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Feminists
In reply to the discussion: More public schools splitting up boys, girls [View all]Starry Messenger
(32,376 posts)9. "Teaching Boys and Girls Separately"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/magazine/02sex3-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
Foley Intermediate School began offering separate classes for boys and girls a few years ago, after the schools principal, Lee Mansell, read a book by Michael Gurian called Boys and Girls Learn Differently! After that, she read a magazine article by Sax and thought that his insights would help improve the test scores of Foleys lowest-achieving cohort, minority boys. Sax went on to publish those ideas in Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences. Both books feature conversion stories of children, particularly boys, failing and on Ritalin in coeducational settings and then pulling themselves together in single-sex schools. Saxs book and lectures also include neurological diagrams and scores of citations of obscure scientific studies, like one by a Swedish researcher who found, in a study of 96 adults, that males and females have different emotional and cognitive responses to different kinds of light. Sax refers to a few other studies that he says show that girls and boys draw differently, including one from a group of Japanese researchers who found girls drawings typically depict still lifes of people, pets or flowers, using 10 or more crayons, favoring warm colors like red, green, beige and brown; boys, on the other hand, draw action, using 6 or fewer colors, mostly cool hues like gray, blue, silver and black. This apparent difference, which Sax argues is hard-wired, causes teachers to praise girls artwork and make boys feel that theyre drawing incorrectly. Under Saxs leadership, teachers learn to say things like, Damien, take your green crayon and draw some sparks and take your black crayon and draw some black lines coming out from the back of the vehicle, to make it look like its going faster. Now Damien feels encouraged, Sax explained to me when I first met him last spring in San Francisco. To say: Why dont you use more colors? Why dont you put someone in the vehicle? is as discouraging as if you say to Emily, Well, this is nice, but why dont you have one of them kick the other one give us some action.
During the fall of 2003, Principal Mansell asked her entire faculty to read Boys and Girls Learn Differently! and, in the spring of 2004, to attend a one-day seminar led by Sax at the school, explaining boys and girls innate differences and how to teach to them. She also invited all Foley Intermediate School parents to a meeting extolling the virtues of single-sex public education. Enough parents were impressed that when Foley Intermediate, a school of 322 fourth and fifth graders, reopened after summer recess, the school had four single-sex classrooms: a girls and a boys class in both the fourth and fifth grades. Four classrooms in each grade remained coed.
Separating schoolboys from schoolgirls has long been a staple of private and parochial education. But the idea is now gaining traction in American public schools, in response to both the desire of parents to have more choice in their childrens public education and the separate education crises girls and boys have been widely reported to experience. The girls crisis was cited in the 1990s, when the American Association of University Women published Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America, which described how girls self-esteem plummets during puberty and how girls are subtly discouraged from careers in math and science. More recently, in what Sara Mead, an education expert at the New America Foundation, calls a man bites dog sensation, public and parental concerns have shifted to boys. Boys are currently behind their sisters in high-school and college graduation rates. School, the boy-crisis argument goes, is shaped by females to match the abilities of girls (or, as Sax puts it, is taught by soft-spoken women who bore boys). In 2006, Doug Anglin, a 17-year-old in Milton, Mass., filed a civil rights complaint with the United States Department of Education, claiming that his high school where there are twice as many girls on the honor roll as there are boys discriminated against males. His case did not prevail in the courts, but his sentiment found support in the Legislature and the press. That same year, as part of No Child Left Behind, the federal law that authorizes programs aimed at improving accountability and test scores in public schools, the Department of Education passed new regulations making it easier for districts to create single-sex classrooms and schools.
