Gender based courses

Within many classrooms at one local junior high school, the snakes, snails and puppy dog tails don’t have their usual interaction with sugar, spice and everything nice — at least not in most core-curriculum classrooms.
   A program now in its second year at Bowie Junior High has segregated its students along the gender lines, and although it has shown some measurable gains in participating students’ academic performance since its implementation last year, the program’s overall impact on the school has yet to be accurately gauged.
   With about 750 children taking at least one gender-segregated class in the areas of math, science, English or social studies — about two-thirds of the school’s overall population — the program has become a fixture at Bowie, principal Denise Shetter said, and most students and parents seem to have grown accustomed to the curriculum.
   But despite the evidence of moderate success of the segregated classes, a second glance at some studies and theories may give educators a reason to cool their heals before applying such programs across the board.
   The local program’s beginnings date back, like most of the single-sex education programs in the United States, to a 2006 amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act that finally permitted schools to segregate along the lines of gender, which formerly had only been an option for physical and sex education classes.
   Since then, many studies have examined the benefits and drawbacks of these courses, with most researchers finding that such programs’ tangible results have been less than conclusive.
   At Bowie, principal Denise Shetter said the program — in conjunction with a host of other pilot programs at the school — has tentatively been regarded as successful, particularly for lower-performing students.
   In addition to an overall 8 percent increase in passing rates at Bowie, students on average witnessed an increase of 1.3 letter grades — meaning the average student with a high C average or lower moved up to a low A — but this was mostly exclusive only to the school’s low-performing demographic.

   THE BENEFITS
   Spencer Thompson, a developmental psychologist and the chair of psychology and child and family studies at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, said research shows that the gender-segregated courses have produced positive results in some areas — and, notably, they’ve garnered the wide support of teachers, principals and parents — but thus far have yet to be proven effective.
   Some sound reasoning from a gender and developmental standpoint lies at the heart of the programs, he said, especially in a society that often pigeonholes boys and girls into their respective social roles, but that’s not to say it should become an ECISD norm or grow to become entire schools segregated by gender.
   Gender segregation helps avoid the pitfalls of the common beliefs that boys are better suited to math and science, Thompson said, while girls are more prone to excel in areas of arts and creativity.
   As prevalent as they may seem throughout culture, he said, these roles can be detrimental to the realities of development, about which research has shown that both boys and girls can excel in either, or both, areas.
   In a mixed classroom, Thompson said, sometimes boys, acting on the belief they are supposed to be the academic and social leaders of the classroom, take control of the class, thus marginalizing the girls sitting next to them.
   “What happens is that its OK for a boy to be smart and to know the answers to things, but girls sometimes feel that if they’re the smartest ones in class then they’ll be teased or picked on or something by boys, and they want to fit into that,” he said. “Sometimes boys are a little bit more out of control that girls are. So by removing the boys from the classroom, you get rid of that.”
   With this in mind, it’s hardly surprising that many studies have shown that the single-sex atmospheres have been more beneficial to women than to men.
   Take, for instance, Vira Baza, an eighth-grade science teacher at Bowie who said the gender-segregated courses have had their most immediate impact on all-girl classrooms.
   “I do see them coming out with more questions about stuff,” she said. “They just have this little insecurity when the boys are here. But when they’re not, they’re just not afraid to ask questions and get into the discussion. Girls concentrate more without boys. I can kind of count on them, give them a task, and they’ll get to it. The boys, I have to give them a task and keep them engaged while they’re here.”
   In the all-male classrooms, Shetter said, the adolescent males frequently act like “knuckleheads” and get rowdier without the natural checks and balances female presence seems to bring to the table.
   Baza agreed, explaining that her all-boy classes tend to get a bit more out of hand, so she has taken extra steps to teach them in ways that keep them constantly engaged, which is the “key to avoiding conflict.”
   “They really tend to be more show-offy with each other,” Baza said. “You just have to keep them engaged.”
   Shetter said the program’s effectiveness at bringing girls to the science/math arena also has a flipside. Much like an all-girl science class makes it easier for them to actively participate more, the same holds true for an all-boy English or arts class, topics that gender norms otherwise might relegate only to its female students.
   “Boys don’t write poetry, so it can also work the other way around,” Thompson said. “As a matter of fact, some would say — and I found another article that says that — that we’ve kind of had a backlash in the other direction,” meaning that some of the trends emphasizing the inclusion of more girls have left some boys behind.
   Yet another upside to the program, one that applies to both girls and boys, removes the self-consciousness and gender-centric distractions that sometimes restrict learning within mixed classrooms, Shetter said.
   “When you’re all together and you’re the same, you don’t start putting up barriers. You don’t start putting up labels,” she said. “It’s really about how they interact, and they’re liking it.”
   A quick poll of Bowie students after school one recent afternoon showed mixed feelings about the class configuration.
   While most of the boys who responded said they either disliked the new curriculum or didn’t care much either way, more girls than boys who were asked said they like same-sex classrooms.
   “It helps me to learn more if I don’t have boys in the classroom,” said seventh-grader Erin Subia, who said “mostly all” of her classes are gender-segregated.
   “Yeah,” added seventh-grader Jl’ Aysia Blaylock. “It’s better without them.”
   Many of the other students — both male and female — however, said the net change seemed minimal.
   “It doesn’t really matter,” said ninth-grader Sergio Pena, who was at the school before the transition to the new program. “It’s the same. There’s really no difference. You talk to the same people (in class) anyway.”
   Before segregating the classes last year, Shetter said, she first looked to research and evidence to support the shift, and the concept withstood the crucible of broad expert analysis.
   Pena, the ninth-grader, said the change was somewhat surprising, but he and his peers seem to have just accepted the new program without much more thought.
   When he was initially told about the program, Pena said, his thoughts were, “OK then, let’s see if it works.”
   “We asked ourselves, ‘What could be the harm?’” Shetter said. “We couldn’t find any harm, so we said, ‘Why not?’”

