comparing single-sex classrooms with coed classrooms at Woodward
The single-sex format creates opportunities that don't exist in the coed classroom. Teachers can employ strategies in the all-girls classroom, and in the all-boys classroom, which don't work as well (or don't work at all) in the coed classroom. If teachers have appropriate training and professional development, then great things can happen, and often do happen. On this page you can learn about the experience of schools such as Woodward Avenue Elementary in Deland, Florida; Foley Intermediate in Foley, Alabama; Jefferson Middle School in Springfield, Illinois; the Cunningham School for Excellence in Waterloo, Iowa; and many other schools which have seen a dramatic improvement in grades and test scores after adopting single-sex classrooms. But those schools did much more than simply put girls in one room and boys in another. In each of the schools just mentioned, teachers received training from NASSPE in practical gender-specific classroom strategies and best practices for the gender-separate classroom. For more information about NASSPE-sponsored professional development, please contact us.
Researchers at Stetson University in Florida have completed a three-year pilot project comparing single-sex classrooms with coed classrooms at Woodward Avenue Elementary School, a nearby neighborhood public school. For example, students in the 4th grade at Woodward were assigned either to single-sex or coed classrooms. All relevant parameters were matched: the class sizes were all the same, the demographics were the same, all teachers had the same training in what works and what doesn't work, etc. On the FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test), here were the results:
Percentage of students scoring proficient on the FCAT
boys in coed classes: 37% scored proficient
girls in coed classes: 59% scored proficient
girls in single-sex classes: 75% scored proficient
boys in single-sex classes: 86% scored proficient.
Remember, these students were all learning the same curriculum in the same school. And, this school "mainstreams" students who are learning-disabled, or who have ADHD etc. Many of those boys who scored proficient in the all-boys classes had previously been labeled "ADHD" or "ESE" in coed classes.
2008 update: in a recent report on NBC Nightly News, Professor Kathy Piechura-Couture of Stetson University , reported that over the four years of the pilot study, 55% of boys in the coed classrooms scored proficient on the FCAT, compared with 85% of boys in the all-boys classes. Same class size. Same curriculum. Same demographics.
In June 2005, researchers at Cambridge University released results of a four-year study of gender differences in education. The researchers investigated hundreds of different schools, representing a wide variety of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, seeking to identify strategies which improved performance of both girls and boys while narrowing the gender gap between girls and boys. What makes this study really unique is that the researchers did not merely observe and document what they found; they then intervened, and attempted to graft those strategies onto other, less successful schools. A total of 50 schools were involved either as "originator schools" (schools which had successfully improved student performance while narrowing the gender gap) or "partner schools" (less successful schools onto which the "originator" strategies were grafted). One of those strategies was single-sex education. These researchers found that the single-sex classroom format was remarkably effective at boosting boys' performance particularly in English and foreign languages, as well as improving girls' performance in math and science. Here is how Dr. Sax (director of NASSPE) summarized the report in his newsletter to NASSPE e-subscribers (if you would like to be on our e-mailing list, please contact us):
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I had the honor of sharing the podium last week with the lead authors of the study, Michael Younger and Molly Warrington. Together, we did six presentations in two days! It was a privilege to be able to discuss the study with the lead investigators face-to-face. Michael Younger more than once referred to the improved performance of the boys in the single-sex foreign languages classes as "astonishing." Both researchers emphasized that it is not sufficient simply to put all the girls in one room and all the boys in another and say "let's give it a whirl." Teachers and administrators need to be committed to the program and must be determined to see it through.
The full report contains many fascinating insights from students and teachers. Consider this comment from one of the boys in the single-gender class: "We don't just do war poems and Macbeth, we do Wordsworth too. It's a challenge, in a way, which Mr J sets us to show the girls we're capable of doing it, but I couldn't talk about these things if there were girls there!" (p. 85)
The researchers conducted extensive interviews with individual students, and thus were able to distinguish among students rather than lumping all the boys into one group and all the girls into another. The researchers were particularly interested in gender-atypical boys: boys who don't care for sports, for example. How do these pupils fare in the all-boys classroom? Here's another excerpt: "Interviews with [these] 'non-macho' boys suggest that these boys did not feel exposed in single-sex classes. . . .Such boys told us - without exception - that they felt at ease and comfortable, that they did not experience bullying or aggressive behaviour from other boys, and that they were not intimidated by the atmosphere in all-boys' classes." (p. 86)
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You can read the BBC's report of the study
You can download the full report (162 pages, Adobe PDF).
