SINGLE-SEX EDUCATION
MAKING GOOD ON THE PROMISE OF BROWN

Rosemary Salomone
Professor of Law
St. John’s University
School of Law
salomonr@stjohns.edu

The subject of single-sex education is vast and complicated. It raises a number of sociological, developmental, and legal questions that admit of no easy answers. At times the debate proceeds as if girls and boys were each members of distinct and cohesive groups. Yet as recent public school initiatives have shown us, no meaningful discussion can take place without factoring in and sorting out the powerful influence of race, culture, and social class on the present and future lives of many American students. That being said, I’m going to focus my remarks on the efforts made by some urban school districts to address the social and academic problems of disadvantaged minority students through single-sex classes or schools. And, purely in the interest of packaging a cohesive argument in the short time allotted, I’m going to limit the discussion to female students although I believe that at least equally compelling arguments can be made to support single-sex programs for inner-city minority boys.

Now civil liberties groups including the ACLU and NOW, as well as others, have raised serious legal objections to these programs. And they typically invoke both Brown v. Board of Education and the VMI decision to support their arguments. To their mind, these programs violate the “separate is inherently unequal” principle of Brown while they are built on the same gender stereotypes that the Court rejected in VMI. Yet if we look closely at both of these decisions, we can just as easily conclude that first, these programs in fact promote the equality ideal laid out in Brown and second, that they also comply with the ground rules laid down in VMI . In other words, there are sufficiently persuasive grounds for concluding that separating students by sex in the middle and high school years may provide an appropriate and effective means for achieving equal educational opportunity and gender equality at least for some female students.

From “Brown” to “VMI”

First, let’s look at Brown. Here oppositionist arguments draw an analogy with racial segregation and argue that separate education can never be equal. Needless to say, the most obvious distinction is that students participate in these programs on a voluntary basis unlike the forced segregation struck down in Brown. But there is also other language in the decision that proves more relevant. Here the Court asserted that to separate children “from others of similar age generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their minds and hearts in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” In a general sense then, Brown was about the right to be free from state action implying inferiority. It was about one’s own sense of self-esteem and self-worth based on how one is perceived and respected in the more immediate community and in the larger society. More specifically the Court noted the importance of education as “the principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment.” This language supports one of the primary goals that school districts have tried to achieve in establishing single-sex classes and schools for disadvantaged students. What I’m referring to here is “cultural socialization,” that is, preparing students for the roles they will assume as adults both in mainstream society and in their communities. That’s what the single-sex classes in Baltimore and Dade County were trying to do in the early 1990s and what more recent all-girls’ schools in New York and Chicago are now attempting to achieve.

But before fleshing this point out further, I want to note that the Court’s decision in VMI carries the equality ideal of Brown into the realm of gender. Here Justice Ginsburg draws a clear distinction between race and sex, telling us that the “inherent differences, between men and women,” are “cause for celebration, but not for the denigration of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual’s opportunity.” Gender classifications are permissible where they “advance the full development of the talent and capacities of our nation’s people,” but not where they are used “to create or perpetuate the legal, social, and economic inferiority of women.” Now the reference to women recognizes the dark history of single-sex education where prestigious schools and colleges absolutely denied them access. Yet the more general reference to “our nation’s people” also can be interpreted as an oblique bow to single-sex programs for inner-city minority students, both female and male. So while same-sex programs are not inherently unconstitutional, they cannot stigmatize or stereotype women. And as Justice Ginsburg demonstrated in her lengthy opinion, the legal conclusion in any particular case depends on a complex weaving together of factual data and research. And that is where I now turn.

Race, Culture, and Social Class

Empirical studies have shown that race and social class mediate the schooling experience and influence how students perceive its importance to their future lives. For inner city girls, the gender gap in math, science, and technology is merely one of the compelling challenges that they face. And while they often demonstrate extraordinary resiliency and even self-confidence in the face of adverse circumstances, arguably debunking the now controversial “loss of voice” theory, they succumb in other ways to negative social forces that impair the ability to succeed academically. For many of them, what James Coleman called the “adolescent subculture of rating and dating” assumes heightened proportion. Only by looking at the surrounding demographic data can we fully comprehend the depths of these problems and the growing interest in single-sex education among urban educators and parents.

