single sex schools opinion essay

Single-sex education: the pros and cons

by: Kristin Stanberry | Updated: May 7, 2024

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Single-sex education (teaching boys and girls in separate classrooms or schools) is an old approach regaining momentum. While single-sex education has long existed in many private schools, it’s a relatively new option for public schools. Only 34 single-sex schools were operating in 2004, but by 2017 U.S. Department of Education data estimated more than 1,000 single-gender public schools. Forty-five percent are all boys, 55 percent are all girls, and 83 percent are overwhelmingly Black and Latino.

Since 2006, federal law has supported the option of single-sex education. when Education Secretary Margaret Spellings eased federal regulations , allowing schools to offer single-sex classrooms and schools, as long as such options are completely voluntary. This move has given parents and school districts greater flexibility, but the research on its value remains a matter of debate.

Nature vs. nurture

Before weighing the pros and cons of single-sex education, consider the influences of “nature versus nurture.” Many factors affect each child’s learning profile and preferences:

• Some factors relate to the child’s nature, such as gender, temperament, abilities (and disabilities), and intelligence.
• Other influences stem from the way parents and society nurture the child: Family upbringing, socioeconomic status, culture, and stereotypes all fall under the “nurture” category.

Advocates of single-sex education argue for the value of separating children from a number of different angles. The most prominent advocate is psychologist and physician Leonard Sax, whose books Why Gender Matters (2005), Boys Adrift (2007), and Girls on the Edge (2010), argue that boys and girls are inherently different and need different educational experiences. Others have argued that the success of women’s colleges point to a value in female-only education, where the chroniclers of the boys growing academic struggles compared to their female peers suggest that boys need girl-free education to fight the stereotype that boys can’t read.

Critics point to a lack of evidence for such claims, summarized by a 2008 New York Times article, which explained that “many academics and progressives tend to find Sax’s views stereotyped and infuriating.” They point out that studies on the impact of single-sex education on learning often do not account for the fact that most single-sex schools are selective or draw from a different population than coeducational public schools. Former president of the American Psychological Association, Diane F. Halpern co-published “ The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling” with other scholars, lambasting sex-segregated education as “deeply misguided, and often justified by weak, cherrypicked, or misconstrued scientific claims.” The subject even inspired a New York Times debate where researchers and pundits squared off about the benefits and bluster of single-sex learning.

So, who’s right? Below are arguments both for and against single-sex education.

Making the case for single-sex education

Those who advocate for single-sex education in public schools argue that:

• Some parents don’t want their children to be in mixed-gender classrooms because, especially at certain ages, students of the opposite sex can be a distraction.
• A 2019 study from the University of Southern California indicates girls learn better when the classroom temperature is warm, while boys perform better in cooler classrooms. If that’s true, then the temperature in a single-sex classroom could be set to optimize the learning of either male or female students.
• Evidence suggests single-sex education can broaden the educational prospects for both girls and boys. A 2017 study examining students in Seoul, Korea, concluded, “male high school seniors attending all-boys schools show higher levels of science interests…than their counterparts attending coeducational schools.”
• A 2015 study out of Switzerland also reports, “[F]emale students in all-female classes experience less stereotype threat and perform better in their mathematics grades than their female peers in coeducational classes.”
• Advocates claim co-ed schools reinforce gender stereotypes, while single-sex schools can break down gender stereotypes. Girls are free of the pressure to compete with boys in male-dominated subjects such as math and science, while boys can more easily pursue traditionally “feminine” interests such as music and poetry.
• Some research offers evidence in favor of co-ed education for boys but single-sex for girls. A 2011 study by Victor Lavy and Analia Schlosser titled “ Mechanisms and Impacts of Gender Peer Effects at School ” determined “an increase in the proportion of girls impose boys and girls’ cognitive outcomes” in elementary schools, caused by “lower levels of classroom disruption and violence, improved inter-student and student-teacher relations, and lessened teacher fatigue.”