November 2005
U. S. Department of Education study of single-sex education "a disappointment", a "missed opportunity," "many studies overlooked"
Click HERE for more information!
Most of the studies comparing single-sex education with coeducation focus on grades and test scores as the parameters of interest. Before we look at those studies, we want you to consider another variable altogether: namely, breadth of educational opportunity. Girls in all-girls schools are more likely to study subjects such as advanced math, computer science, and physics. Boys in all-boys schools are more than twice as likely to study subjects such as foreign languages, art, music, and drama. Those boys might not get better grades in those subjects than comparable boys get in more gender-typical subjects. Studies which focus only on grades and test scores won't detect any difference in outcome. For more about benefits beyond grades and test scores, see the advantages for girls page and the advantages for boys page.
Returning to grades and test scores: There are three categories of evidence:
1. Major nationwide studies, involving tens or hundreds of thousands of students, in countries such as Australia or the United Kingdom where single-sex public education is widely available;
2. "Before and after" studies, examining a particular school or schools before and after the introduction of single-sex classrooms. Because these studies usually involve no change in resources -- the facilities and student-teacher ratios are the same before and after the switch -- the school serves as its own control;
3. Academic studies, in which investigators study coed and single-sex schools while attempting to control for extraneous variables
First category of evidence: Major nationwide studies: England, Australia, Jamaica
England, July 2002: The National Foundation for Educational Research was commissioned to study the effect of school size and school type (single-sex vs. coed) on academic performance. The Foundation studied 2,954 high schools throughout England, where single-sex public high schools are widely available. They released their report on July 8 2002. They found:
1. Even after controlling for students' academic ability and other background factors, both girls and boys did significantly better in single-sex schools than in coed schools. In this age group (senior high school), the benefits were larger and more consistent across the board for girls than for boys. Specifically, girls at all levels of academic ability did better in single-sex schools than in coed schools; whereas for boys, the beneficial effect of single-sex schools was significant only for boys at the lower end of the ability scale. For higher-achieving boys, there was no statistically significant effect of school type on performance, positive or negative. (Remember, though, that this study only examined students in grades 9 through 12; other evidence [see below] suggests that single-sex education is most effective for boys in kindergarten and elementary school.)
2. Girls at single-sex schools were more likely to take non-traditional courses -- courses which run against gender stereotypes -- such as advanced math and physics. The researchers concluded that girls' schools are "helping to counter rather than reinforce the distinctions between 'girls' subjects' such as English and foreign languages and 'boys' subjects' such as physics and computer science" (p. 43). No such effect was seen for boys: for example, boys at single-sex schools were no more likely (actually somewhat less likely) to take courses in cooking than were boys at coed schools.
3. Schools of medium size (about 180 students per grade) seemed to do best. At smaller schools, there was a lack of course offerings especially at the advanced levels. At much larger schools, student performance appeared to suffer.
The Foundation concluded: "It would be possible to infer from the findings that, in order to maximise performance, [public] schools should [have] about 180 pupils per cohort, or year, and be single-sex." You can download the full text of the report as a PDF (115 pages, 13 MB) by clicking here.
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A large Australian study, 2000:The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) compared performance of students at single-sex and coeducational schools. Their analysis, based on six years of study of over 270,000 students, in 53 academic subjects, demonstrated that both boys and girls who were educated in single-sex classrooms scored on average 15 to 22 percentile ranks higher than did boys and girls in coeducational settings. The report also documented that "boys and girls in single-sex schools were more likely to be better behaved and to find learning more enjoyable and the curriculum more relevant." The report concludes: "Evidence suggests that coeducational settings are limited by their capacity to accommodate the large differences in cognitive, social and development growth rates of boys and girls aged between 12 and 16." The findings of the Australian commission were widely reported and were available on the ACER site through 2005. Curiously, late in 2005 all trace of this study was purged from the ACER web site. However, the ACER's own press release describing the study is still available at this link from archive.org.
