Can Same-Sex Schools Aid Desperate Communities?

In schools across the country, the idea of allowing girls to study and learn without having to compete with the more aggressive classroom behavior of boys is catching on.

And, in a few places, the corollary--setting up schools just for boys--has been tried as well, but for a different reason: The all-male schools may help boys stay out of trouble by giving them the discipline and structure that they may not be getting at home.

At least that is the hope of the Wilson administration, which this week introduced a new idea to the state’s education policy debate by proposing to spend as much as $5 million to give school districts incentives to set up all-male and all-female academies, targeted for poor communities plagued by crime and gangs.

Although the academies are sure to be controversial--they’ve been ruled unconstitutional in court battles elsewhere--they also may strike a chord in communities desperate for ways to help seemingly directionless youth find a personal rudder.

“The . . . academies will allow a more structured, more disciplined environment where kids could get a core curriculum, a sense of right and wrong, a sense of personal responsibility, a sense of duty,” said Sean Walsh, the governor’s spokesman.

Free of distractions from the opposite sex, students “could settle down more” and pay attention to their studies, said Glee Johnson, Wilson’s chief deputy legislative aide.

“This is seen almost as a social program” rather than an educational program, Johnson said. “The expectation is that these will be much more structured environments that will appeal to single parents that want a presence of a strong male or female.”

Walsh said the administration wants to get legislation passed that would allow school districts to apply to set up single-sex schools--10 for girls and 10 for boys across the state. They would function as magnet schools, meaning that students would apply to attend.

Administration lawyers believe that the schools would be constitutional because they would be available to both boys and girls, Walsh said.

Nationally, the idea of all-girls classes or schools has been gaining strength, boosted by studies showing that girls have more leadership opportunities and do better academically when they don’t have to compete for teachers’ attention with boys.

The notion that boys need the benefits of same-sex education has been raised as well in a handful of experiments with all-male schools, primarily in urban school districts trying to improve the academic performance of young black youths. No such all-male public school programs now exist, however.

But in California, some are willing to give the idea a try.

“The educational system has gone down the drain across the country and what we need is new, innovative ideas,” said Dr. Edmund Butts, a physician who heads the educational committee of 100 Black Men, a Los Angeles group of black professionals who help mentor African American students and prepare them for college.

“If this is going to help hold onto some of our students, especially minority students, and direct them over the tremendous social and economic hurdles they face, then it is worth a try,” he said.

In another proposal meant to boost educational opportunities in low-income neighborhoods, Wilson also introduced a new version of an oft-debated idea--publicly funded vouchers that would allow students at low-achieving public schools to transfer to private or parochial schools, or public schools outside their districts.

The program is sure to provoke opposition from teachers unions and educators who say it will harm the public schools, but if it does pass muster with the Legislature and the courts, it could become the largest such experiment in the country and cost the state as much as $1.1 billion annually.

The voters rejected a more sweeping voucher initiative overwhelmingly in 1994 and single-sex academies have been shut down in Detroit, Florida and elsewhere after being ruled unconstitutional by the courts.

Some educators are intrigued by the idea of all-boys schools. But, they say, that alone will not solve the problems facing inner-city youths.

“In and of itself, no research shows that single-sex programs are any more valuable than any other programs,” said Larry Springer, who directs the 30 educational opportunity centers run by the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

Those centers serve 1,000 students who are coming out of juvenile hall or probation camps, and 85% of those enrolled are male. That means many wind up in all-male classes, but that has not helped them stay in school or out of trouble, he said.

And because the schools Wilson proposed will be magnets, with voluntary enrollment, some teachers fear that the children who need them the most--those from homes where they receive little supervision and those already getting into trouble--will not be drawn to the highly structured and disciplined campuses.

A few school districts around the country--in Michigan, Georgia and locally in Ventura--already are experimenting with all-girl classes in math and science to provide a more supportive environment for girls who, studies show, may be intimidated by the more aggressive learning style of boys.

Research has found that, in co-ed classes, female students are often virtually invisible to male and female teachers alike. Boys call out eight times as often as girls and girls get less encouragement.

At Ventura High School, about 100 students attend math classes that are virtually all female, and the girls in those classes are getting higher test scores and enrolling in more advanced classes as a result.

After a complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights that the classes discriminated against boys, the school dropped all reference to the gender of students enrolled. Still, all but a handful of the pupils are female.

“I think kids working in that kind of atmosphere are more relaxed, more confident,” said Henry Robertson, the school’s principal.

Based on his school’s experience with the classes, Robertson believes Wilson’s idea of single-sex academies has merit as well.

“It may well be asking the schools to do too much,” Robertson said. “But it doesn’t mean we can’t try and step into the gap that may exist for kids if they’re not getting it at home.”

But Birdia Horne, a veteran dean of students at Locke High School in South-Central Los Angeles, said she believes it is naive to think that schools working alone can impose discipline on students.

“My feeling is, give us more competent teachers, people who are dedicated to working with our students,” she said. “. . . Get in and help our kids some other way than to separate them.”

Wilson’s voucher proposal drew immediate criticism from the California Teachers Assn., which played a key role in the defeat of Proposition 174, the sweeping voucher measure that voters rejected in 1994.

CTA President Lois Tinson said reviving the idea of vouchers puts teachers on the defensive.

“I just wish we had the opportunity to work and do those things we can do in the classroom and not always have to be out there on the defense,” she said. “We could accomplish more.”

State Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin said she shares Wilson’s concern about the failings of poor schools in poor neighborhoods. But she said the voucher plan would only allow a few children to escape to private or suburban schools.