News-Record.com

Some people see segregation as one possible solution to the chronic struggles of black male students in public schools — by gender, that is.

Guilford County school board Vice Chairman Amos Quick favors the concept and said so following a troubling report on June 23 that revealed little to no progress in closing the racial achievement gap in local classrooms.

The report placed black males at the top of the scale in disciplinary suspensions and expulsions, and at or near the bottom in almost every statistical measure of academic progress. This, after so much talk about, and emphasis on, closing the gap not only is disheartening but inexcusable.

Quick and others see single-sex education as one means to better focus young males on their studies. They also see a trend that is gaining more and more traction across the country and, apparently, producing results.

Rapid growth

In 1995, there were two single-sex public schools in the country. This year there are no fewer than 392, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. “The single-sex classroom creates opportunities,” Dr. Leonard Sax, the organization’s executive director, said in an interview last week.

The Guilford County Schools have tried the concept on a very limited basis in two alternative middle-college high schools at N.C. A&T, for boys, and Bennett College, for girls. Counting those two programs, North Carolina has only eight statewide.

In South Carolina, the number of schools offering single-sex education has more than tripled in the span of a year, to 96. One school system in Georgia has been more ambitious, converting all of its schools into same-sex student bodies.

Actually, “desperate” might be a better word. “This school district is in bad shape,” Superintendent Shawn McCollough of the Greene County district, which is predominantly poor and African American, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Even so, advocates of single-sex education say Greene County went too far. The approach works best when it is an option, they say, not the only choice.

But single-gender schools have seemed to make a difference in a variety of settings. For instance, the Thurgood Marshall School in Seattle, which targets inner-city boys, has seen its students’ reading scores soar to 66 percent from 10 percent and its suspension rate drop dramatically. Sax cites Woodward Avenue Elementary School in Volusia County, Fla., which he says has erased the achievement gap altogether, and rattles off similar successes in Foley, Ala., and Toledo, Ohio.

How not to spell success

Sax contends that separate settings cater to the different learning styles of boys and girls. He also cautions: “You should never ever launch this program, or mention it to a reporter, until you have thoroughly briefed the parents and answered all of their questions.”

As examples of doing that wrong, he cites Greene County, Ga. And Guilford County, N.C. “Greensboro has a pretty bad record as far as single-sex education,” Sax said. He was referring to a proposal in 2005 to convert Hampton and Washington elementary schools in Greensboro to single-sex formats. The school board ultimately abandoned the plan after parents balked at the idea. Sax says the proposal was doomed from the start because school officials didn’t share the idea with parents first.

The need for buy-in

Sax said a successful single-gender program needs adequately trained teachers; adequately trained administrators; buy-in from parents at the very beginning, before any public announcements; and the power of parents and students to opt out. Thus, most single-sex programs have girls classes, boys classes and co-ed classes.

Whether that model would work here remains to be seen. But it at least ought to be a part of the conversation. A careful, thoughtful conversation.

As school board member Deena Hayes has rightly suggested: “We just don’t want to rush out there to devise strategies with little information.”

Meanwhile, Sax makes an especially critical point about public sentiment. No matter how you slice the demographics or shuffle the instructional deck, no approach will succeed without community support.