What critics say about single-sex education

Those who claim single-sex education is ineffective and/or undesirable make the following claims:

• The impact on learning isn’t conclusive. For instance, in one of the few studies that controlled for a host of parental, individual and school level factors, researchers analyzing Irish schools (where about one third of the students attend gender segregated schools) found no “significant difference in performance for girls or boys who attend single-sex schools compared to their mixed-school peers in science, mathematics or reading.”
• Few educators are formally trained to use gender-specific teaching techniques. However, it’s no secret that experienced teachers usually understand gender differences and are adept at accommodating a variety of learning styles within their mixed-gender classrooms.
• Gender differences in learning aren’t the same across the board; they vary along a continuum of what is considered normal. For a sensitive boy or an assertive girl, the teaching style promoted by advocates of single-sex education could be ineffective (at best) or detrimental (at worst).
• It doesn’t teach genders to work together. Students in single-sex classrooms will one day live and work side-by-side with members of the opposite sex. Educating students in single-sex schools limits their opportunity to work cooperatively and co-exist successfully with members of the opposite sex.
• It perpetuates gender stereotyping. For instance, the ACLU opposes single-sex schools, claiming they are based on “junk science” to perpetuate “disturbing gender stereotypes” and are a “waste of time” that divert attention from more valuable reforms, such as reducing class size and increasing teacher training. Or as Diane F. Halpern’s put it in “The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling” “…sex segregation increases gender stereotyping and legitimizes institutional sexism.”

Measuring public perception

How does the public view single-sex education? The “average” adult has a different opinion than the graduates of these schools.

In a 2022 poll by YouGov only 25% of adult men surveyed thought all-boys schools were “better” than co-ed schools, with the same percentage viewing them as “worse.” Adult women were less enthusiastic – only 17% thought all-boy schools were superior, with 21% regarding them as worse. Public opinion of all-girls schools was a bit more generous: 25% of men thought they were better for girls than coed schools, and 22% said they were worse, while 20% of women viewed all-girls schools as better than coeds, with 19% claiming they were worse.

People who actually attended single-sex schools were far more supportive. Men who attended all-boys schools were 45 percent positive, claiming it was better than coed, with 29 percent saying they were worse. Women who attended all-girls schools were 41 percent positive, and 26 percent negative.

Many (often most) people answered the survey question with “not sure” or “no difference.” Their uncertainty mirrors the overall ambiguity of the co-ed vs. single-sex school question. As is true of many educational questions, the answer for any given family often depends on context. For instance, is the school operating in a culture where a single-sex education might offer students a respite from gender discrimination? Is the school (coeducational or single-sex) reinforcing gender stereotypes or working against them? Why might the family want single-sex education for their child? Is it intended to empower the child to succeed and learn or keep them narrowly focused on acceptable gender roles?

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Student Opinion

Is Single-Sex Education Still Useful?

By Patrick Phelan

• Jan. 5, 2017

Note: This Student Opinion question was written by a member of an experimental Student Council we ran during the 2015-16 school year. He is a junior at an all-boys’ high school in Boston.

Are all-boys or all-girls schools still useful? What are their benefits? With the emergence of new ideas about the fluidity of gender identity , do they even still make sense?

For example, what happens if a transgender student applies to a single-sex school, or if an enrolled student transitions?

In “ Old Tactic Gets New Use: Public Schools Separate Girls and Boys ,” Motoko Rich provides some context about the educational role of these schools:

Single-sex education, common in the United States until the 19th century, when it fell into deep disfavor except in private or parochial schools, is on the rise again in public schools as educators seek ways to improve academic performance, especially among the poor. Here at Charles Drew Elementary School outside Fort Lauderdale, about a quarter of the classes are segregated by sex on the theory that differences between boys and girls can affect how they learn and behave. ... The theory is generally held in low regard by social scientists. But Ms. Flowers notes that after the school, where nearly all students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, started offering the classes two years ago, its state rating went from a D to a C. Similar improvements have been repeated in a number of other places, causing single-sex classes to spread to other public school districts, including in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia.

