Same-Sex School a Learning Experience

Started with great fanfare two years ago, Orange County’s public single-sex academies are managing to keep their doors open despite slimmed-down enrollment and loss of state funding.

Female enrollment has fallen far short of expectations, hitting a peak of 40, half the expected number. That forced shrinkage in the boys’ program as well. Despite what educators see as major successes with their program, available on a voluntary basis to students in the county’s last-chance continuation schools, the experience has provided a lesson about what happens to hot education ideas when Sacramento gets cold feet.

Long the province of private education, single-gender schooling caught fire in California during the 1990s. The hope was to nurture girls whose voices were muted in math and science classes and provide a calming influence on boys thinking of abandoning school for the streets. Both sexes could benefit from the opportunity to read literature and program computers free of the typical teen temptations to flirt and primp.

Impressed by a girls-only math class in Ventura County, Gov. Pete Wilson seized the initiative in 1996, advocating the academies in his State of the State Address. He offered up $3 million for a pilot program of academies throughout the state. Two years later, the funding evaporated. Of the six pairs of single-gender academies to receive $500,000 in state money, only two remain--in Fountain Valley and East Palo Alto.

Fountain Valley Single Gender Academies Principal Susan M. Condrey, a longtime educator dedicated to students who struggle in traditional schools, is philosophical about the changes.

“There is hope for these kids if you can figure it out,” she said. “You commit to these kids, and you love them. You hold them accountable and make them toe the line. . . . As long as I’m around, this will be an option.”

Not long after Condrey started the program in December 1997, she took a special assignment, only to return recently. The change in leadership and the loss of state funding nearly caused the school to fizzle out in December, but it was resurrected with local continuation-school dollars when Condrey took the reins again, said Ted Price, director of alternative education for the Orange County Department of Education.

Tucked in a drab office park off Harbor Boulevard, the academies are open to 80 students in grades 7 through 12, but they mostly serve high school students.

School Spirit

What sets the academies apart is immediately visible.

In the science and technology lab on the first floor, girls who used to skip class and ditch school are huddled around several computers, following lessons on constructing small rockets and soldering circuit boards.

Ericka Willeford, 17, was referred to the academies two years ago after a troubled adolescence--a haze of partying that led to dropping out of school. At this school, where girls learn with girls and boys learn with boys, she’s getting mostly A’s--marks she hasn’t seen since second grade.

“I left because I didn’t care about school,” she recalled, absent-mindedly tapping her computer keyboard. “Even if I did go to school, I’d ditch. I’ve never even thought of ditching this school. You want to come here. . . . This school made me believe I can fulfill my dreams.”

The girls, in particular, seem passionate about the school. They aren’t outshouted by male peers or embarrassed to raise their hands around cute guys. They have small classes, with teachers who know them and help with homework from job-training lessons too. They get lots of experience with computers, hosting their own school newscasts and videoconferencing with NASA engineers.

Upstairs, boys with buzzed hair and baggy sweatshirts are reading “The Outsiders” and talking about a phenomenon many of them know well: Good kids, when tested by circumstances and fear, can do bad things.

All slouchy posture, the youths grouse a bit about being at the school. Some point out that they wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t been expelled or otherwise referred.

But they grudgingly concede some perks to the program.

“I think it’s a pretty good school,” said 17-year-old Nelson Montanez. “With small classes, the teachers pay more attention to you. About the girls: You don’t need to have the girls--” His classmates laughed. “Not in class anyhow. You learn better here. There’s less distractions.”

To avoid running afoul of antidiscrimination laws, the program must offer boys and girls the same opportunities. They have the same teachers, same classrooms, same materials, same curriculum--just at different times. The students enrolled have vastly different skills. Some are bright enough for college but are troubled or were bored at their neighborhood schools. Others have been trapped in a cycle: They can barely read, so they hate school. That led to acting out, missing school and falling further behind.

Uneven Enrollment

For all the boys’ bluster, they are the ones who have flooded enrollment at the academies, while female enrollment has never met expectations.

At first, the academies were supposed to enroll 80 boys and 80 girls who would attend class on split shifts. When the school opened, boys would attend in the morning and girls in the afternoon one day. The next day, they would swap times.

For reasons Condrey can’t fully explain--possibly because most continuation and alternative-education students are boys--male enrollment easily reached 80, but females were never more than half that.

The uneven enrollment meant the school space wasn’t being used effectively, so now a smaller student body attends class at the same time, but males and females are in different rooms, walking up and down different staircases. Now about 30 girls and 50 boys attend at the same time.

Single-gender public schools have long generated some controversy, because of concerns that boys and girls could receive unequal treatment and the possibility of legal challenges. The research on the benefits of single-gender education has been tantalizing but inconclusive. And the root of any benefit is up for debate: Is it because classes are all girls or all boys, or because the programs attract dedicated teachers, parents and students?

But it was competition for education dollars, not concern about fallout, that led to the demise of state funding, according to Carol Barkley, a consultant who worked on the California Department of Education’s single-gender program.

“It didn’t generate a lot of political fights,” she said. “It raised a lot of questions. Really, I think the reason the program didn’t continue is because of resources. There are so many claims on scarce education dollars; this one didn’t reach the higher echelon.”

Separate from the state pilot program, the Long Beach Unified School District converted one of its middle schools to a single-gender academy at the beginning of this school year. Slated to hold 1,000 students, Jefferson Middle School managed to accommodate another 88 pupils from its 250-name waiting list, said district spokesman Richard Van Der Laan. The school is a voluntary magnet.

Depending on the length of the waiting list for next year, the district may open a second single-gender school, where students attend classes in all-boys or all-girls settings but meet during lunch and after-school activities.

“The school has gotten more awards and honors this year,” Van Der Laan said. “Kids are reporting improved grades and fewer discipline problems.”

Heartened by the number of students from the Fountain Valley Single Gender Academies who have successfully returned to their home high school or enrolled in community college, Price, the county’s director of alternative education, said the program is worth continuing.

“We’re supposed to be about creating opportunities for kids that work, and we’re sticking with it,” he said. “We want to see if there are more than short-term effects [on students]. . . . Now that we’ve got some good attendance and some good behavior, let’s see if there’s some good academic performance as well.”