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Federal Rules Back Single-Sex Public Education |
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From New York Times: The Bush administration is giving public school districts broad new latitude to expand the number of single-sex classes, and even schools, in what is widely considered the most significant policy change on the issue since a landmark federal law barring sex discrimination in education more than 30 years ago. Two years in the making, the new rules, announced Tuesday by the Education Department, will allow districts to create single-sex schools and classes as long as enrollment is voluntary. Across the nation, the number of public schools exclusively for boys or girls has risen from 3 in 1995 to 241 today, said Leonard Sax, executive director of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. New York City has nine single-sex public schools, most of which opened in the past four years. While the move was sought by some conservatives and urban educators, and had backing from both sides of the political aisle, a number of civil rights and women's rights groups condemned the change. To open schools exclusively for boys or girls, a district has until now had to show a "compelling reason," for example, that it was acting to remedy past discrimination. But a new attitude began to take hold with the passage of the No Child Left Behind law in 2002 when women senators from both parties came out in support of same-sex education and asked the Education Department to draft guidelines to permit their growth. The new rules, first proposed by the Education Department in 2004, are designed to bring Title IX into conformity with a section of the No Child Left Behind law that called on the department to promote single-sex schools.
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