But questions about the mission of single-sex education have become especially relevant at women’s colleges in recent years thanks to an evolving understanding of gender identity. In a 2014 Op-Ed, “ Who Are Women’s Colleges For? ”, Kiera Feldman writes:

But today, women’s colleges are at a crossroads their founders could never have foreseen, struggling to reconcile their mission with a growing societal shift on how gender itself is defined. A handful of applications from transgender women have rattled school administrators over the past year, giving rise to anxious meetings and campus demonstrations. On April 29, the Department of Education issued new guidance: Transgender students are protected from discrimination under Title IX.

And in another 2014 piece, “ When Women Become Men at Wellesley ,” Ruth Padawer introduces us to Timothy Boatwright, who was raised a girl and checked “female” when he applied, but introduced himself at college as “masculine-of-center genderqueer.” He asked everyone at Wellesley to use male pronouns and the name Timothy, which he’d chosen for himself. Ms. Padawer writes:

Some two dozen other matriculating students at Wellesley don’t identify as women. Of those, a half-dozen or so were trans men, people born female who identified as men, some of whom had begun taking testosterone to change their bodies. The rest said they were transgender or genderqueer, rejecting the idea of gender entirely or identifying somewhere between female and male; many, like Timothy, called themselves transmasculine. Though his gender identity differed from that of most of his classmates, he generally felt comfortable at his new school.

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Essay Service Examples Education Single Sex Schools

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Works Cited

• Robert Kirschenbaum 2002-2019 National Education Association http://www.nea.org/archive/17276.htm
• Natalie Regoli 2019 https://greengarageblog.org/author/greengarageblogadmin
• Rhonda Rosenberg November 3, 2016 https://www.uft.org/news/teaching/how-class-disruptions-affect-achievement
• U.S. Department of Education 08/11/2009 https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/other/single-sex/characteristics/index.html

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Why do we have single sex schools? What’s the history behind one of the biggest debates in education?

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Jessica Kean receives funding from an Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative grant 'Australian Boys: Beyond the Boy Problem'.

Helen Proctor receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Kellie Burns previously received funding from the University of Sydney, Equity Prize.

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When students walked through the sandstone gates of Sydney’s Newington College for the first day of school last week, they were met by protesters .

A group of parents and former students had gathered outside this prestigious school in the city’s inner west, holding placards decrying the school’s decision to become fully co-educational by 2033.

Protesters have even threatened legal action to defend the 160-year-old tradition of boys’ education at the school. One told Channel 9 they fear the change is driven by “woke […] palaver” that will disadvantage boys at Newington.

Newington is not the only prestigious boys school to open enrolments to girls. Cranbrook in Sydney’s east will also go fully co-ed, with the decision sparking a heated community debate .

This debate is not a new one. What is the history behind the single-sex vs co-ed divide? And why does it spark so much emotion?

Read more: As another elite boys' school goes co-ed, are single-sex schools becoming an endangered species?

What is the history of the debate?

Schools like Newington were set up at a time when the curriculum and social worlds for upper-class boys and girls were often quite different. Boys and girls were thought to require different forms of education for their intellectual and moral development.

The question of whether it’s a good idea to educate boys and girls separately has been debated in Australia for at least 160 years, around the time Newington was set up.

In the 1860s, the colony of Victoria introduced a policy of coeducation for all government-run schools. This was despite community concerns about “ moral well-being ”. There was a concern that boys would be a “corrupting influence” on the girls. So schools were often organised to minimise contact between boys and girls even when they shared a classroom.

Other colonies followed suit. The main reason the various Australian governments decided to educate boys and girls together was financial. It was always cheaper, especially in regional and rural areas, to build one school than two. So most government schools across Australia were established to enrol both girls and boys.

One notable exception was New South Wales, which set up a handful of single-sex public high schools in the 1880s.

