Single-sex classes

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.

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 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. girls in coed classes: 59% scored proficient

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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. Most of the studies comparing single-sex education with coeducation focus on grades and test scores as the parameters of interest. 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. 
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.