Some critics used to argue that single-sex public schools attract children from more affluent families. These critics suggested that the superior performance of students in single-sex schools may be due to the higher socioeconomic class from which such students are purportedly recruited, rather than the single-sex character of the school itself. However, both the ACER study in Australia just mentioned, and the Foundation study mentioned at the top of the page, both found no evidence to support that hypothesis. In the United States, Cornelius Riordan has shown that girls who attend single-sex Catholic schools typically come from a lower socioeconomic background than girls who attend coed Catholic schools. Among boys, Professor Riordan found no difference in socioeconomic status. In 1998, the British Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) tested whether socioeconomic variables might account for the superior performance of students in single-sex schools. They examined test results from 800 public schools, single-sex and coeducational. OFSTED found that the superior performance of students in single-sex schools cannot be accounted for by socioeconomic factors, but appears instead to be a direct result of single-sex education. They also found that students in single-sex schools have a significantly more positive attitude toward learning.
Source: Clare Dean, "Inspectors say girls' schools are the best," Times Educational Supplement, October 9, 1998.
The Foundation study, which suggests that single-sex education is more beneficial for girls than for boys, is somewhat at variance with an earlier study which suggested that single-sex education was more beneficial for boys than for girls. Educator Graham Able published a study of student performance in 30 coeducational and single-sex schools in England. Dr. Able's study documented superior academic performance of students in single-sex schools, after controlling for socioeconomic class and other variables. "The most significant finding was that the advantage of single-sex schooling is even greater for boys in terms of academic results than for girls," Able said. "The unsubstantiated mythology of the educational establishment has been that girls do better in single sex schools but that boys are 'brought on' by the more studious girls in a co-educational environment. This mythology has never been supported by any objective evidence, and any policy derived from it must presumably sacrifice the advantages to one sex in order to promote the cause of the other," he wrote. "[Our] results suggest that single sex schools give an even greater academic advantage to boys than for girls. This directly contradicts the popular educational myth that boys do better in the classroom if girls are present to set them a good example. One could reasonably conclude from this study that both boys and girls are academically disadvantaged in co-educational schools, but that the disadvantage is greater for the boys.
Source: Alison Gordon, "In a class of their own: boys benefit even more than girls from single-sex schools, A-level grades study reveals," in The Mail on Sunday (UK), June 11 2000, p. 42.
A classic study from Jamaica: Marlene Hamilton, studying students in Jamaica, found that students attending single-sex schools outperformed students in coed schools in almost every subject tested. At the time of the study, public single-sex schools were still widely available in Jamaica, so that there were few if any socioeconomic or academic variables which distinguished students at single-sex schools from students at coed schools. Hamilton noted the same pattern of results which has been found in most studies worldwide: Girls at single-sex schools attain the highest achievement; boys at single-sex schools are next; boys at coed schools are next; and girls at coed schools do worst of all.
Source: Marlene Hamilton. Performance levels in science and other subjects for Jamaican adolescents attending single-sex and coeducational high schools, International Science Education, 69(4):535-547, 1985.
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Second category of evidence: "Before and after" studies
Critics of single-sex education sometimes object that studies comparing students at single-sex schools with students at coed schools are intrinsically untrustworthy, because (they say) one can never control for all the confounding variables. "Before and after" studies are done at just one school, before and after its transformation to a single-sex school. Same students, same teachers, same facilities. These studies offer another compelling proof of the superiority of single-sex education.
In 2000, Benjamin Wright, principal of the Thurgood Marshall Elementary School in Seattle, Washington, led his school in a transformation from traditional coed classrooms to single-sex classrooms. . . with astonishing results. Mr. Wright was concerned about the high number of discipline referrals he was seeing: about 30 children every day were being sent to the principal's office because of discipline problems (about 80% were boys). He decided to make the switch to single-sex classrooms in hopes of decreasing the discipline problem.
The results exceeded his hopes. Discipline referrals dropped from about 30 per day to just one or two per day. "Overnight. The change in the atmosphere happened overnight." Same kids, same teachers. Switching to single-sex classrooms had a dramatic effect, instantly.
But improved discipline wasn't the only benefit of the change. "We were just doing it to make sure that the discipline was taken care of. But once we made the switch, the boys were able to focus on academics, and so were the girls. The boys, remarkably, shocked the state with what they did on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning. Our boys went from being in the 10 to 30 percent listing to 73 percent. They went from a reading average of about 20 percent to 66 percent. Our boys outperformed the entire state in writing. They went from being in a low percentile of 20-something to 53 percent in writing.
