Single-Sex Schools

Policy Context

A lively policy conversation regarding the potential benefits and drawbacks of segregating boys and girls for education has existed since the mid-20th century. While elementary schools have historically been coeducational institutions, experiments with differentiating the high school experience by sex gained momentum during the Progressive era. With few single-sex high schools remaining from the 1900s, advocates of differentiated secondary education focused on promoting a sex-segregated curriculum consisting primarily of physical education and elective courses such as home economics, sex education, and manual-vocational training. These reforms strove to prepare and benefit students entering a society where the roles of men and women were well defined and generally accepted. The rise of the women's liberation movement in the 1960s launched a critique of the open and hidden sexism within American public schools. In this coeducational context, researchers found systematic bias against girls in textbooks, course scheduling, and teacher expectations, a bias believed to diminish academic performance in key subjects like math and science. Reformers aimed to address sexism through fights for increased equity within the coeducational context rather than through the separation of boys and girls. The commitment to this coeducational arrangement was cemented in the 1972 Title IX law, which prohibited discrimination by sex in schools receiving federal funds and largely restricted single-sex education to particular classes, including sex education and physical education involving contact sports.

Changes in federal regulation and increased concerns about academic achievement have infused single-gender programming with new energy in the 21st century. Under Title IX, many states and school districts feared sex discrimination lawsuits and were reluctant to support single-sex schools. Single-gender education in public schools gained significant support under the NCLB law, which included a section urging the U.S. Department of Education (DoE) to promote single-sex schools and a $3-million appropriation for single-sex classrooms and schools. As a result of this provision and the active support of politicians, the DoE issued rules in 2006 that reinterpreted Title IX to allow for the creation of single-sex classes, programs, and schools. These guidelines required voluntary student enrollment and the availability of “substantially equal” coeducational classes for students not participating in single-gender classes. Many states interpret these regulations as legal protection for single-gender education and have permitted the growth of single-sex education in public schools.

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