For all too many girls in the inner-city, the harmful effects of early disadvantage are likely to manifest themselves in teenage pregnancy. Of the almost one million teenagers who become pregnant each year, 83 percent are from low-income families. And while birth rates have dropped by 23 percent for African Americans and 5 percent for Hispanics between the ages of 15 and17 since 1990, the overall numbers are still dramatically higher than for whites in the same age group. Viewing life through the lens of few available options, they perceive their economic and social situations as hopeless and resort to early and repeat motherhood as a source of competence and significance.

The results are devastating. Only seven out of ten teen mothers complete high school and they are less likely to go on to college than other young women. Children born to single mothers are more likely to have low birth weight and other medical problems, and to be victims of abuse and neglect. They’re twice as likely to drop out of school, twice as likely to have a child in their teens, and one and a half times as likely to be out of work and school in their late teens and early twenties.

The effects of race and ethnicity reveal themselves most clearly in what is known as the “achievement gap.” Things typically start to unravel during the middle school years. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the test-score gap between white and African American students has been widening since the mid-1980s in nearly every age group and every subject. In reading and math, the differences for both groups across grade levels are at least 25 points. The gaps are especially striking at the top of the achievement spectrum. The problem is most acute in urban areas where six percent of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 who were enrolled in school in 1998 dropped out as compared to a national rate of four percent.

Researchers continue to debate the roots of academic failure. Obviously poorly financed schools and inadequately trained teachers are part of the problem. But some sociologists believe that we should consider student motivation as it collides with conflicting expectations between the larger and the more immediate cultures. Part of the blame may fall on the inability of public schools to develop and constantly reaffirm what has been called “academic identification” - the belief that school achievement is a promising basis for self-esteem. Adolescents growing up in poor communities often receive conflicting messages that make it difficult for them to establish a stable identity. Yet whatever identity they form in these crucial years bears significant consequences for how they adapt to adult society and what their future life choices will be. Adolescents who don’t see themselves as academically competent are far less likely to have high educational and career aspirations.

Research on Single-Sex Education

That’s where single-sex education comes in. Now I’m not suggesting that separating students by sex is the only way to achieve educational opportunity for disadvantaged minority students. But research findings suggest that it may prove particularly effective with this population. A series of studies conducted by Cornelius Riordan, a sociologist at Providence College, are most frequently cited to support this argument. Riordan did not set out to validate single-sex education but rather stumbled upon his original findings in the course of examining the effects of Catholic schooling. In fact, realizing how unfashionable the approach was and the professional risk involved if his conclusions were wrong, he was extremely cautious in reporting his early findings.

Riordan used the large database from High School and Beyond, a 1980 national survey sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics, which included data from Catholic single-sex and coeducational schools. He adjusted for initial differences between the two groups on ability, home background, school policies, and school environment. He compared performance in sophomore and senior years and found that white girls and African American and Hispanic students of both sexes fared better in single-sex schools, while coeducation appeared to benefit white boys. Girls and minority boys attending single-sex schools demonstrated higher cognitive achievement, higher self-esteem, higher internal control, and more liberal attitudes toward working women than their counterparts in coeducational schools. The opposite effect held for white boys in single-sex schools. Here coeducational students surpassed them on all cognitive and affective measures used in the study. Meanwhile, single-sex schools appeared to provide minority males in particular with an environment and set of school policies that foster the growth of internal mechanisms, which in turn, strengthen their belief that they are masters of their own destinies. Low-status students, Riordan maintained, are more receptive to school effects. They also derive a greater benefit from same-sex teachers as role models.