<snip>
Among advocates of single-sex public education, there are two camps: those who favor separating boys from girls because they are essentially different and those who favor separating boys from girls because they have different social experiences and social needs. Leonard Sax represents the essential-difference view, arguing that boys and girls should be educated separately for reasons of biology: for example, Sax asserts that boys dont hear as well as girls, which means that an instructor needs to speak louder in order for the boys in the room to hear her; and that boys visual systems are better at seeing action, while girls are better at seeing the nuance of color and texture. The social view is represented by teachers like Emily Wylie, who works at the Young Womens Leadership School of East Harlem (T.Y.W.L.S.), an all-girls school for Grades 7-12. Wylie described her job to me by saying, Its my subversive mission to create all these strong girls who will then go out into the world and be astonished when people try to oppress them. Sax calls schools like T.Y.W.L.S. anachronisms because, he says, theyre stuck in 1970s-era feminist ideology and they dont base their pedagogy on the latest research. Few on the other side want to disparage Sax publicly, though T.Y.W.L.S.s founder, Ann Tisch, did tell me pointedly, Nobody is planning the days of our girls around a photograph of a brain.
If parents wish to experiment with gender pseudoscience, they are more than welcome to do so. Many parochial schools are segregated by gender.
The greatest effect on education is known to be socioeconomic status of the family.
http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/factsheet-education.aspx
SES and Family Resources
Families from low-SES communities are less likely to have the financial resources or time availability to provide children with academic support.
Childrens initial reading competence is correlated with the home literacy environment, number of books owned, and parent distress (Aikens & Barbarin, 2008). However, parents from low-SES communities may be unable to afford resources such as books, computers, or tutors to create this positive literacy environment (Orr, 2003).
In a nationwide study of American kindergarten children, 36% of parents in the lowest-income quintile read to their children on a daily basis, compared with 62% of parents from the highest-income quintile (Coley, 2002).
When enrolled in a program that encouraged adult support, students from low-SES groups reported higher levels of effort towards academics (Kaylor & Flores, 2008).
SES and the School Environment
Research indicates that school conditions contribute more to SES differences in learning rates than family characteristics (Aikens & Barbarin, 2008).
Schools in low-SES communities suffer from high levels of unemployment, migration of the best qualified teachers, and low educational achievement (Muijs, Harris, Chapman, Stoll, & Russ, 2009).
A teachers years of experience and quality of training is correlated with childrens academic achievement (Gimbert, Bol, & Wallace, 2007). Yet, children in lowincome schools are less likely to have well-qualified teachers. In fact, of high school math teachers in lowincome school districts 27% majored in mathematics in college as compared to 43% of teachers who did so in more affluent school districts (Ingersoll, 1999).
The following factors have been found to improve the quality of schools in low-SES neighborhoods: a focus on improving teaching and learning, creation of an information-rich environment, building of a learning community, continuous professional development, involvement of parents, and increased funding and resources (Muijis et al., 2009).
SES and Academic Achievement
Research continues to link lower SES to lower academic achievement and slower rates of academic progress as compared with higher SES communities.
Children from low-SES environments acquire language skills more slowly, exhibit delayed letter recognition and phonological awareness, and are at risk for reading difficulties (Aikens & Barbarin, 2008).
Children with higher SES backgrounds were more likely to be proficient on tasks of addition, subtraction, ordinal sequencing, and math word problems than children with lower SES backgrounds (Coley, 2002).
Students from low-SES schools entered high school 3.3 grade levels behind students from higher SES schools. In addition, students from the low-SES groups learned less over 4 years than children from higher SES groups, graduating 4.3 grade levels behind those of higher SES groups (Palardy, 2008).
In 2007, the high school dropout rate among persons 16- 24 years old was highest in low-income families (16.7%) as compared to high-income families (3.2%) (National Center for Education Statistics, 2008).
