US schools segregate boys, girls
2 Mar 2008, 0014 hrs IST ,AP
GREENSBORO (GEORGIA): Nearly four decades after this rural Georgia county stopped segregating its schools by race, it wants to divide students again"”this time by sex.
Greene County is set to become the first school district in the nation to go entirely single-sex, with boys and girls in separate classrooms"”a move born of desperation over years of poor test scores, soaring dropout rates and high numbers of teenage pregnancies.
"At the rate we're moving, we're never going to catch up," Superintendent Shawn McCollough told parents in an impassioned speech last week. "If we're going to take some steps, let's take some big steps."
The majority of longtime residents "”and most of the 2,000 students in the county's schools"” of this county of about 14,400 people between Atlanta and Augusta, are black and working class.
McCollough pointed to research showing that boys and girls learn differently, and said separating them will allow teachers to tailor their lessons. Also, boys won't misbehave as much because they will no longer be trying to impress the girls, and the girls will be more likely to speak up in class because they won't be afraid to look smart in front of the boys, he said.
The school board's move to radically overhaul the system next fall has angered parents, students and teachers, who say they weren't consulted. And one of the nation's foremost proponents of single-sex education warned that the board has gone too far.
The measure, approved two weeks ago, applies to the high school, the middle school and both elementary schools. It exempts only the preschool and a charter school, which is public but operates independently.
Leonard Sax, head of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, said that while single-sex schools and classrooms are on the increase, he knows of no other community that has converted its entire school system.
He called the move illegal. Districts across the US have been switching to single-sex education since federal officials issued rules to ease the process in 2006. Nationally, at least 366 public schools are either entirely single-sex or have single-sex classrooms, Sax said.
In Greene County, boys and girls will be in separate classrooms in the elementary schools. Boys and girls in grades seven through 12 will attend separate schools. Some electives and extracurricular activities such as ROTC and band will probably be coed.
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