Riordan’s subsequent research on Catholic schools moved him to refine his original thesis. He later suggested that the effects of single-sex education fall within a hierarchy of low-status characteristics (female, racial minority, low socioeconomic status). The greatest effects are found among African American and Hispanic females from low socio-economic groups, slightly diminished effects among African American and Hispanic males from low socio-economic homes, smaller effects still for white middle-class females, and virtually no differential effects among white males or affluent students regardless of race or gender.

Riordan agrees with researchers such as Valerie Lee that certain organizational features including small school size and a strong academic curriculum contribute to the greater academic effectiveness of single-sex schools. Yet in his view they don’t totally explain the difference. For him, there are other forces operating here that flow out of school type itself - the role models, leadership opportunities, diminished youth-culture values, and an affirmative pro-academic parent and student choice that are key to the success of single-sex schools. And it is these forces, he argues, that make the approach work best for historically disadvantaged student populations. It could very well be that single-sex schools are more empowering for these students than for those whose families are already empowered socially and economically.

The Young Women’s Leadership School

With that thought in mind, I’d like to connect the dots between the social science evidence and what Brown and VMI tell us about equal educational opportunity as viewed through the lens of gender. For my context I use the Young Women’s Leadership School in East Harlem, a relative newcomer that has subtly but decidedly lent new credibility to the discussion on single-sex schooling and broadened the debate over how we might best meet the needs of disadvantaged students. As many of you may recall, when New York City announced plans to open the school in September 1996, it caused quite a stir. The New York Civil Liberties Union, the New York Civil Rights Coalition, and the New York chapter of NOW threatened legal action to prevent the school from opening. Absent a male plaintiff to bring suit in federal court, they filed a Title IX complaint with the federal Office for Civil Rights. OCR has yet to resolve that complaint although as time wore on during the Clinton Administration years, OCR officials became more inclined to let the school pass as a remedial measure. The mood in Congress has also changed with former first lady, now Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton co-sponsoring legislation that will permit federal school reform funds to be used for single-sex programs. Meanwhile, the school itself has expanded from grade seven to grade twelve and graduated its first class in June 2001.

TWYLS, as the students call it, is a small school with a population of 360 students housed in the top five floors of an office building in one of the poorest neighborhoods in New York City. The high school’s literature calls it “a public school with a private mission” and it feels very much like a private school, one blending traditional and progressive elements. The school has a clearly articulated purpose “to nurture the intellectual curiosity and creativity of young women.” It is also unequivocal in the values it aims to instill, developing in students “a sense of community, responsibility, and ethical principles - characteristics that “will help make them leaders for their generation.” There is a firm Discipline Code that includes four “non-negotiable rules” - no violence, no drugs, no weapons, and no leaving campus without a parent or guardian.

Leadership is a strong piece of the curriculum. Many of the activities are geared to that end. Sixty hours of community service are required for high school graduation. Women’s achievements pervade the materials used, providing pro-active and thoughtful female role models. The focus is on math, science, and technology - three areas where girls have been found to lag behind in achievement and career interest. From the first day of seventh grade, college is built into the life plan of every girl. In that sense, the school provides a ticket out of the surrounding culture and only families who buy into that project send their daughters in the first instance. Many of these families are headed by single mothers who decidedly want a better life for their daughters. As the word has spread through the East Harlem community and beyond, more and more of them are going to great lengths to seize that opportunity. Middle-class parents are also pulling their daughters out of private schools to send them to TYWLS. According to school estimates, there are currently 1,000 girls clamoring to get in.

Students are select in their attitudes but not in their academic preparation. The school recruits actively from the surrounding community. Admissions decisions are based on an interview, a test (including a writing and a math component), attendance and discipline records, and teacher recommendations. About 18 percent of the students are African American, 78 percent Hispanic, and the remaining white and Asian. About 45 percent are eligible for free lunch. A small number are learning disabled or need intensive instruction in English. Many come from homes where English is not spoken. The school’s budget comes primarily through the usual city and state channels with about $1,000 per student for enrichment activities, including a college counselor, provided by the Young Women’s Leadership Foundation, a private foundation established to promote similar schools for disadvantaged girls.