Foley Intermediate School began offering separate classes for boys and girls a few years ago, after the schools principal, Lee Mansell, read a book by Michael Gurian called Boys and Girls Learn Differently! After that, she read a magazine article by Sax and thought that his insights would help improve the test scores of Foleys lowest-achieving cohort, minority boys. Sax went on to publish those ideas in Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences. Both books feature conversion stories of children, particularly boys, failing and on Ritalin in coeducational settings and then pulling themselves together in single-sex schools. Saxs book and lectures also include neurological diagrams and scores of citations of obscure scientific studies, like one by a Swedish researcher who found, in a study of 96 adults, that males and females have different emotional and cognitive responses to different kinds of light. Sax refers to a few other studies that he says show that girls and boys draw differently, including one from a group of Japanese researchers who found girls drawings typically depict still lifes of people, pets or flowers, using 10 or more crayons, favoring warm colors like red, green, beige and brown; boys, on the other hand, draw action, using 6 or fewer colors, mostly cool hues like gray, blue, silver and black. This apparent difference, which Sax argues is hard-wired, causes teachers to praise girls artwork and make boys feel that theyre drawing incorrectly. Under Saxs leadership, teachers learn to say things like, Damien, take your green crayon and draw some sparks and take your black crayon and draw some black lines coming out from the back of the vehicle, to make it look like its going faster. Now Damien feels encouraged, Sax explained to me when I first met him last spring in San Francisco. To say: Why dont you use more colors? Why dont you put someone in the vehicle? is as discouraging as if you say to Emily, Well, this is nice, but why dont you have one of them kick the other one give us some action.
During the fall of 2003, Principal Mansell asked her entire faculty to read Boys and Girls Learn Differently! and, in the spring of 2004, to attend a one-day seminar led by Sax at the school, explaining boys and girls innate differences and how to teach to them. She also invited all Foley Intermediate School parents to a meeting extolling the virtues of single-sex public education. Enough parents were impressed that when Foley Intermediate, a school of 322 fourth and fifth graders, reopened after summer recess, the school had four single-sex classrooms: a girls and a boys class in both the fourth and fifth grades. Four classrooms in each grade remained coed.
Separating schoolboys from schoolgirls has long been a staple of private and parochial education. But the idea is now gaining traction in American public schools, in response to both the desire of parents to have more choice in their childrens public education and the separate education crises girls and boys have been widely reported to experience. The girls crisis was cited in the 1990s, when the American Association of University Women published Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America, which described how girls self-esteem plummets during puberty and how girls are subtly discouraged from careers in math and science. More recently, in what Sara Mead, an education expert at the New America Foundation, calls a man bites dog sensation, public and parental concerns have shifted to boys. Boys are currently behind their sisters in high-school and college graduation rates. School, the boy-crisis argument goes, is shaped by females to match the abilities of girls (or, as Sax puts it, is taught by soft-spoken women who bore boys). In 2006, Doug Anglin, a 17-year-old in Milton, Mass., filed a civil rights complaint with the United States Department of Education, claiming that his high school where there are twice as many girls on the honor roll as there are boys discriminated against males. His case did not prevail in the courts, but his sentiment found support in the Legislature and the press. That same year, as part of No Child Left Behind, the federal law that authorizes programs aimed at improving accountability and test scores in public schools, the Department of Education passed new regulations making it easier for districts to create single-sex classrooms and schools.
<snip>
Among advocates of single-sex public education, there are two camps: those who favor separating boys from girls because they are essentially different and those who favor separating boys from girls because they have different social experiences and social needs. Leonard Sax represents the essential-difference view, arguing that boys and girls should be educated separately for reasons of biology: for example, Sax asserts that boys dont hear as well as girls, which means that an instructor needs to speak louder in order for the boys in the room to hear her; and that boys visual systems are better at seeing action, while girls are better at seeing the nuance of color and texture. The social view is represented by teachers like Emily Wylie, who works at the Young Womens Leadership School of East Harlem (T.Y.W.L.S.), an all-girls school for Grades 7-12. Wylie described her job to me by saying, Its my subversive mission to create all these strong girls who will then go out into the world and be astonished when people try to oppress them. Sax calls schools like T.Y.W.L.S. anachronisms because, he says, theyre stuck in 1970s-era feminist ideology and they dont base their pedagogy on the latest research. Few on the other side want to disparage Sax publicly, though T.Y.W.L.S.s founder, Ann Tisch, did tell me pointedly, Nobody is planning the days of our girls around a photograph of a brain.
