The evidence that single-sex schools will help boys is lacking, concluded the Calgary Board of Education. If anything, single-sex education helps girls more than boys, according to one educator quoted in the story, which is my observation from watching anecdotal material reported from schools engaging in single-sex experiments.
The lack of research into what works, and doesn’t work, with single-sex education is my biggest concern about the fast growing single-sex programs in the United States. It’s possible that single-sex education is a good option for boys, and some inner-city, all-boys charter schools indicate that it can be highly effective.
But until schools have a research-based teaching program to follow, it’s just as possible single-sex programs will be abandoned prematurely, all because the federal government greenlighted the experiments without offering any research on how to do it.