Critics of the school inevitably ask for the bottom line. Are students doing “better” than they would have in a coed school? That question is essentially unanswerable. As anyone familiar with research methods understands, the conditions for a valid, reliable, and useful comparative study simply do not exist here. The very virtue of such schools, that they are completely voluntary, turns out to be their methodological vice. Students attend as a matter of choice and not by random selection. So there is no way to tell if any differences in outcomes are the direct result of the different approaches or merely the effect of background differences between the student populations. And even if this problem could be handled statistically, there is no way to control for a host of between-school differences that inevitably affect learning. Schools differ from each other in subtle and not so subtle ways, from their curriculum to the instructional materials and approaches used, to their educational philosophy, teacher experience, and overall climate.

Yet when viewed on its own or against the general backdrop of New York City, the program has been successful on a variety of counts. In the high school, daily attendance remains over 90 percent while in the middle school it exceeds 96 percent. In 2000-2001, the school was one of 19 high schools, out of a total of 146 citywide, where 100 percent of the graduating class passed both the New York State math and English exams. At many other schools the passing rate was dreadful. For example, among graduating seniors at Park East High School, another highly regarded school just blocks from TYWLS, only 26 percent passed the math exam and 80 percent the English. Citywide, more than a quarter of the class of 2001 could not graduate because they had either failed or not taken the state math Regents exam.

For the graduating class of 2001, the SAT scores were above the average for New York City (442 on the SAT Verbal and 438 on the SAT math). Of the 32 graduates, 31 went on to college and the remaining student entered the military. Among them, 28 were the first in their families to go beyond high school. In contrast, only 59.1 percent of students graduating similar schools in New York City planned to attend a four-year college.

Now critics argue that the school’s apparent success is due to the quality of the educational experience and has nothing to do with the single-sex environment. They point to small class size, a clearly articulated mission, a rigorous curriculum, a high level of parent involvement, an intense focus on college preparation, dedicated teachers, and the added resources of the Young Women’s Leadership Foundation. All that is true to a certain extent. Yet it is still questionable whether you can reproduce these tangible features of a good school in a coeducational setting and achieve exactly the same results. If you talk to the young women attending the school, they make it clear that the all-girl setting incorporates certain intangible elements - a feeling of school pride, self-confidence, and physical security - that create an environment where they can flourish emotionally and academically. Obviously the school has not been a source of stigma or inferiority but one of personal empowerment and status within the East Harlem community and beyond. If you spend time at the school, which none of the most vocal critics has done, it is hard not to agree. As one teacher who had previously taught in a small coed school in the Bronx put it, “These girls are far more assertive and aware. They have a stronger sense of their future.” That is exactly what the school aims to achieve at least in the short run while the long-term effects on their professional and personal lives can now only be envisioned. In the meantime, it is reasonable to conclude that for this population of girls at this particular juncture in their lives, single-sex schooling has proven appropriate and effective in “advanc[ing] the full development of [their] talent and capacities.”

Now I admit that, as a matter of policy, separating students by gender may not be the ideal. Schools must prepare girls and boys for personal and public adult lives where they will need to interact in mutual understanding and respect. But then again, this is not an ideal world. For some girls and for various social and developmental reasons, perhaps the most effective way to achieve an equitable end is to provide an education separate from boys at least for some portion of their school years. Given the fact that more than three decades of federal remediation programs have failed to stem the downward spiral of young people growing up in impoverished communities, single-sex programs are an alternative worth consideration. As a nation, we have expended billions of dollars on a variety of unproven programs and on research to measure their effects. The ongoing debates over bilingual education and whole language versus phonics are clear cases on point. We’ve also come to understand that sometimes equal means “different” as in the case of linguistic minorities and the learning disabled.