If parents wish to experiment with gender pseudoscience, they are more than welcome to do so. Many parochial schools are segregated by gender.
The greatest effect on education is known to be socioeconomic status of the family.
http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/factsheet-education.aspx
SES and Family Resources
Families from low-SES communities are less likely to have the financial resources or time availability to provide children with academic support.
Childrens initial reading competence is correlated with the home literacy environment, number of books owned, and parent distress (Aikens & Barbarin, 2008). However, parents from low-SES communities may be unable to afford resources such as books, computers, or tutors to create this positive literacy environment (Orr, 2003).
In a nationwide study of American kindergarten children, 36% of parents in the lowest-income quintile read to their children on a daily basis, compared with 62% of parents from the highest-income quintile (Coley, 2002).
When enrolled in a program that encouraged adult support, students from low-SES groups reported higher levels of effort towards academics (Kaylor & Flores, 2008).
SES and the School Environment
Research indicates that school conditions contribute more to SES differences in learning rates than family characteristics (Aikens & Barbarin, 2008).
Schools in low-SES communities suffer from high levels of unemployment, migration of the best qualified teachers, and low educational achievement (Muijs, Harris, Chapman, Stoll, & Russ, 2009).
A teachers years of experience and quality of training is correlated with childrens academic achievement (Gimbert, Bol, & Wallace, 2007). Yet, children in lowincome schools are less likely to have well-qualified teachers. In fact, of high school math teachers in lowincome school districts 27% majored in mathematics in college as compared to 43% of teachers who did so in more affluent school districts (Ingersoll, 1999).
The following factors have been found to improve the quality of schools in low-SES neighborhoods: a focus on improving teaching and learning, creation of an information-rich environment, building of a learning community, continuous professional development, involvement of parents, and increased funding and resources (Muijis et al., 2009).
SES and Academic Achievement
Research continues to link lower SES to lower academic achievement and slower rates of academic progress as compared with higher SES communities.
Children from low-SES environments acquire language skills more slowly, exhibit delayed letter recognition and phonological awareness, and are at risk for reading difficulties (Aikens & Barbarin, 2008).
Children with higher SES backgrounds were more likely to be proficient on tasks of addition, subtraction, ordinal sequencing, and math word problems than children with lower SES backgrounds (Coley, 2002).
Students from low-SES schools entered high school 3.3 grade levels behind students from higher SES schools. In addition, students from the low-SES groups learned less over 4 years than children from higher SES groups, graduating 4.3 grade levels behind those of higher SES groups (Palardy, 2008).
In 2007, the high school dropout rate among persons 16- 24 years old was highest in low-income families (16.7%) as compared to high-income families (3.2%) (National Center for Education Statistics, 2008).
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More on the studies of Leonard Sax, the web owner of Single Sex Schools-
Starry Messenger
Jul 2012
#5
The feminist case for SS classrooms is that is has been shown to increase girls test scores 30%.
lumberjack_jeff
Jul 2012
#8
Schools can't do anything about socioeconomic status of the families living in the district.
lumberjack_jeff
Jul 2012
#11
Parents who choose schools are defacto more involved in their children's education.
Starry Messenger
Jul 2012
#14
The "why" matters, else it's hard to ascribe the outcome to the intervention.
Gormy Cuss
Jul 2012
#22
In this case, both the blue eyed and brown eyed students tested better.
lumberjack_jeff
Jul 2012
#23
You missed the point about eye color but bias is one way that data can be corrupted.
Gormy Cuss
Jul 2012
#24
Do banks issue Mortgages based upon gender or income, payment histories etc?
One_Life_To_Give
Jul 2012
#21