In a Class of Their Own

Of the state’s few experiments in single-gender public education, the concept may get its truest test in the first two such schools to open in Southern California--in an Orange County office park.

Other all-boy and all-girl public schools launched this year in California serve mainstream students on or next to mainstream, coeducational campuses.

The Single Gender Academies, which opened in Fountain Valley on Dec. 1, cater to students who have left traditional education altogether.

The 75 enrolled in grades 7 through 12 come from the Orange County Department of Education’s alternative and correctional school system. Some have run afoul of the law. Some have gotten too many Ds or Fs in regular schools. Others have had deep personal or family troubles. Plenty know the life of street gangs from the inside.

Without help, most are in jeopardy of not graduating.

Also differentiating these academies is their isolation from other schools. The two-story campus is surrounded by a glass-walled office complex.

But something else makes this the state’s purest laboratory for testing the hypothesis that separating the sexes can help some students: the fact that male and female students almost never run into each other--not before school, not during recess, not during lunch and not after school. Classes are on a staggered schedule so that boys and girls are never on campus at the same time.

*

“It is a different model,” said Karen Humphrey, coordinator of California’s state-sponsored, single-sex schools, “and I think it has some elements to it that are rather exciting.”

Among them: Students attend class in four-hour shifts without a break. They don’t have desks of their own. They share workstations--ones with late-model computers and video equipment. They are encouraged to conduct research projects off campus.

Principal Susan M. Condrey doesn’t call the student-teacher work areas classrooms. They are “learning environments.”

That may sound a bit hokey, Condrey conceded, but she is trying to get the students to reconsider their lives--and what school means. The single-gender schooling, funded by a one-year state grant of $500,000, is part of that strategy.

“We’re hoping that these kids feel like they can be successful members of their communities,” Condrey said. “That is what’s been missing from their lives. They don’t really fit in. We are going to help these kids who don’t have what most people have--who don’t have the home life, the skills, the training, the means, the awareness to succeed. Our goal is to bond with these kids and help them find their way.

“I think the single-gender setting makes it much easier because we’re focused on them, and they’re focused more on themselves.”

*

In this century, single-sex education in the United States has been virtually the exclusive province of private schools. But the opening of the public ones here follows the debut of a pair of same-sex schools in Stockton in August and others in San Francisco and Siskiyou County. Pairs of similar schools are planned shortly at two other Bay Area sites.

The premise behind single-gender schools is that the fewer distractions boys and girls encounter in class, the better. Some educators say it also helps them break down gender stereotypes.

By the end of the year, Condrey predicted, “we’re going to have our girls building rockets and robots, and we’re going to have our boys writing poetry.”

It remains an open question, however, how much single-gender settings actually help students. Some research suggests that girls can do better in subjects such as math and science when isolated from boys. But the benefits for boys are unclear.

Civil rights and women’s rights groups also have concerns about whether it’s equitable, effective, or even constitutional for the state to create separate schools for girls and boys. State officials have sought to safeguard the schools from charges of discrimination by making them voluntary and providing equitable resources.

In Fountain Valley, the boys and girls split everything evenly--teachers, computers, books, down to the last No. 2 pencil.

But the biggest draw for many students--the reason most cited for signing up--appears to be the Pentium computers. On a recent day, students were word-processing their first reports and checking out CD-ROM disks on 16th century explorers.

*

Being apart from girls struck 16-year-old Manuel Ponce of Santa Ana as no big deal, though he acknowledged that it might help a little. “You get more concentration on your work,” he said. “When there’s girls, they flirt and stuff like that.”

But Nancy Granadino, another 16-year-old from Santa Ana, said: “When you’re with boys, sometimes you’re embarrassed about what you might say. They goof around too much. They’re too loud.”

In serving students who are hardened yet fragile, these schools attempt to strike a balance between tolerance and discipline. Students are required to sign a letter stipulating such statements as, “I am capable of learning, developing and participating in school and in my life.”

One male student was suspended on the first day for writing gang graffiti on a piece of paper. But that has been the only rule violation cited so far.

Teachers, who also volunteered for the assignment, said they strive to instruct each group identically.

“Whatever the boys get, the girls get. Period,” said Pete Herman, 31, who team-teaches with five other faculty members. “They get exactly the same thing, word for word, lesson to lesson.”

*

As students enter the school, Herman greets those of both sexes with a firm handshake of the sort they’ll need in the business world. At the end of the day, seeking to connect with their world, he leaves both girls and boys with a more casual grip, slip and knuckle rap that he picked up from the streets.

“They’re very brave to have made the decision to come to this school,” said Patrick Wnek, 30, another group teacher. “It’s different maybe from what they’re used to. It’s different from the norm. It sure is nice that they’re willing to take a risk and come here to learn.”