Same-Sex Classes to Be Offered at Long Beach Middle School

Remember spending math class passing love notes instead of textbooks? Well, those days are scheduled to end soon for about 1,000 middle school students in Long Beach.

The Long Beach school district, known for its bold educational innovations, is planning to transform Jefferson Middle School into California’s first public school to separate girls and boys in all academic classes.

Citing parental support and some reports that suggest that girls do better in math and science when taught without boys, the second-largest school system in Los Angeles County plans to introduce same-sex classes at the school next semester.

Officials said the experiment, which won school board approval this week, will help decide whether same-gender classrooms boost academic performance.

“If a youngster is passing notes and has the letter of his girlfriend inked on his hand, his attention is elsewhere,” said district spokesman Richard Van der Laan. “Maybe those things can be taken care of elsewhere, not in instructional time.”

Six California school districts now have single-sex academies, including one in Orange County. But nearly all are units within larger coeducational schools, state education officials said. And none teach more than 200 students.

In Long Beach, parents of about 1,000 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders across the district will have the option of enrolling their children in boys-only and girls-only classes this fall.

The ambitious plan follows reforms that have won Long Beach widespread acclaim from politicians and education officials.

The district was one of the first to end social promotions in certain grades. And during a visit in 1996, President Clinton told district officials that “America is in your debt” for their introduction of mandatory uniforms for elementary and middle school students.

The latest announcement, officials said, follows years of listening to parents who told them that they would like the option of single-gender schools.

Private schools have long offered parents such an option. But single-gender classes have been rare in modern public schools since the civil rights movement brought--for very real reasons--suspicion of any segregation.

Long Beach officials said they believe that public school parents deserve the same choices as private school ones.

“Some people pay a lot of money to send their children to these kinds of schools,” said Kristi Kahl, who coordinates middle school reform at the district. “We thought maybe this is something that could work in a public school setting.”

Many of the details of the plan have yet to be hammered out. For example, officials remain unsure whether students will mingle in physical education classes or at lunchtime.

But the main goal of the changes, Kahl said, is to improve academic results. That target is by no means guaranteed.

The state’s six other single-sex academies have operated for less than two years, and formal studies on their students’ progress won’t be completed until later this year.

Other reports suggest that girls do better in math and science when taught separately from boys, but Kahl acknowledged that the results remain inconclusive.

“It is really hard to say how much you can attribute [improvements] to gender separation, how much you can attribute to instruction and how much you can attribute to parent commitment,” she said. “But in reality, probably all of those things come into play.”

Some parents agree. In January, a poll of more than 500 parents in the district found that 58% supported creating single-sex academies. Many, like Mildred Stansberry, the grandmother and guardian of an eighth-grader at Jefferson, said she supports the plan.

“Nowadays the girls . . . come home and they talk about boys and not books,” she said. “I want them to come home talking about books.”

But Ira Williams, father of Taryn, a sixth-grader at Jefferson, said he opposes the plan.

“If I wanted that type of environment, I would have put [Taryn] into an all-girls school,” he said. “It’s segregation. I thought we were past that.”

On Thursday, reaction from Jefferson students was mixed.

“I think they should do this because boys talk too much,” said seventh-grader Shadiyah Wite.

But some students oppose the proposed changes. Dasha Burrus, an eighth-grader, said some are organizing a protest for today after school.

“I feel it should be mixed,” she said. “I’m not sitting there and staring just at boys and saying, ‘Wow! Look at his blue eyes,’ or something.”