These results aren't confined to elementary schools. An inner-city high school in Montreal made the switch from coed classrooms to single-sex classrooms five years ago. Since making that switch, absenteeism has dropped from 20 percent before the switch to 7 percent now. About 80 percent of students pass their final exams, compared with 65 percent before the switch. And, the rate of students going on to college has nearly doubled. You can read more about this Montreal high school here.
Numerous similar cases have been documented in the United Kingdom. For example: John Fairhurst, principal of the Fairhurst High School (in Essex, in southeastern England) decided to reinvent his school as two single-sex academies under one roof. The students would take the same courses from the same teachers, but boys and girls would attend separate classes. Three years after making the change, the proportion of Shenfield boys achieving high scores on standardized tests had risen by 26%. The girls performance improved only slightly less, by 22%, and they still outperformed the boys.
Source: Judith O'Reilly, "Mixed school hits new heights with single-sex classes." Sunday Times (London), August 20, 2000.
A similar experiment in Mill Hill, also in England, achieved similar results. In Mill Hill, the county high school was divided up into a girls' wing and a boys' wing in 1994. Since that time, the number of pupils scoring high on the GCSE exam has risen from 40 percent to 79 percent. Dr. Alan Davison, the principal, comments that "Men and women's brains are different. It is crucial that we in education recognise that."
Source: Times Educational Supplement (London, UK), "News & Opinion," August 25 2000, "London School Segregates. . ."
The "before and after" experience of schools undertaking this transformation has been so consistent, and so impressive, that the British Secretary of Education (then David Blunkett) asked the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) to investigate whether this model should be applied widely throughout Britain, in a wholesale conversion of coed schools to single-sex academies.
Source: Nicholas Pyke, "Blunkett plans single-sex classrooms." The Independent (London), August 20, 2000, p. 8. Note: In June 2001, Mr. Blunkett was promoted to the post of Home Secretary.
Researchers at Manchester University in England tested this approach more formally. They assigned students at five public schools either to single-sex or to coed classrooms. 68 percent of boys who were assigned to single-sex classes subsequently passed a standardized test of language skills, vs. 33 percent of boys assigned to coed classes. Among the girls, 89 percent assigned to single-sex classes passed the test, vs. 48 percent of girls assigned to coed classes.
Source: Julie Henry, "Help for the boys helps the girls," Times Educational Supplement (London, UK), June 1 2001.
Similar findings were reported by researchers at Cambridge University, who examined the effects of single-sex classrooms in schools in four different neighborhoods, including rural, suburban and inner-city schools. They found that "using single-sex groups was a significant factor in establishing a school culture that would raise educational achievement." For example, at Morley High School in Leeds, only one-third of boys had been earning passing grades in German and French prior to institution of the program. After the change to single-sex classes, 100% of boys earned passing grades. Click on the link to read the story which appeared in the Sunday Telegraph March 30, 2003.
Third category of evidence: academic studies comparing single-sex schools with coed schools
Cornelius Riordan, professor of sociology at Providence University in Rhode Island, published a series of studies in the 1980's and early 1990's comparing short- and long-term outcomes of graduates of single-sex Catholic schools in the United States with graduates of coed Catholic schools in the United States. On a variety of measures, Riordan found that girls in single-sex schools consistently outperformed girls at coed schools. In Riordan's studies, the beneficial effect for boys is smaller than it is for girls (contrast this finding with Graham Able's report [see above] that the benefits of single-sex schooling are greater for boys than for girls). Riordan believes that the beneficial effects of single-sex schooling are most impressive for children from underprivileged backgrounds. However, this belief sets him apart from many other researchers in the field, particularly outside the United States.
Source: Cornelius Riordan. Girls and Boys in School: together or separate? New York: Teachers College Press, 1990.
Researchers at the University of Michigan compared graduates of Catholic single-sex high schools with graduates of Catholic coeducational private schools. Boys in the single-sex high schools scored better in reading, writing, and math than did boys at coed high schools. Girls at the single-sex schools did better in science and reading than girls in coed schools. In fact, these researchers found that students at single-sex schools had not only superior academic achievement, but also had higher educational aspirations, more confidence in their abilities, and a more positive attitude toward academics, than did students at coed high schools. And, girls at the single-sex schools had less stereotyped ideas about what women can and cannot do.