These were intended to provide an alternative to single-sex private secondary schools. At that time, education authorities did not believe parents would agree to enrol their children in mixed high schools. Historically, coeducation has been more controversial for older students, but less so for students in their primary years.

A changing debate

By the 1950s, many education experts were arguing coeducation was better for social development than single-sex schooling. This was at a time of national expansion of secondary schooling in Australia and new psychological theories about adolescents.

In following decades, further debates emerged. A feminist reassessment in the 1980s argued girls were sidelined in co-ed classes. This view was in turn challenged during the 1990s , with claims girls were outstripping boys academically and boys were being left behind in co-ed environments.

Which system delivers better academic results?

There is no conclusive evidence that one type of schooling (co-ed or single sex) yields better academic outcomes than the other.

Schools are complex and diverse settings. There are too many variables (such as resourcing, organisational structures and teaching styles) to make definitive claims about any one factor. Many debates about single-sex vs co-ed schooling also neglect social class as a key factor in academic achievement.

What about the social environment?

Research about the social outcomes of co-ed vs single-sex schools is also contested.

Some argue co-ed schooling better prepares young people for the co-ed world they will grow up in.

Others have suggested boys may fare better in co-ed settings, with girls acting as a counterbalance to boys’ unruliness. But it has also been argued boys take up more space and teacher time, detracting from girls’ learning and confidence.

Both of these arguments rely on gender stereotypes about girls being compliant and timid and boys being boisterous and disruptive.

Key to these debates is a persistent belief that girls and boys learn differently. These claims do not have a strong basis in educational research.

Read more: We can see the gender bias of all-boys' schools by the books they study in English

Why such a heated debate?

Tradition plays a big part in this debate. Often, parents want their children to have a similar schooling experience to themselves.

For others it’s about access to specific resources and experiences. Elite boys schools have spent generations accumulating social and physical resources tailored to what they believe boys are interested in and what they believe is in boys’ best interests . This includes sports facilities, curriculum offerings, approaches to behaviour management and “old boys” networks.

Many of these schools have spent decades marketing themselves as uniquely qualified to educate boys (or a certain type of boy). So it’s not surprising if some in these school communities are resisting change.

More concerning are the Newington protesters who suggest this move toward inclusivity and gender diversity will make boys “second-class citizens”. This echoes a refrain common in anti-feminist and anti-trans backlash movements , which position men and boys as vulnerable in a world of changing gender norms. This overlooks the ways they too can benefit from the embrace of greater diversity at school.

As schools do the work to open up to more genders , it is likely they will also become welcoming to a wider range of boys and young men.

• Private schools
• single sex education

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The Resurgence of Single-Sex Education

The benefits and limitations of schools that segregate based on gender

Defenders of same-sex schools hold fast to the belief that girls and boys benefit from separate academic instruction. Proponents often point to school experiences documented in landmark reports like The American Association of University Women’s “ How Schools Shortchange Girls ” as evidence of widespread inequities faced by girls in mixed classrooms. Same-sex educational settings are also offered as a way to improve lagging achievement for low-income students of color— mainly boys —in urban public schools. Conversely, opponents claim single-sex education perpetuates traditional gender roles and “ legitimizes institutional sexism ,” while neuroscientists refute the merits of gender differences between girl and boy brains. And rather than creating more equitable schools for nonwhite students, some critics compare separating boys and girls to racially segregated schooling. The disputes pitting ardent supporters against fervent detractors have done little to dampen popularity, however. The prevalence of single-sex public schools has risen and fallen over the years, yet the last decade has seen a major revival. According to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, only 34 single-sex public schools were in operation in 2004 . That number jumped 25-fold in 10 years: The New York Times reported in 2014 that 850 schools nationwide had single-sex programs. With participation apparently on the upswing, the Department of Education’s civil-rights division offered guidelines on single-sex classes to K-12 public schools last year. Against this backdrop of renewed interest in single-sex schools and classes, the author Juliet A. Williams, a professor of gender studies and associate dean of the Division of Social Sciences at UCLA, takes a deep dive into the social aspects and framing of this hotly debated issue in a new book, The Separation Solution? Single-Sex Education and the New Politics of Gender Equality . She recently shared some thoughts with me on the subject. The interview that follows has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Melinda D. Anderson: A major thread running through the book is that so many people—educators, parents, activists, and politicians—strongly believe in the potential of single-sex education to unleash academic excellence, while the evidence supporting this claim is sparse and insufficient. What would you say is the primary driving force behind its well-entrenched support?

