Negative Effects Of Single Sex Education

Single sex schooling offers a wide range of advantages to students of all ethnicities and ages that coeducation fails to offer.

Single sex schooling first came into the light in 1999 when the first public middle school offered single sex classes. Since then, several hundred schools have begun offering single sex classes. According to the National Association of Single Sex Education, “In 2002 only eleven schools in the United States offered single sex courses, in 2011 close to 550 classes existed” (Coyle & Razavian, 2010). The rise of single sex schooling has created an abundant amount of opportunities for students, while also highlighting the negative effects of coeducational classrooms.

Coeducational classes often condemn students to gender

Single sex schooling offers teachers the ability to alter their lessons to fit their specific needs. James Hearn, a fifth-grade teacher at Beech Hill Elementary School outside Charleston, South Carolina, states his classes have become more effective after separating the genders. ‘“Girls are easy. They're more traditional,’ said Mr. Hearn. ‘They're really into family relationships, so I try to make [the] class more personal. ‘Boys,’ he said, ‘are harder. They're always wanting to move around. But they're into sports, so I try to bring in news articles to make [the] class more interesting”’ (McNeil, 2008). Boys often retain more information in a competitive environment. The teacher would then post test score information to encourage males to work harder and improve. Girls, however, perform better in a gentler environment. Posting the test score in a coeducational class would cause females to become embarrassed and close themselves

When Thurgood Marshall Elementary School transitioned to single sex education, Principal Wright noted the school remained at the bottom of the barrel with ninety-five percent of minority students. Seattle's Superintendent of Public Schools Joseph Olchefske compared switching to single sex education to standards-based, ‘“All of the work around the standards­based movement is built on the simple premise that it's the job of every school to see that every child achieves,’ Olchefske says. ‘If gender­based education works, it's incumbent on us to do it"’ (Schachter, 2003). Similar to standards-based grading, single sex education offers an abundant amount of advantage to students of all ethnicities and ages. Since the switch to single sex schooling, test scores, attendance rates, and the overall confidence of students has