Single-Sex Classes a First for State’s Schools

At 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, 82 seventh- and eighth-graders here crossed a legal and educational frontier, becoming the first California students ever to attend state-subsidized schools in which boys attend class only with boys and girls only with girls.

Though historic, the event inaugurating Mary McLeod Bethune Academy for Girls and Horace Mann Academy for Boys was decidedly low key, with only a few nervous school officials marking its passing. Recognizing that their efforts could well invite legal challenges, they sought to downplay how the academies, which occupy four portable classrooms, differ from the rest of the Brookside Middle School campus.

But there was no getting around these distinctions--no boys will be pulling girls’ ponytails and no girls will have to worry about intimidating potential boyfriends by appearing to be too smart. And everyone involved in the program is hoping such simple facts will help all the kids buckle down to their studies.

Boys “distract me, they, I don’t know, always show off and stuff,” Lindsay Noriega, 12, said as the students gathered on the blacktop before entering the academies for the first time.

“I show off, too!” said Ashley Tiratelle, 12. But her friend Shannon Alvarez quickly shot back: “Now . . . there’s no one to show off to.”

Alfredo Mejia, 13, agreed. “You’ll be focusing on schoolwork and that’s what you need to get ahead in life,” he said. Besides, “they have a lot of computers here”--one for every three pupils.

The academies at Brookside are the first of what are expected to be seven pairs opening across the state over the next several weeks, the others in Butte Valley in Siskiyou County, San Francisco, El Monte, San Jose, East Palo Alto and through the Orange County Office of Education.

Each pair is to get $500,000, to be divided between the boys and girls equally, down to the penny, and to be spent in exactly the same way--a $200 boombox for each of the classes at Brookside, for example.

That fact makes them unique in the country and, it is hoped, will help them withstand the sort of legal challenges that have been directed at experiments in one-sex education elsewhere, alleging they violate constitutional protections guaranteeing equal access for boys and girls.

An all-girls school in New York, the Young Women’s Leadership School in East Harlem, is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Education because of complaints from the American Assn. of University Women, the National Organization for Women and the American Civil Liberties Union that it discriminates against boys and segregates girls. And courts have ordered schools for girls in Philadelphia, and ones for boys in Baltimore and Detroit, to make their classes coeducational.

Here at Brookside, the boys and girls are not entirely segregated. They will be separate during most courses, but will mingle during lunch, recess and in special enrichment classes in Spanish, advanced math and band.

Brookside is in the 8,600-student Lincoln Unified School District, which has spawned a number of educational innovations, including having numerous “multi-age” classrooms in which students of various grades are in the same classes, as they will be in the academies.

Although they serve an affluent northwest Stockton neighborhood, the academies--named after an early African American female teacher and the creator of state-run school systems--are “magnet” programs that have drawn about half their enrollees from other parts of the district.

So far, the girls’ program has proved more attractive, enrolling 48 of a maximum 50 students, compared to only 34 in the boys’.

Most of the pupils said they were encouraged to sign up for the new program by their parents. But Tricia Perez said it was her idea--and she was thrilled to get a seat.

“The boys would make fun of you or laugh at you if you had the wrong answer,” she said of the coed school she attended last year. “Girls won’t do that because they’re a little bit more mature.”

Michael Bricka might dispute that. “Girls are always saying, like, ‘She likes you,’ ” he said.

Single-sex education once was common in America. But it’s been rare in public schools in modern times, when the civil rights movement brought--for very real reasons--suspicion of any segregation. Court rulings and 1972 federal legislation solidified that view.

In recent years, though, there has been impetus to try different approaches amid concerns about girls falling behind boys in math and inner-city boys leaving school for the streets, which has prompted proposals for boot-camp-like academies.

In California, Gov. Pete Wilson called for single-sex experiments in his 1996 State of the State address. Wilson said the boys’ academies would help reduce gang violence while the girls’ academies would help participants achieve more in math and science, as happened in girls-only classrooms in Ventura County that sparked his interest in such programs.

But those classes at Ventura High School later were ordered to admit boys if they asked to get in. And now Wilson and his aides characterize the academies as simply offering parents another choice within the public schools.

“After all, parents know what’s best for their kids,” Wilson said in a statement Thursday. “I’ve no doubt that single-gender options will help kids . . . flourish--freeing them from distractions and keeping them on task.”

To qualify for the program, the academies had to set exactly the same goals for boys and girls. At Brookside, for example, the students will strive to raise their test scores, improve their ability to plan their futures and develop a stronger sense of self-esteem--something some researchers into human development consider to be particularly critical during adolescence.

“In seventh and eighth grade, students move from valuing what their parents value . . . and start to look to their peers,” said Brookside Principal Jason Messer, who pushed the academy idea. “They have some self-doubt, they start to question their abilities . . . and we expect the single-gender setting will give them a comfort zone.”

Researchers generally have found that girls start out equal to or even ahead of boys in math and science. But during adolescence, they tend to drop back and are less likely to pursue those subjects at higher levels. Single-gender classrooms, especially ones in which teachers promote learning cooperatively rather than competing to get right answers, have been found to help.

Less research exists showing the benefit of single-gender classes for boys, outside of Catholic schools. But the theory is that boys will be better able to concentrate. And national assessment tests have found that boys read and write less well than their female peers.

The legal push to avoid differences, though, may make it difficult to tailor the programs to address the divergent needs of boys and girls in the California academies. The Brookside teachers were trying so hard to be the same, at least on the first day, that all four had written the same lesson plan on the chalkboard--the same lesson plan being followed for seventh- and eighth-graders in the regular classrooms.

But hard as they try to be identical, the classrooms differ.

In the girls’ academy classroom of Aloise Miller, a shelf displayed furry stuffed bears and a poster of Eleanor Roosevelt, saying “She is an American.” In a corner, there was a pile of soft pillows, one decorated with the cartoon character Tweety Bird.

Former football coach David Agnew, one of the teachers in the boys’ academy, had Sports Illustrated magazines on his shelf, and he used the length of a football game to give students an idea of how much homework he expected from them daily. Reflecting on his own teaching style, he said, “Do I get the athletes to respond in a certain way and do I think it will work in the classroom? Definitely.”

The academies at Brookside and elsewhere in California will be under a microscope. The ACLU has convened a panel of experts to examine single-sex education. The American Assn. of University Women, which has scheduled a meeting of researchers on gender issues in education for later this year, also will be watching.

“We feel that there is nothing conclusive about the pros of single-sex education . . . and what we are supporting is further experimentation, further research,” said the group’s executive director, Janice Weinman. “Ideally, what we would hope for would be equal treatment within a public setting.”

Joey Ensley, 13, understands that he is part of something untried. “We’re guinea pigs, yep, guinea pigs,” he said before school. “It’s a new thing, and everybody’s got to know about a new thing.”