Juliet A. Williams: Some people believe in single-sex education because they had a great personal experience. To other people, single-sex education seems like plain old common sense: They see differences between boys and girls, and they like the idea of creating schools that reflect these differences. Still others look at the failure of U.S. public-school systems and think, “we’ve got to do something; let’s give it a try.” Since the 1990s, there has been a resurgence of interest in single-sex education in public schools serving students in grades K-12. My book takes a look at the arguments driving interest in single-sex public education, as well as the results. What I have found is that single-sex public-school initiatives have been created with the best of intentions, but that they are not delivering the results. At the same time, they are producing some unintended consequences in terms of reinforcing damaging gender stereotypes.

Anderson: Your freshman year at the Philadelphia High School for Girls, an all-girls public magnet for academically gifted students, is compared to “serving time in prison,” a characterization I found peculiar as a graduate of Girls’ High. With the exception of your brief stint in an all-girls school, The Separation Solution? lacks input from current students or alumni of K-12 single-sex schools. Could their perspectives have expanded your analysis of single-sex education? Williams: I’m pretty sure I would have experienced some measure of adolescent angst no matter where I went to school, and looking back, I think it would be a real mistake to conclude that it was because I happened to attend an all-girls [high school] as opposed to a coed one. By the same token, I suspect that many people who flourished in single-sex environments would have had an equally rewarding experience at a coed school. That’s the problem with relying on personal experience to assess what works in education, and what doesn’t. Think of it this way: If I were to write a book about new treatments for cancer, [I wouldn’t] go out and ask people whether they enjoyed their treatment. I would want to know about results. Our kids deserve to grow up in a society that takes their education every bit as seriously as we take our commitment to good medicine.   Anderson: The creation of single-sex academies in the 1950s throughout the South by anti-integrationists aiming to thwart Brown v. Board of Education and keep black boys from being in classrooms with white girls is an interesting tidbit. Today, K-12 single-sex programs are still mostly concentrated in southern states. Can you talk more about this historical footnote?

Williams: Mention single-sex education to most people today, and you are likely to conjure images of elite institutions in bucolic settings, where emphasis is placed not only on rigorously training young minds, but also on building character and developing self-confidence. As I discovered, however, behind the image of single-sex education’s rosy past lies the story of its disturbingly checkered history. After the Civil War, several of the nation’s increasingly diverse, urban school districts moved to create single-sex public high schools to appease xenophobic parents worried about the prospect of students from different ethnic, religious, and class backgrounds rubbing shoulders throughout the school day. In the years following the landmark Supreme Court ruling, the prejudice driving the retreat from coeducational public schools was even more flagrant … amidst racist panic about the inevitability of young white women and young black men forming social bonds across racial lines.

This history is important [yet] I don’t think there are any easy analogies to be drawn between racially segregated schools in the past, and single-sex schools in the present. Many single-sex programs have been initiated specifically to address the unmet needs of underserved students, particularly black and Latino young men, and there is no question that some of the very best single-sex public schools today are ones created to serve low-income students of color. What is a question [though] is whether these schools are great because they are single-sex. So far, there isn’t evidence to show that they are. Instead, the research shows that successful schools, whether single-sex or coed, tend to have certain things in common, like creating strong mentoring relationships and keeping class sizes to a manageable level. When this happens, students benefit—whether or not boys and girls [are separated].

