Surge in single-sex schools due to boys, but are girls helped more?
Just seven years ago there were only 11 public single-sex schools. Now there are 540. The majority of those schools were formed in response to boys floundering in school, but are girls helped more? This study from UCLA only answers the girls side of that equation, but I detect a pattern. There’s ample evidence that girls benefit from single-sex education. (Full disclosure: Although our daughters attended co-ed schools, they graduated from a girls school.)
Here’s an interesting one from England: Boys do worse in English when they have a lot of girls in their class.
And finally, here’s an interesting story about a boys school opening up on the banks of North Carolina’s French Broad River. (Next full disclosure: When young, I spent nearly summer on my grandmother’s farm on the French Broad, so naturally I’m pulling for this to succeed.) This from the Citizen-Times:
All-boys middle school hopes to start in fall
By Ashley Wilson
Will Yeiser had been looking for a way to connect his love for the outdoors with his passion for teaching children.
Now he thinks he’s found it.
In August, Yeiser, a former Spanish teacher at Asheville Middle School, plans to open The French Broad River Academy, a private all-boys middle school with a focus on the French Broad River and global awareness.
He will open the school with longtime friend David Byers, a former Asheville High science teacher.
“I got really intrigued with the idea of combining outdoor experiential education with the traditional public school setting,” Yeiser said. “We both started talking about scaling up our passion and vision for what schooling should be.”
After learning about the different ways in which boys and girls learn, Yeiser decided the Asheville area needed an all-boys middle school.
Tags: single sex