Source: Valerie Lee and Anthony Bryk. Effects of single-sex secondary schools on student achievement and attitudes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 78:381-395, 1986.
The same University of Michigan team later reported that the beneficial effects of single-sex education don't end after students leave the school. They found that graduates of single-sex schools were more likely to go to a prestigious college, and more likely to aspire to graduate school or professional school, than were graduates of coed schools. That finding held for both girls and boys.
Source: Valerie Lee and H. M. Marks. Sustained effects of the single-sex secondary school experience on attitudes, behaviors, and values in college. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82:578-592, 1990.
In one remarkable study of 2,777 English high school students, girls at coed schools were found to lose ground to boys in science and vocabulary as they progressed through high school. Exactly the opposite occurred at single-sex schools: the girls at single-sex schools outperformed both the boys at single-sex schools and the boys at coed schools. Again, this study reported the familiar pattern: girls at single-sex schools on top, followed by boys at single-sex schools, then boys at coed schools, with girls at coed schools doing the worst.
Source: J. D. Finn. Sex differences in educational outcomes: a cross-national study. Sex Roles, 6:9-25, 1980.
Not just better students; more well-rounded people
The benefits of single-sex schools are not only academic. Just as importantly, single-sex education has been shown to broaden students' horizons, to allow them to feel free to explore the own strengths and interests, not constrained by gender stereotypes. A British researcher compared the attitudes of 13 and 14 year-old pupils toward different subjects. Students at coed schools tended to have gender-typical subject preferences: boys at coed schools liked math and science and did NOT like drama or languages, whereas boys at single-sex schools were more interested in drama, biology and languages. Likewise, girls at girls-only schools were more interested in math and science than were girls at coed schools.
Source: A. Stables. Differences between pupils from mixed and single-sex schools in their enjoyment of school subjects and in their attitudes to science and to school. Educational Review, 42(3):221-230, 1990.
A University of Virginia study published in 2003 found that boys who attended single-sex schools were more than twice as likely to pursue interests in subjects such as art, music, drama, and foreign languages, compared to boys of comparable ability who attended coed schools. Single-sex schools break down gender stereotypes. Coed schools reinforce gender stereotypes.
Source: Abigail Norfleet James and Herbert Richards, “Escaping Stereotypes: educational attitudes of male alumni of single-sex and coed schools,” Psychology of Men and Masculinity, 4:136-148, 2003.
Andrew Hunter, now the principal of Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh (Scotland) agrees. Having taught in both coed schools and single-sex schools, Mr. Hunter observes that there is "a subtle and invidious pressure towards gender stereotyping in mixed [= coed] schools. Girls tend to be cautious about going into subjects or activities which are thought of as essentially boys' things, but in boys' schools boys feel free to be themselves and develop, to follow their interests and talents in what might be regarded as non-macho pursuits: music, arts, drama.
Quoted in: Elizabeth Buie, "Today's sexual evolution," The Herald (Glasgow), November 21 2000, p. 16.
Brian Walsh, who has been a principal at both boys' schools and coed schools, made this observation: "Boys ordinarily do not even try to sing in a coed school, whereas they love choral singing in a boys' school; in the coed setting they make fun of French pronunciation, whereas in the single-sex setting they enjoy becoming fluent in French; in drama, they muck up or clown around to avoid seeming imperfect in a coed setting, whereas they excel at drama when by themselves.
Quoted in: David Riesman. A margin of difference: the case for single-sex education. In J. R. Blau (editor), Social roles and social institutions, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1990, pp. 243-244.
At many coed schools, it's not "cool" for kids to be excited about school. The game of who likes who, who's going out with who, who's cool and who's not, is what's really important at most coed schools. That's seldom the case at single-sex schools. Edison Trickett and Penelope Trickett, comparing students at private single-sex schools in the United States with students at private coed schools in the United States, found that students in the single-sex schools had a far more positive attitude toward academics than did students in coed schools. This finding held for both boys and girls. The students at the single-sex schools also developed better organizational skills, and were more involved in classroom activities.
Source: Edison Trickett, Penelope Trickett, et al. The independent school experience: aspects of the normative environment of single-sex and coed secondary schools, Journal of Educational Psychology, 74(3):374-381, 1982.
