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Single-Gender Classes Thrive In S.C.

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By SEANNA ADCOX, The Associated Press

Published: October 1, 2007

COLUMBIA, S.C. - David Chadwell is sure boys and girls can get through the awkward middle school years better when they're separated, in classrooms tailored to the learning styles of each gender.

As the country's first and only statewide coordinator of single-gender education, Chadwell is helping to make South Carolina a leader among public schools that offer such programs. About 70 schools offer the program now, and the goal is to have programs available to every child within five years, he said.

The theory is that by separating girls and boys - especially during middle school years typically marked by burgeoning hormones, self doubt and peer pressure - lessons can be more effective because they are in unique classrooms.

For example, Chadwell explains, research shows boys don't hear as well as girls, so teachers of all-boys classes often use microphones. And because boys' attention spans tend to wander, incorporating movement, like throwing a ball to a student when he's chosen to answer a question, can keep them focused.

In one recent boys' class, a group of seventh-graders sprawled on the floor around a giant vinyl chart, using skateboard parts and measuring tape to learn pre-algebra. In a school a few miles away, middle school girls interviewed each other, then turned their surveys about who's shy and who has dogs into fractions, decimals and percentages. Classical music played in the background.

Teachers in all-girls classes say they've learned to speak more softly, because their students can take yelling more personally than boys. And the educators gear their lessons to what students like: assigning action novels for boys to read or allowing girls to evaluate cosmetics for science projects.

'Boys like the activities. They like moving around,' said Becky Smythe, who teaches all-boys and all-girls English and history at Hand Middle in Columbia, which launched single-gender classes this year in its sixth grade.

Chadwell, a Detroit native, had spent years in classrooms, including teaching in a Quaker school outside Philadelphia and helping start a school in China, before he began teaching in South Carolina in 1999.

Five years later, aiming to create what he calls the 'best middle school experience possible,' Chadwell won permission from the state to launch South Carolina's first public, all-day single-sex program. Then came the push by new state schools Superintendent Jim Rex to expand single-gender education to give parents more options within public schools, and Chadwell seemed perfect to head those efforts. He took the post in July.

'No other state has anyone remotely like David Chadwell,' said Leonard Sax, founder of the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education and the author of 'Why Gender Matters.' 'It's such an advantage to have a knowledgeable person who's led the format himself in a public school saying 'This works and this doesn't work.''

Until last year, single-sex classes were allowed in only limited cases, such as gym and sex education classes. But the U.S. Education Department updated its rules and made it easier to allow same-sex education anytime schools think it will improve students' achievement, expand the diversity of courses or meet individual needs.

At least 363 public schools across the country now offer single-sex educational opportunities, according to the single-sex education association.

Separating the sexes in public schools has mixed reviews.

Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, thinks states should not advocate educational experiments. Segregating boys and girls could damage students if boys come away with sexist ideas of being superior, or if students are boxed into learning a certain way, she said. She also questioned whether single-gender programs' successes are because of good teachers and smaller classes, not sex segregation.

'There are ways to appeal to interests and learning styles and abilities without lumping people based on gender, which is not a good measure of anything,' Gandy said. 'At what point is it OK to make judgments of entire groups of human beings based on race or sex?'

David Belton, a Columbia parent, said he was leery of letting his daughter enroll in Dent Middle's inaugural single-gender program in 2004.

But his daughter, who then was entering sixth grade, insisted. Now he's glad she joined the program. He thinks that because she wasn't self-conscious about boys' opinions of her, his daughter felt comfortable speaking out in class and her confidence flourished. She was eager to go to school every day, he said.

Boys also say being separated from girls helps them learn.

'I like it because I can focus and study more here,' said Quinn Martin, an eighth-grader who started making the honor roll after entering an all-boys program.

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