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lumberjack_jeff

(33,224 posts)
11. Schools can't do anything about socioeconomic status of the families living in the district.
Mon Jul 9, 2012, 11:46 AM
Jul 2012

It's pointless to worry about it. At worst, it simply becomes an excuse to do badly.

In contrast, single sex classrooms is an actionable idea.

From your link

Foley, population 11,300, is 10 miles from the Gulf Coast. Fifty-seven percent of Foley Intermediate’s students are white, 24 percent are black and 17 percent are Latino; 70 percent receive free or reduced-price lunches each day. In the first year of Foley’s single-sex program, a third of the kids enrolled. The next year, two-thirds signed up, and in its third year 87 percent of parents requested the program. Principal Mansell reports that her single-sex classes produce fewer discipline problems, more parental support and better scores in writing, reading and math. She does, however, acknowledge that her data are compromised, as her highest-performing teachers and her most-motivated students have chosen single-sex.

...

Wylie says she believes she is a better teacher, and her students are better students, because they’re in a desexualized — or at least less-sexualized — environment. “Sure,” she says, “when they take pictures, they often present their backsides first. But I think I’m giving girls a better education than I could have if there were guys in the room. I’m freer. I’m more able to be bold in my statements. When I teach poetry and I talk about the sex in poetry I don’t need to be worried about the boy in the room who is going to chuckle over the thing he did with the girl last week and embarrass her. Which happened more than once in my last coed environment.”

Nearly everyone at T.Y.W.L.S. acknowledges that often parents’ most pressing concern when enrolling their 11-year-old daughters is sheltering those girls from sexualized classrooms and sexualized streets. “Harlem’s a very intense environment,” says Drew Higginbotham, T.Y.W.L.S.’s assistant principal, who lives in the neighborhood. “You’re constantly needing to prove yourself physically, to prove yourself sexually. Parents, when they come to our school, they sort of exhale deeply. You can hear them thinking to themselves, I can see my daughter here and she’s going to be O.K. for six hours a day.” Sax is not above or beyond this kind of thinking, either. In fact, after a nearly-two-hour conversation filled with scientific jargon and brains, he told me, perhaps wishfully, that really the most important reason to send a child to a single-sex high school was that those kids still go on dates. “Boys at boys’ schools like Old Farms in Connecticut, or Saint Albans in Washington, D. C., will call up girls at Miss Porter’s in Connecticut, at Stone Ridge in Maryland, and they will ask the girl out, and the boy will drive to the girl’s house to pick her up and meet her parents. You tell kids at a coed school to do this, and they’ll fall on the floor laughing. But the culture of dating is much healthier than the culture of the hookup, in which the primary form of sexual intimacy is a girl on her knees servicing a boy.”

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my radical ideas handmade34 Jul 2012 #1
"Most destructive is age (discrimination): Yes! Jackpine Radical Jul 2012 #27
The results of single sex classrooms have been positive. lumberjack_jeff Jul 2012 #2
Also negative- Starry Messenger Jul 2012 #3
The FCAT itself is notoriously unreliable- Starry Messenger Jul 2012 #4
More on the studies of Leonard Sax, the web owner of Single Sex Schools- Starry Messenger Jul 2012 #5
Thank you for posting this obamanut2012 Jul 2012 #6
In addition, Sax's website even twists court decisions obamanut2012 Jul 2012 #7
Justice Ginsburg lumberjack_jeff Jul 2012 #13
So you agree Sax's website twists the VMI case's decsiion? obamanut2012 Jul 2012 #17
I'm working on the assumption that you asked a question lumberjack_jeff Jul 2012 #18
The feminist case for SS classrooms is that is has been shown to increase girls test scores 30%. lumberjack_jeff Jul 2012 #8
"Teaching Boys and Girls Separately" Starry Messenger Jul 2012 #9
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
"Pseudoscience in Sax on Sex" Starry Messenger Jul 2012 #10
I'm more persuaded by arguments that refute the outcomes. lumberjack_jeff Jul 2012 #12
Jeff, I am politely asking you to knock it off, now obamanut2012 Jul 2012 #15
It's worse. Starry Messenger Jul 2012 #16
From the president of Bryn Mawr. lumberjack_jeff Jul 2012 #19
Bryn Mawr is not a public school. Starry Messenger Jul 2012 #20
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
I don't think I did. lumberjack_jeff Jul 2012 #25
Without at least a strong correlation it's just a guess. Gormy Cuss Jul 2012 #29
I agree to this extent. lumberjack_jeff Jul 2012 #30
Do banks issue Mortgages based upon gender or income, payment histories etc? One_Life_To_Give Jul 2012 #21
Very bad idea. nt ladjf Jul 2012 #26
I'm so damn tired of everything being politicized. xfundy Jul 2012 #28
I thought we figured out that "Separate but Equal" kdmorris Jul 2012 #31
Public education in the US has been co-ed since the early 1900's too. Starry Messenger Jul 2012 #32
I have three daughters, as well kdmorris Jul 2012 #33
Perfectly stated! Starry Messenger Jul 2012 #34
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