   THE DRAWBACKS
   But, according to Thompson and another expert about these types of programs, the potential for harm does exist.
   Dr. Leonard Sax, director of the National Association of Single Sex Public Education, a nonprofit organization that supports the availability of same-sex educational programs when appropriate, said segregating classes without extensive teacher training and parental input can quickly backfire on administrators.
   “You can engage girls in computer science. You can engage boys in art and creative writing. But that doesn’t happen automatically,” he said. “Just putting girls in one room and boys in another accomplishes very little. In can actually have adverse effects if teachers don’t have appropriate training.”
   Without the proper training and without enough parental and administrative involvement, Sax said, the classes can reinforce society’s gender norms, not circumvent them.
   “If you simply put girls in one room and boys in another, and teachers have not had appropriate training, the result is that you end up reinforcing gender stereotypes,” he said. “You end up teaching girls with shopping analogies and boys with sports analogies. That’s not helpful, because not all boys like sports and not all girls like to shop.”
   Shetter said she is aware of the research indicating the importance of teacher development to go along with the program, though she and her team at Bowie opted not to require it for its teachers.
   “I’m not saying that we don’t need it, but we’re doing it more through action research,” she said. “We’re not trying to prove a theory. We’re saying, ‘Does it have an impact?’ ”
   This, she said, is why each of the teachers in the program are required at teach at least one of the all-girl, all-boy and mixed classes, which gives her and other administrators the ability to look at each teacher’s performance with the male and female classes and compare it to the mixed-class control group.
   Also, Thompson said, the program potentially could pose a threat to students’ notions of what the real world has in store for them by only placing them in classrooms with the same gender, a situation they’re unlikely to find upon entering the workforce.
   He said segregated classrooms could foster rivalries and create an atmosphere conducive to the spread of myths about the opposite sex.
   “I do know that in adolescents, both males and females are trying to figure out who they are, and a lot of that is their gender roles,” he said. “They not only need to know how to act within their gender, but how to act with others and make it so they don’t have myths about how others think of them. The only way to do that is by having interaction with more people.”
   Shetter said she has only had one complaint from a parent about the potential social impediments of segregated classes when the individual expressed concern about their daughter’s ability to learn dating strategies.
   Her response, Shetter said, was that her more immediate concerns pertained to academic growth, not a 15-year-old’s skill in courtship.

   WHAT NOW?
   Thompson, like Sax, emphasized that the programs could prove beneficial, but only if its teachers are well versed how to teach to a gender-specific group.
   And in their review of the program’s impact, Thompson said, administrators should make absolutely sure the evidence supports its continuation in the future.
   “There’s no simple solution,” he said. “If it gets boys to do better in their English classes and it gets girls to do well in mathematics, chemistry and physics, then that’s good. But it may not be for everybody. You have to be cautious.”
   At the end of this year, Shetter said, an evaluation of each teacher’s results will be thoroughly reviewed before she makes any more plans for the program, which could include the addition of gender-specific teacher development.
   So far, however, the most objective measure of the program’s success — its affect on TAKS test performance — have been encouraging, she said, noting that the school was mere points away from an ‘exemplary’ rating this year. And Bowie was the first secondary campus in ECISD to achieve recognized status.
   “Basically what we do is we say, ‘What’s it going to take to get these kids to learn?’ ” she said. “(Researchers) have some valid issues about gender-specific — gender norms — but we’re not doing this to make sure we didn’t engender students. We’re doing this to improve progress in content areas.”

GENDER-SEGREGATED CLASSES
   Pros
   >> Helps girls strive more in math/science.
   >> Helps boys strive more in English/arts.
   >> Broad teacher, parent and administrator support.
   >> Fewer inter-gender distractions.
   Cons
   >> Without teacher development, gender stereotypes could be reinforced, not avoided.
   >> Boys tend to act out when not in presence of girls.
   >> Diminished social interaction between sexes.
   >> Cross-gender rivalries, myths.
   Source: Bowie principal Denise Shetter; Spencer Thompson, psychologist; Dr. Leonard Sax, director of NASSPE; Vira Baza, eighth-grade science teacher.