school and remain unemployed, as well as more political activism and nontraditional major choices for women.
“I see it as a positive thing and they are getting more individualized attention this way,” Yungk said. “Most girls are wired a little bit alike and boys are wired a little bit alike as well. Standards are there and like for my kids, they have to learn about the Civil War and I’m planning for two different approaches – the boys actually might act out a battle, but most girls wouldn’t be too crazy about it and would want to try something else.”
They mix genders at recesses, lunches and in classes like music so that they “get the sense that there are boys and girls at this school.”
Yungk said they test students each month and by the end of the year will have more information as to whether or not the classes are working.
“This is the pilot year, so I think that first set of scores will be what we can improve and what not. I think we just take it year by year because we want it to succeed and continue as a tradition at this school.”
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