Anderson: The claim that boys and girls are “hard wired” differently, namely the neuroscience of sex-based learning differences, has been refuted by scientific researchers. Still, a belief in its efficacy persists as an education-policy approach and in teacher professional development. How can this be more effectively countered? Williams: While researching this book I learned about a fascinating phenomenon called “the selective allure of neuroscientific information.” In a series of ingenious experiments, a team of Yale researchers found that even the citation of irrelevant neuroscience information can make certain claims seem more credible than they otherwise would be. What this means in practice is that we can be all too easily drawn into accepting even the most poorly substantiated claims about the differences between men and women, provided those claims come dressed up in the commanding rhetoric of “hard-wiring.” What I found is that many of today’s “gender-sensitive” pedagogies are sold to teachers and parents in a deceptively appealing pseudo-scientific jargon of sex difference. That’s not to say that there aren’t real differences between girls and boys. But it is to say that we should be very skeptical of anyone who claims that we can extrapolate from what currently is known. Despite the fact that much of the popular science of sex difference has been debunked, the past decade has seen a proliferation of public-school programs modeled on bogus teachings.

Anderson: The prospect of transgender students recalibrating the single-sex education debate is presented in the book, with the mission and practice of single-sex schooling upended “in new and important directions.” What do you see as the future of single-sex education as growing numbers of students no longer identify with a gender binary?

Williams: It will be interesting to see how single-sex schools address the issue of gender diversity moving forward. The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights has been clear that transgender and gender nonconforming students are entitled to protection from sex-based discrimination under Title IX. [All public and private elementary and secondary schools, school districts, colleges, and universities receiving any federal financial assistance must comply with Title IX] Further, all students are entitled to participate in school programs based on their gender identity. One place single-sex public schools may wish to look for guidance moving forward is to the nation’s private women’s colleges. In recent years, several of the most prestigious historically all-women’s colleges have revised their admissions statements to explicitly welcome applications from transgender and gender nonconforming students. In doing so, these colleges are taking important steps to ensure that their commitment to single-sex education doesn’t inadvertently perpetuate bias and intolerance. Anderson: A provision in No Child Left Behind in 2001 helped accelerate the growth of single-sex education—you describe a “surge of single-sex experiments” in public-school classrooms across the country. A co-sponsor of the provision allowing school districts to use grants for same-sex schools and classrooms was former New York Senator Hillary Clinton, who cast single-sex education as furthering public-school choice. Now a candidate for U.S. president, how do you think same-sex education might fare in a Hillary Clinton administration?

Williams: Many officials, including then Senator Hillary Clinton, saw single-sex public education as a promising reform strategy. At the time, federal money was set aside to encourage “experimentation” with single-sex approaches. Since then, hundreds of single-sex public-schooling initiatives have been launched. What have we learned? Predictably, fans of single-sex education loudly proclaim these experiments to be a success —and they have a few carefully chosen examples to prove it. But the real story lies in the overwhelming number of single-sex initiatives that have failed to produce positive results. In 2014, an exhaustive review found no significant proven advantages of single-sex schooling over coeducation, either for boys or for girls. With so many proven approaches to education reform out there, let’s invest in those. Our kids’ lives are too precious to experiment with.

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Single-Sex Education: New Perspectives and Evidence on a Continuing Controversy

• Original Article
• Published: 31 July 2011
• Volume 65 , pages 659–669, ( 2011 )

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• Margaret L. Signorella 2  

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The number of single-sex schools in the United States has climbed steadily in recent years, despite a lack of consensus that such schools lead to academic or psychological outcomes superior to those of coeducational schools. In this introduction to the first part of a special issue on the topic, we review the history of single-sex education in the U.S. and factors that have led to its recent rise. We then review ideological and methodological controversies in the field. Finally, we summarize the eight empirical studies that appear in the issue, highlighting the contributions of each paper to a body of work that we hope will inform educational practice and policy.

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Thoughts on “probability values and human values in evaluating single-sex education”.

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Bigler, R.S., Signorella, M.L. Single-Sex Education: New Perspectives and Evidence on a Continuing Controversy. Sex Roles 65 , 659–669 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-011-0046-x

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